nonsense.”
“When you say ‘bright’…?”
“Got a degree from Cambridge. Did a lot of theatre and revue while she was there, I gather – Footlights and what-have-you – even started working as a professional actress. Then moved into PR, a lot of music business stuff…which is presumably how she came to meet Ricky.”
“But is she – ?”
Carole’s question didn’t get asked, however, because at that moment Ted Crisp delivered their lunch order. Carole tucked into her steak, while Jude began to make inroads into a huge pile of turkey, stuffing, chipolatas, crispy bacon, roast potatoes, brussels sprouts, bread sauce and cranberry sauce. For the first time that year Christmas seemed very close.
They were so involved in eating that they didn’t notice the thin, long-haired woman in the smock finish her Guinness and make her way out of the pub. Nor did they notice the curious look she gave them as she left.
? The Shooting in the Shop ?
Six
In the event, in spite of all her misgivings, Carole rather enjoyed Jude’s open house. Not that she hadn’t been desperately nervous before it. In fact, for the first time in her life, she had even contemplated having a bracing drink at High Tor before she braved the rarefied atmosphere of Woodside Cottage. She had an unusual amount of alcohol in the house in anticipation of Christmas lunch with Stephen and family, and her supplies included a half-bottle of brandy to light the Christmas pudding. The temptation to have a quick nip from it before she went next door was surprisingly strong. But Carole curbed the urge. Drinking when on one’s own – secret drinking, as her parents would have called it – was, Carole knew, ‘a slippery slope’. And she’d spent much of her life rigidly steering clear of slippery slopes.
After considerable internal debate, she had decided that one-fifteen was probably the proper time to arrive for a party that was scheduled ‘from twelve noon until the booze runs out’. And although she’d never have admitted to having done it, her location in High Tor enabled her to check from her bedroom window that enough guests had arrived for her to make her own entrance comparatively unnoticed.
With regard to a bottle, she decided finally to go down the Chilean Chardonnay route. She had bought six for the Christmas lunch (as well as a bottle of champagne), but recognized that that was over-catering for a party of four, one of whom was a baby and one of whom would be having to drive back to Fulham afterwards. So she could spare one to ensure that it took a little longer for the booze at Woodside Cottage to run out.
Carole didn’t put on a coat. It would have been daft to do so when she was only going next door, but that wasn’t the reason why she left it at High Tor. If she found the open house too much of a strain, then she wouldn’t have to delay her unobtrusive exit by searching for her coat.
At one-fifteen sharp Carole Seddon made the stressful journey of a few yards to Woodside Cottage, gloomily anticipating that the house’s owner was the only person she would recognize. Also, she felt sure that Jude would be surrounded by other guests and not notice her arrival. Then Carole would stand around like a lemon, and the full scale of her own social ineptitude would be revealed for all to see.
She needn’t have worried. Jude answered the door to her tentative knock and immediately enveloped her in a huge hug. She swept up the proffered bottle of Chilean Chardonnay. “Lovely; our favourite, isn’t it? Look, there are some poured glasses on the tray over there. Help yourself. And I’m sure there are lots of people you recognize.”
Carole was about to say she doubted that, but as she looked into the room she was surprised by how many faces she did know. It was almost like a parade of the Fethering people who had been involved in Carole and Jude’s previous investigations. There was Sonya Dalrymple, who had got them involved in solving the murder at the Long Bamber Stables. Now divorced from her odious husband Nicky, she looked more blondly beautiful than ever. There was Connie from the hairdresser’s on the parade, which used to be called Connie’s Cuts, but had been renamed Marnie. She stood glowing with happiness beside Martin, the husband she had remarried after his second wife had been found guilty of murder. Sonny Frank from the betting shop was there, along with another of its regulars, Gerald Hume, who was an intellectual soul-mate of Carole’s.
“Hello,” he said in his precise, mandarin way. “What an inestimable pleasure it is to see you. I had been hoping that you might be attending this gathering, given your geographical proximity to our hostess. Now what can I pass you to drink? ‘A beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene’?”
“Yes, I’d rather it was less blushful than Keats recommended, though. A glass of white, please.”
Gerald handed the drink across. When Carole thanked him, he riposted with a quotation she could not immediately identify: “‘The labour we delight in physics pain.’” Replying to her quizzical look, he said, “
She raised her glass to his. “Are you still a regular at the betting shop?”
“Oh yes,” he replied. “And about to experience two days of deprivation.” Seeing her puzzled expression, he elucidated. “No racing on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.”
In its perverse way, the first sip of her cold Chardonnay spread a pleasing warmth through her body. She looked around the sitting room of Woodside Cottage, transformed for Christmas. It was more cluttered than ever with boughs of holly, fir and other evergreens stuck to the walls and standing in jugs and vases. All natural decorations, she noted. No paper chains, no tinsel, no lametta, certainly no fairy lights. Simply variations of green interrupted only by the red of holly berries. Whatever she did, Jude had style.
And she also, however casual her approach to it might have seemed, knew how to run a party. Hardly surprising, when Carole came to think about it, because one of Jude’s previous incarnations had been as a restaurateur. Somehow spaces had been found on the crowded surfaces for trays of drinks and bowls of intriguing- looking nibbles. There was no room for a table where the guests could sit down, but enticing smells from the kitchen suggested more substantial hot food would soon be on its way.
And yet Jude didn’t seem to be distracted by her culinary responsibilities. She was flitting amongst the throng, as ever surprisingly light on her feet for a woman of her bulk. She was dressed in layers of wafting garments, predominantly purple, mauve and pale, pale violet. On top of her intricately plaited bundle of hair was the room’s only concession to tinsel, the crown she’d picked up in Gallimaufry. As she had done so many times before, Carole wondered how it was that Jude could get away with the way she dressed. If she herself had gone around with a tinsel crown on, she would look ridiculous, like an ageing woman in an anonymous Marks and Spencer’s black dress who’d had a drop too much at the staff Christmas lunch and forgotten to remove the hat she’d got in her cracker.
But then Carole was Carole and Jude was Jude.
At that moment Jude’s lack of concern about the kitchen was explained as issuing forth from it came Zosia, the bar manager from the Crown and Anchor. Her blond hair was in its usual stubby pigtails and her customary broad grin was in place, as she balanced trays of chicken satay sticks, prawn tempura, stuffed mushrooms and other delights.
Carole couldn’t help reflecting that Zosia was another person who had come into their lives through murder. It was the death of her brother Tadeusz that had brought the girl to England and, though she never let the surface of her cheerful public persona crack, there must have been times when she still felt the loss.
If Zosia was helping Jude, then Ted Crisp must be holding the fort at the Crown and Anchor. But even as Carole had the thought, she saw the landlord across the room, standing on his own, large and forlorn. With a murmured apology to Gerald Hume, she crossed towards him.
Seeing Ted in public always gave Carole a bit of a charge. The sheer unlikeliness of her having had a brief affair with the man gave her more sense of herself as a woman than she usually felt. And her confidence was increased by how uncomfortable he was looking. She’d been worried about her own social ineptitude, her not recognizing anyone at the open house, and yet here she was grinning away at familiar faces as she crossed the room, whereas it was Ted who appeared to know no one. Not surprising, really. He hardly ever stirred from the premises of the Crown and Anchor. So Fethering residents who weren’t regulars at the pub…well, he probably hadn’t met them.
He did look rewardingly pleased to see her, and uncharacteristically kissed her on both cheeks. She had
