“Why?”
“Oh, come on, Jude, keep up. He’d have left it there, so that the police would find it – or at least the charred remains of it – thus supporting the suicide theory that he was so keen to persuade us to accept.”
“I’d forgotten about that. It seems such a long time ago.” Jude finished up the last of her turkey and aligned her knife and fork on the plate.
“If you’d like a sweet, there’s a bit of Christmas pudding left…or some mince pies.”
Jude’s brown eyes gleamed. “Mince pies with brandy butter?” Carole nodded. “Yes, please!”
As they settled down to their final Christmas indulgence, Jude began, “Of the three people Ricky might have been coming to see yesterday…”
“Kath, Anna or Rupert Sonning.”
“Yes. We don’t have an address for Anna…”
“We know her surname. Carter. Maybe she’s in the phone book?” Carole checked and she wasn’t. “Probably moved into the area too recently.”
“Well, you can try another of your dog-walking missions tomorrow morning.”
“Yes.”
“I wonder if she’s heard about Ricky’s death yet. And what effect it’ll have on her when she does. In the long term, I think she’ll probably feel relief. The relationship was never going to go anywhere.”
“From what she said to me, she was quite deeply entangled with him. He meant a lot to her, as part of her reinvention of herself.” But Carole didn’t want to spend long on psychological speculation. “Anyway, we can’t find Anna today, so that leaves Kath and Rupert Sonning.”
“Who may still be living at her place. I suppose we’ll have to try Ayland’s again, though whether Kath’ll be there, who knows? She must take a day off sometime.”
A call to the boatyard produced nothing but an answering machine message. Jude sighed despondently. “If only we had a home number or a mobile for her…”
Her neighbour beamed. “But we do. I made a point of getting both from Rupert when I visited him on Thursday.”
“Oh, well done, Carole. I think a call might be in order, don’t you?”
“A call saying what?”
“A call asking whether Kath Le Bonnier would care to join us in the Crown and Anchor for an early evening pint of Guinness.”
? The Shooting in the Shop ?
Thirty-Six
Kath did not seem fazed by the request for a meeting, nor, when she arrived at the Crown and Anchor, was she fazed by the fact that Jude had brought Carole along. And, remarkably for someone who had just lost the love of her life, she did not show any signs of grief.
After her introduction, Carole went to the bar to get the drinks and Jude expressed her condolences about Ricky’s death.
“Yes, but he hasn’t really gone,” said Kath. “He’s just in a different dimension.”
“Ah. And where is that dimension?”
“It’s around us.” The woman smiled beatifically. “It’s all around us.”
“So is Ricky in a better place than he was when he was alive?”
“Oh yes.” Kath giggled. “The Devil Women can’t get at him where he is now. Only I can get at him now.”
The drinks arrived, and Jude felt quite relieved that her neighbour hadn’t witnessed the recent exchange. Carole and New Age mysticism were a potentially combustible mix.
“Did you actually see Ricky yesterday afternoon?” asked Jude.
“Oh yes, I saw him.”
Carole came in with the next question. “Did you talk to him?”
“I talked to him, yes.”
“And what did he say to you?”
Kath looked at Carole curiously. “He didn’t say anything. He was no longer in the dimension where he could speak.”
Seeing the exasperation building in her friend, Jude said quickly, “You mean Ricky was already dead when you saw him yesterday?”
“Dead? What do you mean when you say ‘dead’?”
“She means,” said Carole severely, “that he had stopped breathing and was showing no other vital signs.”
“Ah. In this dimension, yes.”
“What?” asked Carole.
“Kath,” Jude intervened hastily, “did Ricky ring you to say he was coming to Fethering yesterday?”
“No. I just knew he was coming. I felt his aura.”
Avoiding Carole’s eye, Jude asked whether there had been anyone else with Ricky.
“No. He was on his own in the car, leaving his body there while the real him moved into another dimension.”
Covering Carole’s snort, Jude went on, “You don’t know whether Ricky contacted Rupert Sonning yesterday?”
“Rupert Sonning? I don’t know anyone called Rupert Sonning.”
“Sorry. Old Garge. Who’s staying at your place at the moment. You don’t know whether Ricky contacted him?”
“I don’t think so. Anyway, Old Garge isn’t staying with me anymore.”
“Do you know where he’s gone to?”
The response was a shrug which announced that she didn’t know and she didn’t much care.
“But Ricky did ask you to put him up, didn’t he?”
“Oh yes. I don’t like Old Garge. I don’t like having anyone in my flat except for me and Ricky. But Ricky asked me to, so I let Old Garge stay.”
“Kath,” asked Jude, “you haven’t seen Ricky’s latest Devil Woman recently, have you? The blonde one from the shop?”
“Not since I saw her in the car with him before Christmas, no.”
“But do you think Ricky came to Fethering yesterday to see her?”
Kath took a sip of Guinness before replying. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now. None of the Devil Women can reach Ricky now. Only I can reach him. Everything is perfect now. Things have been arranged as they should be.”
Carole and Jude exchanged looks which contained not only exasperation, but also an element of suspicion. If Ricky’s death brought Kath such a sense of peace and resolution, was it not possible that she might have helped him on his way?
“While Old Garge was staying with you,” asked Carole, “did he say anything about – ”
“I didn’t listen to him when he talked.”
Carole continued evenly, “Did he say anything about Polly’s death?”
The eyes Kath turned on her questioner had a new shrewdness in them. She may have been loopy, but some bits of her brain worked extremely well. “What sort of thing should he have said?”
“Old Garge has been described as ‘the eyes and ears of Fethering Beach’. He told me he’d seen Ricky setting fire to Gallimaufry. I was wondering whether he’d said anymore to you about what happened that night. I mean, he told me he had no idea who killed Polly. I thought he might have opened out a bit more to you.”
“Why should he? He was staying in my place under sufferance. I didn’t encourage conversation while he was there.”
“Are you sure he didn’t say anything about it?” asked Jude in a gentler tone than Carole’s.
