“Would it be possible for us to have a look at it? Get a copy made, if you like? We would look after it.”
“Yes,” said Serena ruefully, “in fact, you can have it. Sadly, it’s of no use to me.”
Carole looked confused. “But I thought you said it was publishable.”
“Yes, it very definitely is. Even in this state. Polly wanted to make more changes, but that was only because she had a perfectionist streak in her. All this manuscript needs is a little copy-editing and it could go straight to the printers tomorrow.”
“Then why do you say it’s of no use to you?”
“Because,” the agent replied, “amongst the many emails I came back to on Saturday, was one from Piers. He said the Le Bonniers had had a family conference, and they’d decided they didn’t want Polly’s book ever to be published.”
“He said that, did he?” Carole looked beadily across at her neighbour. Unusually, there was a beadiness in Jude’s eyes too.
? The Shooting in the Shop ?
Forty
The moment Serena Fincham had gone back to her office, Jude rang through on her mobile to Fedingham Court House. It was some time before Lola answered the phone. She sounded weary to the marrow of her bones.
“I’m still alive,” she replied to Jude’s solicitous enquiries. “Mabel asked where Daddy was this morning, and when he was coming back. I only just stopped myself from bursting into tears in front of her. God knows how I’ll break the news.”
“You’ll find a way,” said Jude, not for the first time.
“Hope so.” Lola made an attempt to pull herself together. “Anyway, what can I do for you?”
“I wonder…is Piers still there with you?”
“No, he isn’t.”
There was a harshness in Lola’s tone that made Jude ask, “Has he been causing any trouble?”
“You could say that. If you call coming on to a woman who’s been widowed little more than twenty-four hours causing trouble.”
“Piers?”
“Yes. He had the nerve to come into my bedroom last night. I didn’t have much prospect of sleeping anyway, but he ensured my night was completely ruined.”
“What did he do?”
“Oh, he sat on my bed, and he started pawing at me, and he said our time in Edinburgh together was the best bit of his life, and he’d always really loved me, and now Polly and Ricky were out of the way there was no reason why we couldn’t become an item and…It was horrible. I couldn’t believe anyone could be so insensitive, least of all someone who I’ve always thought of as one of my closest friends. It took me hours to persuade him that I didn’t love him, that Ricky was the only man I’d really loved and…and then Piers started hitting me. I actually had to call for Varya and physically push him out of my bedroom.” She sounded perilously close to tears.
“So where is Piers now?” asked Jude.
“At his flat in London, I assume. I sent him off this morning with a flea in his ear.”
“You wouldn’t have his address to hand, would you?”
“Yes, I know it off by heart. Near Warren Street tube. He’s been there a while. I used to spend a lot of time with them there before I met Ricky.” She gave the details.
“What time did Piers leave this morning?”
“Varya drove him to Fedborough Station to catch an early train, the seven-forty-two…leaving me to somehow get across to my children that their father’s dead, let alone start organizing his funeral…”
“You’re allowed to do that, are you? The police have released the body?”
“Yes, they said they’ve had a preliminary report from the surgeon who did Ricky’s post mortem.” She hurried over the words, not wanting to dwell on them. “And I can start making funeral arrangements. Ricky died a natural death.”
¦
In the teeth of the evidence, Carole and Jude were still not convinced about that.
“There’s something I’ve just remembered,” said Jude.
“What?”
“The morning after we heard that a woman’s body had been found in the ashes of Gallimaufry I spoke to Lola on the phone. I asked her if she had any idea who the victim might be. She said she’d checked that Anna and Bex were all right, and that Ricky had checked that Polly was safely in London with Piers…”
“Are you saying that Ricky was lying?”
“No. I’m saying that Piers was.”
¦
The flat off Tottenham Court Road which Piers and Polly had shared showed little signs of a feminine touch. Its aggressive tidiness suggested more the hand of a masculine control freak. Framed on the walls were posters going back to Piers’s Footlights days, and more recent stills for television shows he’d contributed to. Posters of plays that Polly Le Bonnier might have been in did not feature. A smell of Piers’s cigarette smoke hung heavy in the air.
He had sounded unsurprised when Jude had rung to ask if he minded her and Carole coming to see him. They had stayed in the coffee shop flicking through the manuscript for half an hour or so, which had been long enough to form a pretty clear picture of the hatchet job Polly had done on her boyfriend. Then they’d rung Piers.
On arrival at the flat, they were greeted with the minimum of courtesy, no offer of a drink but instead the immediate question, “What’s all this about?”
“We were hoping you might be able to tell us that,” replied Carole.
“We’re interested in the deaths of Polly and Ricky,” said Jude.
“You’re not alone in that. Everyone seems to think it’s their business to speculate on the subject.”
“We particularly wanted to talk to you, Piers, because we’ve just been reading the manuscript of Polly’s book.”
He went pale as he demanded, “Where the hell did you get that?”
“From Serena Fincham.”
“Damn! I should have rung her and told her not to talk to anyone about it.”
“What?” said Carole. “And then you would have suppressed every copy of it, wouldn’t you? Did you know, incidentally, that Ricky had Polly’s flash drive with a copy of the book on it?”
“Ricky’s dead. He’s not going to pass it on to anyone now.”
“Perhaps not. But if it was in his possession when he died – and we have reason to believe it was – then it’s probably now in the hands of the police. They’re going to be very interested in its contents, I would imagine, given that they’re still investigating Polly’s death.”
If he’d looked pale before, a new adjective was required to describe the pallor with which he reacted to this news. He fumbled for a cigarette and lit up.
“Anyway,” said Jude easily, “that character of Edwin in the book doesn’t seem very pleasant, does he? Domestic violence is never very pretty, is it? You always wonder about the personality of someone who gets a thrill out of beating up a woman. If he’s capable of that, what other crime might he be capable of? And of course, if every copy of Polly’s manuscript had been destroyed, the story of your violent behaviour would have died with her, wouldn’t it?”
Piers had by now recovered himself sufficiently to say, “You can’t prove anything. And if there were anything to prove, the one witness who might have testified is sadly dead.”
“Sadly…or conveniently…?” suggested Carole.
“Are you accusing me of killing Polly?”
“Not necessarily. But we would like to know your arguments for why we shouldn’t accuse you of killing Polly.”
