? The Poisoning in the Pub ?
Seventeen
Carole and Jude didn’t see each other on the Wednesday. At Woodside Cottage there was a full appointment book for clients requiring healing, and at High Tor there was a bit of a panic about Gulliver. The dog had cut his foot on some rusty metal during his morning walk on Fethering Beach. Fortunately the wound was on his shin rather than the soft pads, but it still bled a lot and Carole rushed to the vet’s, where she had to wait about an hour to get him patched up and given an antibiotic injection. So great had been her hurry that she’d not put a rug on the back seat and so spent a long time in the afternoon scrubbing canine blood out of the usually immaculate upholstery of her Renault.
Then when she finished that, she had a call from Gaby, who was again talking about her mother-in-law looking after Lily while she and Stephen went away for a weekend. That left Carole both excited and unsettled. All the old doubts about her maternal skills resurfaced.
One good thing did happen that day, though. Jude got a call from Zosia in the evening to say that the police had finished their investigations of the scene of the crime, and the Crown and Anchor would be opening again on the Thursday. Jude rang Carole and they agreed to meet there for lunch. Apart from the opportunity for a bit of snooping, they had to show their support for Ted.
¦
As it had done a week before, the pub’s reopening coincided with the publication day of the
It was inevitable, but it was just the sort of publicity Ted Crisp didn’t need.
Not that Carole and Jude heard his views on the subject. When they arrived at the pub round twelve-thirty, he wasn’t there. “Had to go to a meeting at the bank,” Zosia explained. Which sounded rather ominous.
The interior of the Crown and Anchor had been meticulously swept and tidied so that no one would know it had been a scene of violence. But outside the scars were plain to see. Two of the windows were boarded up with MDF, and wires from the broken lights hung from their sockets. Debris of broken chairs, window-boxes and glass had been swept up against the front wall, but there hadn’t been time to take it away yet. The place looked rundown and unwelcoming.
That was reflected in the lack of customers. Carole and Jude had anticipated that the pub’s new notoriety might have attracted a few local ghouls, but they had misjudged the attitude of village residents to recent events. Greville Tilbrook would now no doubt be able to fill up his petition many times over. Fethering’s word for social groups of whom it disapproved was an ‘element’, and it did not like the idea of having a pub right in its centre which attracted a violent ‘element’.
Or then again, the lack of customers might be partly due to no one knowing that the pub had reopened for business.
It was good news for Carole and Jude, however, because it meant they had the undistracted attention of Zosia. As she poured their Chilean Chardonnays, they asked the Polish girl to bring them up to date with events at the pub since they were last there. Unfortunately, she couldn’t be much help, because she hadn’t been there either. But, sensing the seriousness of their enquiries, she told them that Ed Pollack was back in his kitchen.
“Do you think he’ll mind talking to us?” asked Carole.
Zosia assured them that he wouldn’t and, since there were still no other customers, led them out through the door at the back of the bar.
They had forgotten about the chefs injury, so his appearance was quite a shock. His nose looked about twice its normal size and a gauze dressing was held with sticking plaster over the bridge. The bruising had spread to the hollows under his eyes, and he looked like a mournful panda. This image was intensified by a large pair of glasses, less trendy than the ones he’d worn previously, balanced precariously on the tip of his swollen nose.
Carole winced at the sight. “How is it? Very painful?”
“Not too bad now. So long as nothing touches it.”
“Is it actually broken?”
“No, thank goodness.”
“Do you know who hit you?”
“Couldn’t really see in the melee out the front. Probably just a swinging elbow. I don’t think I was particularly targeted. Just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
The same words that Sally Monks and Nell Witch-ett had used about Ray. But Jude felt pretty sure that in his case the murder victim had been targeted.
They heard the ting of a bell from back in the bar. “Another customer,” said Zosia. “Word must be spreading. I’ll go and deal with the rush.” And she left the kitchen.
“And how are you feeling?” Jude smiled solicitously at Ed. “You must still be in shock.”
“Not great,” the chef admitted. “It was the first time I’d actually seen someone dead and…well, seeing Ray, you know, what had happened to him.” His upper-class accent made him sound particularly young and vulnerable.
“Do you mind talking about it?” asked Jude.
“No, be quite glad to, actually. At home my mother has been so studiously avoiding the subject, you know, treading on eggshells, trying not to get me more upset.”
“Did the police give you a rough time?” asked Carole. “You know, on Sunday night?”
Ed shrugged. “They were only doing their job. And if they really thought I’d killed Ray – which at first they seemed to – then there was no reason for them to use kid gloves.” His understatement gave both women the impression that his interrogation had been pretty gruelling.
“And why did they think you’d done it?”
“Circumstances were against me, really. I’d got blood all over my front. Ray had been stabbed with one of my kitchen knives. You know, the police come into a situation like that, not knowing anyone, not knowing the background…you can hardly blame them for leaping to the obvious conclusion.” He seemed to be bending over backwards to exonerate them from any criticism.
“So how long were they questioning you?” asked Carole.
“They let me go at around four on Monday morning. My mother had been terribly worried about where
“And what did the police ask you?”
“The same question over and over again, really.”
Ed Pollack couldn’t prevent a slight shudder at the recollection. “How well I knew Ray, what I’d got against him.”
“Why you’d killed him?” Jude suggested.
“Not quite in those words, but that was the gist of it, yes.”
“And what made them finally realize you were innocent?”
“I’m not sure that they do think that yet. I’ve a nasty feeling I may still be high up their list of suspects.”
“All right then – what persuaded them to let you go?”
“I think it was probably the blood on my shirt. They’d taken a sample of it as soon as I got to the station. I was introduced to a doctor, he must’ve run some tests on the blood. Anyway, they got the message that the blood was mine, and that it was a different blood group from Ray’s. That’s when they started to realize they hadn’t got anything definite against me.”
“They must have been disappointed. The police like cases that have quick, obvious solutions.” Jude was slightly surprised to hear this from Carole. Given her Home Office background, it was unusual for her to voice even the slightest criticism of the constabulary.
“Well, they were only doing their job,” said Ed generously.
“Do you mind…” Jude began, “do you mind if we actually look at the…” She was uncharacteristically embarrassed “…look at where Ray died?”
“It’s a free country.” Ed Pollack threw open the back door of the kitchen. “Though I wouldn’t think there was
