have they changed?”
“What do you mean?”
“One of the first things you said when you came here this evening was that what had happened to Polly made you feel ‘guilty’. You presumably mean you feel guilty because you think you should have been around, protecting her?”
“I suppose so. In a way, yes.”
“I was just wondering whether there might be another reason why you felt guilty…?”
He controlled another flash of instinctive anger, then said, “Are you suggesting that I might have had something to do with Polly’s death? Because I was in London at the time and I do have an alibi for the night of the fire, someone who can vouch for where I was and – ”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Jude raised a hand to calm him. “I’m not making any accusations here. All I was wondering was whether the cause of your feeling guilty might be because your relationship with Polly was coming to an end?”
“I didn’t say that.” Piers was blushing furiously.
“No, but was it?”
There was a silence which Carole eventually broke. “Interesting that you said you had an alibi for the time of the fire…someone who could vouch for where you were all night…”
Any barrier of defiance Piers might have put up instantly crumbled away. “Yes, all right. I was with another woman.” He went on, recklessly, “I’ve met someone else. One of the cast of the new sitcom I’m writing. This is the real thing. I was going to tell Polly as soon as we got Christmas and New Year out of the way. I didn’t want to hurt her over the holiday.”
“Ah,” said Jude.
“How thoughtful of you,” said Carole.
? The Shooting in the Shop ?
Twelve
Jude disclosed as little information about her ‘clients’ as she could, so she hadn’t told Carole that her first contact with the owner of Gallimaufry had been professional. Before she’d taken her son Henry along for help with his asthma, Lola herself had needed to call on Jude’s healing skills. After the birth of her first child Mabel, she had suffered terrible post-natal depression. Exceptionally intelligent, coming from a high-powered job in music PR, used to having her own way, Lola had found the shock of being stuck at home as a mother totally drained away her self-confidence. Sessions at Woodside Cottage (and with an acupuncturist to whom Jude referred her) had sorted out the problem, and it had not recurred after the birth of Henry. But Jude remained aware of the woman’s inner fragility and was worried about how she would be coping with the shock of Polly’s death.
So she rang Lola again on the Wednesday morning, Christmas Eve. “Are you surviving?”
“Yeah, it’s not easy, but having the kids around is helping. They don’t realize what’s happened, so they kind of take my mind off things. Mabel’s had an ear infection, but that’s better, thanks to good old antibiotics. She’s fantastically excited about Father Christmas coming. Henry’s still a bit young to take all that in, but he’s pretty bouncy too. And one of the Dalmatians has just had puppies, so they add to the feeling of new life about the place. I’m surviving.”
“Good. Just wondered if you’d like to meet. You know, if I could be of any help?”
“Not a bad idea. I’ve got some last-minute shopping…which I could do in Fethering. Apparently the rest of the parade’s open now…apart, of course, from Gallimaufry,” she added sardonically.
They agreed to meet at the swings by the beach.
¦
Lola, Mabel and Henry looked as though they’d stepped out of a catalogue for upmarket winterwear. The Yummy Mummy and her two adorable kids, the little ones muffled up in so many layers that they looked like multicoloured Michelin men. Mabel was extremely articulate about which swing she wanted to go on, a grown-up one with no restraining cradle. Henry, who couldn’t yet speak, made his desire to be put into one of the baby ones equally clear. Having taken an immediate shine to Jude, Mabel wanted to be pushed by her, and Henry seemed happy for his mother to do the job. As they pushed the swings, the women talked.
“How’s Ricky taking it all?” asked Jude.
Lola screwed up her face in puzzlement. “Always hard to know with him. I mean, he’s usually so up, so positive about everything, that it takes time for a real disaster to get through to him. I think he is suffering – he must be. But there’s always been quite a distance between him and Polly…you know, she kind of came in a job lot when Ricky married her mother. They didn’t see that much of each other, there was a bit of history from when the marriage broke up, and then her mother dying didn’t help.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that.”
“It was ugly. Drugs overdose, thought to be accidental, though no one’s quite sure. Heroin. It’s amazing, actually, that Polly was as sane as she was. Anyway, their relationship could be pretty spiky, but Ricky did care for Polly a lot, in his own way. Mind you, you’d never know it from the way he’s behaving now. I asked if he wanted me to pull the plugs on Christmas, you know, minimize the celebrations with a view to what’s happened, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Wants to leave all our arrangements in place, even through to our New Year’s Eve party. I did send you an invitation to that, didn’t I, Jude?”
“Yes, thank you, I’ll be there.” A sudden thought came to her. “I say, would you mind if I brought a friend with me?”
“Fine. The more the merrier.”
“It’s Carole, my next-door neighbour. You know, you met her in the shop.”
“She’ll be very welcome.”
Jude was glad Lola didn’t ask why she wanted Carole along on New Year’s Eve. Partly, it was because she didn’t like thinking of her friend on her own that night, but she had another motive too. There had been an unexplained death in the Le Bonnier family. If any investigation was required, Jude would be glad to have Carole’s rational mind helping her on the case.
“So you say Ricky’s OK?”
Lola nodded, then sighed with frustration. “It’s strange…you can be very close to someone, love someone very much and then suddenly realize that there are whole areas of their personality that you just don’t know at all.”
“At the party Polly told Carole that she’d introduced you and Ricky.”
“Sort of, yes. It was through her, well, through Piers, really.”
Jude picked up a subtle flicker of intonation in the voice, and she made a connection with Piers’s reaction when he’d talked about their time together at Cambridge. Her brown eyes found the woman’s hazel ones. “You and Piers used to be lovers, didn’t you?”
Lola did not hesitate with her reply. “Yes. It’s a long time ago now. When we took a Footlights revue up to the Edinburgh Festival. We were sharing a flat and sort of living in each other’s pockets up there and…well, it was inevitable.”
“Did the affair continue after Edinburgh?”
“Not for long. We both had other people. Piers was with Polly, as he had been from before he started at Cambridge, and I was with…a Classics don at Caius.”
“Another older man,” Jude suggested.
“I do seem to be a sucker for them, you’re right.” Lola grinned ruefully. “And, to save you the trouble of working out the psychological reasons for that…yes, my father was a strong presence in my life, and he did die when I was in my early teens.”
“Thank you. Has Ricky talked to you much about Polly’s death?”
She shook her head. “Only about practical things. For someone who seems so open to everyone who meets him, he’s surprisingly reticent about saying what he’s feeling.”
Jude gestured to the children on the swings. “And presumably these two haven’t shown any reaction to what’s happened?”
