“I’m honoured.”
“So you should be. Mabel’s very picky about who she favours with her friendship. At the moment the list only includes you, the detective constable and Lisa Simpson.”
“I’m doubly honoured.”
“Well, be careful. Or you could find I’m dragooning you into babysitting duty. There are very few people who Mabel will allow to babysit her.”
“I will await the call. How is her ear infection, by the way?”
“Getting better. Antibiotics finally kicking in.”
“About the police…” Jude gently nudged the conversation back on track. “What kind of stuff have they been asking you? Checking alibis and things like that?”
“Oh yes. A lot of very gentle probing along the lines of ‘Where were you on the night of the twenty-first?’ But at no point have they suggested that we’re suspects in any criminal actions. Instead, they’ve done a lot of circuitous talk about how important it is to be able to ‘eliminate you from our inquiries, Madam’.” The accent she dropped into for the last few words reminded Jude of Lola’s background in Footlights revues.
“And I assume that you and Ricky could both account for yourselves throughout the night of the fire?”
Jude had made the question sound as flippant and unimportant as she could, but still detected a guardedness in Lola’s tone as the reply came back, “No problem. One of the only advantages of Mabel’s ear infection – and it wouldn’t be an advantage for anyone who wasn’t looking for an alibi – is that it makes her sleep very badly. She kept waking up through Sunday night, so Ricky and I could give firmer accounts of our whereabouts than usual.”
“And you weren’t in Fethering earlier in the day, you know, on the Sunday?”
“Ricky was. You should know, he came to your party. I was stuck at home, looking after poor little Mabel. She was feeling really sorry for herself. That was the worst day of the ear infection…well, that and the Monday. She just lay on the sofa, hardly reacting to anything. She didn’t even perk up for Polly, and she adores Polly. That is, adored.” Once again, Lola winced from the pain of bereavement.
“Yes, at my party Polly told Carole she was going back to your place to see ‘the little ones’.”
“Not that she saw much of them. When it comes to parties, Ricky’s a great ‘stayer’. He never leaves when he says he’s going to. As a result it was after six when they got back here, and Polly only had about half an hour with the kids before Ricky had to take her to the station to catch her London train.”
“The seven thirty-two?”
“I think it was that one.”
“Except, of course, she never caught it, did she?”
“No.” Again Jude could hear a slight wobble in Lola’s voice.
“So you weren’t in Fethering at all on that Sunday?”
“I’ve told you – no.” The answer was almost snappish, but maybe Lola was being extra-vehement to hide her emotional lapse.
Well, thought Jude, somebody’s lying. Kath is positive she saw Ricky with Lola in his Mercedes 4?4 near Fethering Yacht Club at around eight o’clock on the Sunday evening. Lola denies being there.
And, in spite of the woman’s loopiness, Kath’s was the version of events Jude was inclined to believe.
¦
Television schedules are over-stuffed at Christmas. The best offerings – and here ‘best’ is very definitely a relative word – are reserved for the main days of celebration – Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve. And the less important parts of the holiday are padded with all kinds of rubbish, particularly lots of superannuated movies.
And so it was that that Saturday evening Carole found herself watching a black and white film, starring Flora Le Bonnier. Entitled
Carole thought the whole thing was tosh, but quite watchable tosh. What struck her most, though, was the beauty of Flora Le Bonnier, which glowed through the dusty monochrome print. Probably in her early twenties when the film was shot, she had the kind of natural good looks which would have made men do stupid things, like giving up families and careers just to be near her. Carole Seddon, whose looks were never going to cause comparable upheavals, could still appreciate such beauty when she saw it. And she could still wonder how it must feel for someone like that to see the depredations of age on her face and figure. In the film Flora’s hands were particularly beautiful, slender and expressive, unlike the ugly claws they had become. Though Flora Le Bonnier remained a fine- looking woman and looked good for her age, she had declined considerably since her glory days.
And although Carole knew there was no genetic link between the two women, she kept being struck by the actress’s likeness to her dead granddaughter. Polly’s face had more character than sheer beauty, but the two shared an expression of unshakeable determination. And when in the film Lady Mary faced some reverse, the set of her mouth was exactly the same as her granddaughter’s look of dogged resentment.
The effect this perception had on Carole was, almost for the first time, to make her confront the reality of Polly Le Bonnier’s death. She felt restless and, after she’d completed her bedtime routine, unready for sleep. So, as happened increasingly, she found herself sitting down in front of her laptop.
She started, as so many researchers do these days, with Wikipedia. The entry for Flora Le Bonnier was, like most Wikipedia entries, incomplete and full of unsupported detail. There was an exhaustive listing of the film and television productions in which she had appeared, but very little personal history. Flora Le Bonnier’s rule about not speaking directly to the press appeared to have paid off.
The only parts of the entry that alerted Carole were the following sentences: “Flora Le Bonnier was adopted as a baby by George Melton, a solicitor, and his wife Hilda, but subsequent research revealed her to be a descendant of the long-established Le Bonnier family which became extinct with the death in action of Graham Le Bonnier in the Western Desert in 1941. The accuracy of this link to the aristocracy has been questioned in various press reports.”
And then, just when she got to the interesting bit, there were two words in brackets, printed in blue: ‘[citation needed]’.
The following morning, Sunday, Carole dropped in at Woodside Cottage on her way back from Gulliver’s walk and told Jude of her online findings. They agreed that Flora Le Bonnier’s background deserved further investigation.
“Needless to say, when I googled her name there were thousands of references. I suppose I’ll have to work through all of them.”
“If you’ve got the energy, Carole. It may not be that important, anyway. I mean, does it matter these days whether people have an aristocratic background or not?”
“It matters to Flora Le Bonnier.”
? The Shooting in the Shop ?
Eighteen
After Carole had left, Jude was not really surprised to have a call from Piers Duncton asking if he could come and see her. Ever since Lola had said he was back in Fedborough, she’d been expecting to hear from him. She hadn’t yet decided on his motives, but she knew the young writer was as keen as Carole and she were to find out the exact circumstances of Polly Le Bonnier’s death.
“Did you manage to have any kind of Christmas?” she asked, once she’d got him settled in the folds of an armchair and supplied him with a cup of black coffee and an ashtray for the cigarette he kept taking nervously in and out of his mouth.
