“I agree that all of this is possible, but I still don’t see – ”
“I haven’t finished,” said Carole severely. “This person arranged to have Ray killed before he could spill the beans about what had been going on. And he arranged to have Viggo killed for just the same reason.”
“So what’s the common factor?”
“Jude, you are being particularly dense this morning. The common factor is you. Or us, if you like. Ray was murdered just after he’d nearly told you who’d set him up to swap the scallops. Viggo was murdered just after you and I revealed our suspicions of Viggo – or at least showed an unhealthy interest in him – to Derren Hart in Fratton. I think we should be very careful from now on, Jude. We’re up against someone ruthless enough to kill two men with mental-health problems. I don’t think he – or she – would be too bothered about adding a couple of middle- aged women to the list.”
Jude was silent. She took a long sip of coffee. It didn’t dispel the woolliness in her head as much as she had hoped. The she asked, “How much do you think Ted is involved?”
“I don’t think he’s involved in the murders.”
“Not in actually committing them, no. But he’s holding out on us. He’s definitely got more information than he’s letting on about. He complicated things at the start by trying to protect Ray – and look how that ended up. I think he could tell us a lot more.”
“I’m sure he could, but since he currently won’t talk to us at all, I don’t see how we’re going to get it out of him.”
“Maybe not, but I think it’s worth another call.” Jude dialled the number of Ted’s flat, then the Crown and Anchor main line. Answering machines on both. Maybe the landlord wasn’t there. She thought it was more likely that he just wasn’t taking calls. For a moment she contemplated leaving a message informing him of Viggo’s death, but she decided against it. If Ted Crisp was as involved, as he was in her worst imaginings, he’d already know what had happened.
Jude, uncharacteristically gloomy – she needed her sleep – looked at Carole and shook her head. “I just don’t know where we go next.”
“Well, I do,” said her friend. “We follow up the only other lead we have.”
“I didn’t know we’d got another lead.”
“Something we got from Derren Hart.” Jude still looked bemused, but the confidence in Carole’s pale blue eyes was growing. “Do you fancy a pub lunch, Jude?”
“I don’t think Ted’s any more likely to talk to us face to face than he is on the phone.”
“I wasn’t thinking of the Crown and Anchor. I was thinking of another pub.”
“Oh?”
“The other one where Derren Hart said Viggo used to go drinking with the bikers.”
“Ah, yes.” There was now a matching sparkle in Jude’s brown eyes. “Of course, I’d forgotten about that.”
“So I think lunch at the Cat and Fiddle, don’t you?”
“Excellent idea.”
“It’s not as if we don’t know where it is.”
¦
Carole and Jude had been to the Cat and Fiddle before, because Zosia’s brother Tadeusz Jankowski had worked there before his premature death. They remembered how little they’d liked the place. Though it had a perfect position, right on the banks of the Fether, and did very good business, particularly in the summer, they had recoiled from its phoney, country-and-western-influenced style. They winced inwardly as they remembered the bar staff, dressed-in red-gingham shirts and dungarees.
Carole and Jude also remembered the pub’s over-the-top landlady, Shona Nuttall. She’d had no inhibitions about talking to them before, even though the thing she had most wanted to talk about was herself. But maybe she’d have some useful recollections of Viggo’s and Derren Hart’s biker crowd.
The interview they were anticipating was, however, not to be. As Carole slowed the Renault down to enter the Cat and Fiddle car park, she found her way barred by a high gate of solid wood. The frontage of the pub itself was also fenced off and its windows boarded up.
But the site looked very neat and under control. What was happening was a makeover rather than a close- down. This was confirmed by a printed board on the fencing, which read:
THE CAT AND FIDDLE WILL BE RE-OPENING ON 1 OCTOBER AS ANOTHER WELCOMING AND LUXURIOUS HOME HOSTELRIES TAVERN.
? The Poisoning in the Pub ?
Thirty-One
So they did end up having lunch in the Crown and Anchor, exactly two weeks after the food-poisoning incident that had started them on their current investigation. There were a few more customers – mostly holidaymakers – than there had been on their previous visit, but the pub wasn’t doing anything like the volume of business it should have been in the middle of a hot July.
Ted Crisp was there, but without being overtly rude, he made it clear that he didn’t want to engage in conversation with them. After a friendly enough wave on their arrival, he suddenly had urgent things to do in the kitchen.
Zosia served them. She looked tired, her customary brightness dimmed. The stress surrounding the Crown and Anchor was getting to everyone. They got their large Chilean Chardonnays, and both went for salads, chicken for Carole, salmon for Jude.
“I see we’re not Ted’s favourite people today,” Jude observed to Zosia.
“Not just you. No people are his favourite people. He is in a bad state.”
“Is he still on the whisky?” asked Carole.
The Polish girl nodded glumly. “I think so. He is very unhappy, but he will not talk about what is making him unhappy. He…what is that idiom you have? He puts it in a bottle?”
“He bottles it up,” said Jude.
“Yes, that is what he does. Which does not help. This ‘bottling-up’, I think, makes things worse for people.”
Carole, for whom life had been one long process of bottling-up, nodded.
“We’ll get it out of him eventually,” said Jude.
Zosia grinned, without much optimism.
“Has Ted heard about the latest death?” asked Carole. “Up at Copsedown Hall.”
“Oh yes. News of tragedy travels fast in a place like Fethering, that I have learned since I have been here. There is more gossip, I think, even than in a Polish country village.”
“Did Ted say anything when he heard the news?”
“I don’t know. I was not here when he was told. But he certainly does know.”
Just as they were about to find a table, Jude noticed a book propped up behind the bar.
“Could I have a look at it?”
Jude took the book over to the empty alcove Carole had found for them. When she opened it, she realized that not only the torn dust jacket made it unsaleable. The spine had broken in more than one place, leaving the contents like an unevenly sliced loaf of yellowing pages.
“Must’ve been published quite a time ago,” Jude observed. She checked on the copyright page. Yes, the book was nearly ten years old. “So that was when Dan Poke was presumably at his peak of popularity.” Carole looked at her quizzically. “Publishers tend only to go for showbiz autobiographies from the really hot names. People who’re currently big on telly. I suppose you don’t know how well his television career’s going at the moment, do you?”
Jude had supposed correctly. Carole left her in no doubt that the sort of programmes people like Dan Poke might be involved in were not her favoured viewing.
“No, but you can’t miss them, when someone’s really hot. You see them on trailers between other
