The Fethering Mysteries 11; The Shooting in the Shop

“Are you suggesting that a woman who makes herself look like that deserves everything that’s coming to her?” suggested Jude mischievously.

“Yes,” said Carole, unaware of any irony. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.” She rubbed her thin hands up and down against each other. “Hm…well, I know a fairly foolproof way of making sure my path crosses with Anna’s.” An expression of irritation crossed her face. “Or I would if had Gulliver with me. I’ll have to wait till he’s back from the vet’s.”

“Carole,” said Jude gently, “it is possible for a person to take a walk on Fethering Beach without a dog, you know.”

“Oh, is it?”

“Yes, I’ve done it many times myself.”

“Have you really?” said Carole, bemused by the alien concept.

¦

When she got back to Woodside Cottage Jude found a couple of messages on her answering machine from clients who needed her services. In both cases a back problem had recurred, and in both cases Jude felt pretty confident that the relapse had the same cause. The tensions of family Christmases were reflected by increases not only in consultations with lawyers about divorce, but also in stress-related illness.

Knowing the level of neurosis in the two clients who’d left messages, Jude realized that the sessions would be long and arduous, and she would have to expend at least as much energy in listening as she did in healing.

As a result, by the time she made it back to Woodside Cottage she was totally washed out. She cooked a self-indulgent fry-up for supper, had a couple of glasses of wine and contemplated watching something mindless on television before falling into bed. But, as she reached for the remote, she noticed and picked up the copy of One Classy Lady that Flora Le Bonnier had given her.

Jude looked first at the title page. No ghost writer was acknowledged, which possibly (though by no means definitely) meant that Flora had written the book herself.

She flicked through the first chapter, which made much of Flora’s connection with the aristocratic Le Bonnier family. Without positively stating that she was the illegitimate daughter of the Graham Le Bonnier who was killed in the Western Desert, the implication was definitely there. It was also implied that Flora had been unaware of her ancestry during her girlhood. Only when she joined the Rank Charm School did she become interested in her family background, and it was then that her connection with the Le Bonniers was proved. Though what the nature of that proof was, the autobiography did not specify.

Jude moved on to the pages of photographs, of which, given the range of their subject’s career, there were many. Jude was struck, as Carole had been when watching Her Wicked Heart, by how stunningly beautiful Flora Le Bonnier had been in her prime. Most of the photographs were either posed studio portraits, official production publicity shots or movie stills. Almost none of them gave any insight into Flora Le Bonnier’s private life.

There was just one, showing her with a two-year-old Ricky and that, too, was a highly professional piece of work in black and white, mother and child artfully displayed on a metal bench in some lavish garden. That was it; nothing else of a personal nature. There were no family album snaps, none which might show their subject in an unguarded moment. Having spent the morning with Flora, Jude concluded that the actress’s life had contained very few unguarded moments.

Moving to the index, she found a mere half-dozen references to ‘Ricky’. None to ‘Richard’, so maybe the child had been christened with the shortened name, or maybe he had just always been called that. The mentions of him in the book were all similar in tone. Ricky was ‘a delightful child’, ‘the greatest joy that life had brought me’, ‘a prodigiously talented musician’. Like the photograph in the garden, there was something posed and sanitized about the references.

Only on one occasion did what could have been genuine emotion break through the carefully written text. Flora Le Bonnier was about to begin a six-month tour to Australia, playing Mrs Erlynne in Lady Windermere’s Fan. She wrote:

The thought of leaving three-year-old Ricky for such a long time stabbed through my heart like a sliver of ice. No amount of public adulation from antipodean audiences could make up for the sense of bleak bereavement I felt at that moment.

It sounded heartfelt, but the extravagance of the language still made Jude ambivalent about the sincerity of the sentiments expressed.

She tried to analyse what she knew about the relationship between Ricky and his mother. The only time she had seen them together, at her open house, Flora had seemed almost to worship her son. But then, when she’d talked to Kath, she’d been told: “Ricky was looked after by his aunt, because his mother was always off acting all over the world.” Given the fact that Ricky and Kath had gone to the same village school, that aunt must have lived near to Fethering. Jude wondered idly whether she’d been Flora’s sister. Or indeed whether she was still alive. And, if so, where?

She scoured the index and flicked through the text, but could find no reference in One Classy Lady to Polly Le Bonnier. There was no mention of any of Ricky’s marriages. All Jude could find in the book which related to his adult career was the one sentence: “My son’s artistic talents developed in a different way from my own, and he made a huge success developing new talents in the heady ‘pop music’ scene of the late sixties and early seventies.”

More interesting, from Jude’s point of view, was the fact that there was no mention at all of who Ricky’s father had been. No reference, so far as a fairly exhaustive flick through the pages of One Classy Lady could establish, to any husbands or lovers in the life of Flora Le Bonnier.

? The Shooting in the Shop ?

Twenty-Three

Carole Seddon woke early the following morning, denying to herself that she was feeling the absence of Gulliver from his usual base in front of the Aga. She washed and dressed briskly, determined to put into action her revolutionary plan of taking a walk on Fethering Beach without the excuse of a dog.

The timing was, of course, pivotal and, being Carole, she reached the Promenade at seven-twenty, even though she knew there was no chance of Anna appearing with her Black-Watch-clad Westie until half past. Risking the ever-present danger of looking like a sad old pensioner, Carole sat in one of the seafront shelters and waited.

It was a cold day, the weather seeming to reflect the general feeling that everyone had had enough of Christmas jollity, and couldn’t wait to get back to the normality of the forthcoming year.

Seven-thirty came and went, and there was no sign of Anna or her dog. Carole recognized that not everyone was such a fetishist about punctuality as she was and gave the woman the benefit of the doubt. She sat waiting in the shelter, willing herself not to look lonely and decrepit, wishing she had brought the Times crossword with her, both to while away the time and also to give the illusion of purpose.

She let eight o’clock pass, but by a quarter past reconciled herself to the fact that she wasn’t going to see Anna that morning. Her first thought was that maybe the woman realized she and Jude were on to her and had taken evasive action, but she soon realized what a ridiculous idea that was. Anna was probably unaware of any interest they might have in her and had changed her morning routine for reasons that they could not begin to guess at.

Carole stood up and stretched her frozen limbs, about to go straight back to High Tor. It would soon be time to get in the Renault and drive to Fedborough. The thought of having Gulliver back brought her a disproportionally warm glow which she tried unsuccessfully to suppress.

But as she started back along the Promenade, she saw coming towards her a woman with a dog. Not Anna, the dog-walker she had been hoping to meet, but a dog-walker nonetheless. The words of Saira Sherjan came back to her. “I know for a fact that dog-walkers constitute one of the most efficient gossip grapevines in the world. Members of the Fethering Beach Dog-walking Mafia exchange all kinds of secrets on their early morning walks.” Carole changed direction and advanced towards the woman.