“No. I was surprised to see you at Old Garge’s hut yesterday.”
“I wasn’t expecting to find you there either.”
“Can I ask why you went there, Piers?”
“You don’t have to ask. You heard what I told the old fart. That the police wanted to talk to him. For reasons of his own, he wasn’t keen on the idea of that, so he decided he’d make himself scarce.”
“But why did you take it upon yourself to tell him? Do you know him well?”
“I’d met him once before. On the beach with Ricky.”
“And it was your idea to go and warn Old Garge about the police coming?”
Piers looked uncomfortable. “No. Ricky wanted me to.”
“Wasn’t Ricky in London on Tuesday?”
“Yes, but Lola had apparently rung him to tell him about the police being keen on interviewing Old Garge, and she said Ricky wanted me to go and warn him.”
Carole mentally squirrelled away that information. Her suspicious mind registered that Lola could have made up the instruction from her husband. It could have been her own initiative to send Piers down to the hut on Fethering Beach.
“So do you know where Old Garge is now?” Carole asked directly.
The young man’s glazed eyes narrowed and he looked rather sly as he replied, “Oh, he’s quite safe for the time being. Out of the way in a nice little flat. It’ll take the police a while to find him there.” He smiled complacently as he downed the remains of his wine. “Ex-wives have their uses.”
“What do you mean? Whose ex-wife are you – ?”
But she’d lost him. Muttering that he needed to get more wine, Piers Duncton brushed past her and was quickly absorbed by the throng inside.
Carole stayed on the terrace for a moment, piecing together the information she had just received. And the more she thought about it, the more excited she became. Her suspicion had been proved right. Old Garge – back in his Rupert Sonning days – must have been married to Flora Le Bonnier. He was Ricky’s father. And he was now safely ensconced in his ex-wife’s flat up in St John’s Wood.
Which was maybe why Flora was so keen to get back to London.
Carole looked for the old actress as she went back through the house, but there was no sign of her. She asked Lola, who happened to be passing and was told that Flora had gone up to bed. She was too tired to stay up and see the New Year in.
Carole checked her watch. Only eleven-twenty. The thought of staying in Fedingham Court House till midnight, and then enduring the excesses of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and everyone hugging and kissing each other and… She wouldn’t mind slipping away before all that happened. Was there a chance that Jude would be equally keen to leave?
She found her neighbour still in the room with the music. Still dancing with the same tall man, though dancing rather closer now. As Jude caught her eye, Carole mouthed, “Think I might be off. Do you want to come?”
“Oh, I’m not sure…”
“Is this your lift?” asked the man, looking at Carole as though she were an unlicensed minicab driver. He winked at her. “Don’t worry, love. I’ll see Jude gets back home safely.”
Carole looked around for her host and hostess, but didn’t try that hard. Better just to slip away and then thank them in a day or two. Not on the phone. She was sure they wouldn’t even recognize her name if she rang to thank them. No, she’d post a well-chosen card saying something like: “it was such a wonderfully lively party that I simply couldn’t find you to say thank you at the end, but I did want to say how much…” She’d done it many times before.
She also wondered for a moment whether Anna had fulfilled her intention of attending. There hadn’t been any sign of her, but in a crush like that it would have been easy to miss someone. On reflection, though, Carole thought that actually facing the prospect of seeing Ricky and Lola together in their home, Anna would have chickened out.
On the gravel outside the house a minivan was decanting a small band of men with kilts and bagpipes. Carole felt even more relieved that she was escaping the midnight rituals.
As celebratory fireworks from Fedingham Court House garden illuminated the West Sussex sky, it was a very stony-faced Carole Seddon who drove back to Fethering and High Tor.
? The Shooting in the Shop ?
Thirty
Waking up to a new year did not improve Carole’s mood. When she passed Woodside Cottage on her way to Fethering Beach for Gulliver’s early morning walk, there was no sign of life. Nor was there when she came back.
She felt terrible. And what made everything more terrible was the ancient familiarity of the feeling. She remembered the sheer awfulness of school dances, where you’d gone with a friend and then, when a half-decent- looking boy had come on the scene, the friend’s loyalty had immediately gone straight out of the window. And though the two of you had agreed to travel back together, somehow you ended up going home on your own.
She couldn’t settle to anything that morning and took her bad temper out on the house, cleaning High Tor to within an inch of its life.
After considerable indecision, at eleven o’clock she rang Jude’s home number. There was no reply. She didn’t even contemplate ringing her mobile.
It was not until a quarter to one in the afternoon that a rather smart BMW sports car drew up outside Woodside Cottage. Jude bounced out with a cheery wave to her escort. What compounded the awfulness of the situation was that Carole hadn’t moved back from the bedroom window quickly enough, and she, too, received the blessing of a wave from her neighbour.
¦
Moments later, the phone rang. She knew it would be Jude. And it was – a bouncy, bubbly Jude, full of good wishes for the new year, with no hint of apology in her voice. She seemed completely unaware of the purgatory she had inflicted on her friend.
“I just wondered, Carole…I know it’s late, and you’ve probably had lunch…”
“No, I haven’t, actually. I didn’t feel like anything.”
“Well, I’m starving and I feel like a huge big, self-indulgent fry-up. Do you fancy joining me?”
Carole was faced with a moral dilemma. Declining the offer might be a way of expressing her disapproval, but accepting was the only way she was going to find out how her neighbour had spent the previous night. Obviously, accepting won.
There was a tantalizing smell of bacon when she arrived in the sitting room of Woodside Cottage. Jude had changed out of her party attire and wore a long Arran cardigan draped over a long denim skirt. She supplied a Chilean Chardonnay for Carole, but poured a glass of Argentinian Cabernet Sauvignon for herself. “I always find red works better as a ‘hair of the dog’ than white. Now, you just sit down, and I’ll bring the food through in a minute.”
Carole did as she was told, and listened to Jude bustling about cheerfully in the kitchen. Something had certainly put a smile on her face. Carole was damned if she was going to ask what.
The fry-up was particularly delicious. Jude’s approach to cooking was eclectic, depending on her mood. She was just as likely to offer guests dishes with brown rice and bean sprouts as she was
Both women were very hungry (though Carole didn’t like to speculate what had given Jude her appetite). They were silent as they wolfed down their food and only when they’d reached the stage of mopping up the remaining bits of egg and fat with crusts of fried bread did Jude speak. “Interesting, last night, wasn’t it?”
It may have been interesting for
