“So he had congenital heart disease, did he?”
“No, not congenital. Again, he was very honest. There was one stage in his life when Ricky did a lot of drugs. Heroin, mostly. And I think there’s medical evidence – there’s certainly anecdotal evidence – that heroin buggers up the system, particularly the heart. There are plenty of examples of rock stars dying of heart attacks in their late fifties, early sixties. So Ricky’s heart was fatally damaged by his early excesses. It was a time-bomb ticking away. Then with all the stress he’s been under since Polly’s death – and his bloody mother being as demanding as ever, putting pressure on him every way she knew how – which is quite a lot of ways…” The last sentence was spoken with deep bitterness.
“Anyway…” At the end of the line Jude could hear Lola take a deep breath as she struggled for control. “What’s heartbreaking about it is that Ricky had really changed. He hasn’t touched any kind of drug for eleven years, he’s clean. Even the drinking, even though he talks it up a lot, he’s cut back hugely on that. And then marrying me, and having Mabel and Henry. It was a new start…it was…” Emotion robbed her of speech.
“Well, look, Lola, if there’s anything I can do…Are you on your own there? Because I could come up and – ”
“I’m fine, thank you, Jude. Varya’s looking after the kids. And Piers is here again…though that is something of a mixed blessing.”
“Oh?”
“Piers has always had a tendency to self-dramatize. And he’s overreacting like mad to Ricky’s death. In a way, that’s almost helping me. Seeing how ridiculous Piers looks being all weepy and hysterical is stopping me from going down the same route.”
“OK, well, you’ve got my number, Lola. If there’s anything I can do…”
“I’ll let you know.”
“And when you’ve got details of the funeral sorted…”
“I’ll see to it you’re informed. Everything should be pretty straightforward once the post mortem’s been done. It’s tragic and it’s heartbreaking, but it was a natural death.”
Jude wasn’t quite as convinced as Lola about that.
¦
On the spur of the moment – which was rare, Carole Seddon was very wary of anything that happened on the spur of the moment – she invited Jude round for lunch. She was keen to use up the remains of the Christmas Day turkey which she’d frozen. The old year had passed and Carole wanted to tidy things up by removing all traces of it.
She did the turkey in a white sauce, served up with mashed potatoes and peas. Though she said it herself, it did taste rather good. And there was still a bottle of the Christmas Chilean Chardonnay left to accompany the meal.
Inevitably the women’s conversation soon moved to the murder – or what both of them felt convinced now was a double murder.
“The main question,” said Carole, “is who Ricky was coming to see in Fethering before he came to see us.”
Jude nodded. “Well, the two obvious contenders are his ex-wife and his lover. Kath and Anna.”
“And don’t forget Rupert Sonning. He clearly had had some dealings with Ricky…well, Rupert jumped when Ricky told him to.”
“Yes. I take it we’re assuming a connection between the two deaths?”
“We have to, Jude. Otherwise the coincidence is just too great. And I think we can also assume that Ricky was killed to stop him from divulging what he knew about Polly’s death to us, or to the police, or indeed to anyone else.”
“That’s certainly the most likely scenario. Pity, I was absolutely convinced he was our murderer – particularly after we found that text from him on Polly’s mobile.”
“You say ‘text from him’, Carole. But, in fact, we should be saying ‘text from his mobile’. We don’t know who pressed the buttons.”
“No. Say he’d left it at Fedingham Court House when he went to take Polly to Fedborough Station, then it could have been used by Lola…or Flora…or Varya, come to that.”
“What about Piers, though, Carole?”
“Piers sending the text? How on earth would he have got hold of Ricky’s mobile? He claims to have been in his London flat that evening, waiting for Polly to join him.”
“He also says he spent the night with his new girlfriend.”
“Yes, I’m not certain that we can accept everything said by Piers Duncton as gospel truth.”
Jude took a pensive mouthful of turkey, then said, “If Ricky isn’t guilty of killing Polly, he’s still in the frame for torching Gallimaufry.”
“More than in the frame. He did it. Rupert Sonning witnessed him doing it.”
“Assuming Rupert Sonning’s telling the truth.”
“Yes, he’s an odd man, spending the declining years of his life masquerading as a beachcomber. And he has a very strange sense of morality. He apparently doesn’t see anything wrong with burning down a business to claim on the insurance. He called it ‘a victimless crime’.”
“All right, Carole. So, moving on from the hypothesis that Ricky didn’t kill his stepdaughter, but did start the fire…he did that because he found Polly in the shop dead, and he set the shop alight in the hope of protecting the person who he knew had killed her.”
This gave Carole a new idea. Her eyes sparkled with excitement as she announced, “And that person must be his mother. Flora’s such a powerful personality that Ricky would do anything to appease her. Yes, that makes sense. She had some animus against Polly…I don’t know what, but we can work that out later. Ricky left his mobile at home and Flora used it to send the text which lured Polly back to Gallimaufry. Flora met her there and shot her!”
Carole sat back, glowing with the satisfaction of having solved the case. She raised her glass to toast the success, but lowered it when she saw the expression on Jude’s face.
“What’s wrong? I’ve just provided the perfect theory of what happened.”
“It’s a good theory,” said Jude, “but it does suffer from one major flaw.”
“I don’t think it does.” Carole’s confidence began to drain away. “What major flaw?”
“Flora’s hands. You’ve seen how arthritic they are. They’re as useless as flippers. She can’t grip anything. She has to use both hands to hold a wine glass. There’s no way she could send a text message with those hands. And, by the same token, there was no way she could have held a gun to shoot Polly.”
“Oh, damn.” It was very rare for Carole to utter even the mildest swear word, but she had been severely provoked. Her splendid edifice of a solution had been undermined by one tiny detail. What made her even more annoyed was the knowledge that Jude was right.
Her mouth set in an expression of petulance as her friend mused, “I wonder if there’s more than one person involved? Someone sent the text from Ricky’s mobile, someone else met Polly at Gallimaufry and shot her.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, it widens our range of suspects, for one thing. Also, if we’re assuming the text was sent by someone at Fedingham Court House…though it needn’t have been, because somebody might have stolen Ricky’s mobile or he might have given it to someone or – ”
“Just for the moment, Jude,” said Carole tartly, “let’s assume that the text was sent from Fedingham Court House.”
“All right. Well, if that is the case, it wasn’t sent by anyone in Fethering – in other words, it wasn’t sent by any of the three people Ricky might have come here to see yesterday afternoon…”
“Kath, Anna or Rupert Sonning.”
“Exactly.” Jude sipped at her Chardonnay. “The fact that Ricky had Polly’s mobile phone suggests to me that he definitely did find her dead in the shop. He took it to avoid anyone who was investigating the crime finding the message we found on it.”
“If he knew that message was there.”
“Yes. I wonder if, when he found her body, he also found the gun that had been used to kill her…”
“Well, if he did, he would have left it there.”
