‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I forgot, what with. .’ Seeing a negative head-shake from Piers, she didn’t mention Reggie Playfair, just concluded: ‘One thing and another.’
‘Well, I do hope you’ll enjoy it. Labour of love on my part. It’s about all the real tennis courts I’ve played on.’
‘Which is virtually all the real tennis courts in the world,’ said Piers.
‘Virtually,’ Wally agreed with a modest smile.
‘As I know well,’ said Piers.
‘Oh yes, we’ve had some jolly jaunts in foreign climes, haven’t we?’ The old man recollected with a nostalgic smile.
‘Well, thanks. I’m sure I’ll really like it,’ asserted Jude, with possibly more tact than truth, as she took the book. Then she went on, ‘I enjoyed watching you play this morning.’
‘You didn’t see me at my best, I’m afraid,’ said Jonty Westmacott. ‘Just wasn’t seeing the ball today. Tweaked a tendon in my knee a couple of months back and it hasn’t really settled down yet.’
‘Well, you saw me at my best,’ said Rod Farrar. ‘Sadly, that’s as good as I get these days. Not that I ever was that great. And the new hips and knees, wonderful though they are, never quite match the originals.’
‘Have you had them done recently?’ asked Jude.
‘Most recent knee a couple of years ago. But I have got to second time round on both hips and knees. So what you see before you is a bionic man. All parts in more or less perfect order. . though not all the original parts I started out with.’ He looked at Jude piercingly. ‘Are all your joints your own?’
It was not a question that she had ever been asked before, but she was able to reassure Rod Farrar that her body had not yet been enhanced in any way by the surgeon’s knife.
‘Lucky you.’ Then realizing that actually asking the question might be seen as some lapse from gallantry, he said, ‘But of course you are far too young to worry about that sort of stuff. Anyway — ’ he grinned at her — ‘are you hooked yet? Are you going to become obsessed with real tennis like the rest of us?’
‘Early days,’ she replied cautiously.
‘I do hope you’ll take to it,’ said Rod. ‘And it would be really good if you could join us one day for a Wednesday morning doubles.’
‘Oh? Why?’
‘Because,’ he replied, ‘you would lower our total age to under three hundred!’
Quickly she did the calculation and realized that, even if Rod Farrar was being rather gallant about her age, all of the men must be in their eighties.
By now Tom Ruthven had returned to the table with the drinks. A red wine for Jonty and for the others halves of bitter (Jude got the feeling that a few years earlier, when their prostates had been in better condition, they would have been ordering pints.)
‘Incidentally,’ Wally Edgington-Bewley announced, ‘George did tell us about Reggie, so if you were delicately skirting round the subject. .’
‘Thanks for telling us,’ said Piers.
‘You two found him, I gather?’
‘Yes.’
‘We should raise a glass to him.’ Wally raised his half and said, ‘Reggie Playfair.’
All the others around the table did the same and together, as somehow Jude knew they would, they all solemnly intoned, ‘Poor old bugger.’
NINE
‘Hello, it’s Oenone Playfair.’
Jude was taken aback by the unexpected phone call and hastened to assemble some appropriate words of condolence but Oenone briskly cut through them. ‘Yes, well, it was bound to happen one day.’ As Piers had said, she wasn’t the type to let anyone see her suffering.
‘Listen, Jude, the reason I’m calling you is that a great friend of mine is Suzy Longthorne. . you know, who runs the Hopwicke Country House Hotel.’
‘Oh yes?’ Jude knew exactly who was being referred to. Suzy, a former model, had been a friend for a long time.
‘Well, Suzy told me that you were very helpful to her when she had an awkward situation of a young man being found hanged in her hotel.’ Jude remembered the circumstances vividly. What had looked like a suicide had been proved to be murder.
‘She said you and your friend — Carole, is it? — found out the truth of what had really happened.’
‘Well, yes, I suppose we did.’
‘And I wondered if I could enlist your help. . ideally yours and Carole’s?’
‘Of course. But can I ask what for?’
‘To find out what actually happened to Reggie.’
Jude was very relieved that Carole had been included in Oenone Playfair’s request for a meeting. She was aware of her neighbour’s continuing unspoken resentment of the new relationship with Piers Targett. The fact that he had stayed over at Woodside Cottage on the Wednesday night would not have lessened that resentment.
Anyway, Piers had set off after breakfast in the E-Type on his way to Ebbsfleet where he would take the Eurostar to Paris.
So Jude had the perfect opportunity to do a little fence-mending. No peace offering to Carole Seddon could have been more seductive than an invitation to join in another murder investigation.
‘I think you should be careful about the words you use,’ said Carole when the situation had been explained to her.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, Oenone Playfair didn’t use the word “murder”, did she?’
‘No, she just said she wanted to find out what had happened to Reggie, but surely that must mean. .?’
‘Not necessarily. I don’t think we should mention the possibility that he was murdered until she does.’
It was a wise caution, because as soon as Carole and Jude started talking to Oenone Playfair, it was clear that the recent widow had no suspicions of foul play.
They had agreed to go to her house, Winnows. Though reacting with apparent stoicism to her husband’s death, Oenone confessed that she didn’t really feel up to going out yet. On the way over in Carole’s immaculate Renault, Jude brought her neighbour up to date with the events of the previous day at Lockleigh House tennis court.
Winnows was a large detached dwelling about midway between Lockleigh and Fedborough. Flint-faced like many West Sussex buildings, its size suggested that it had probably once been a farmhouse, which over the years had been expensively refurbished. The whole place breathed money. The garden was immaculately maintained. On the gravel in front of a flint-faced outhouse converted into a double garage stood two BMWs, including the one Jude had last seen outside the Lockleigh House tennis court.
The interior of the house was equally perfect, not flashy in any way but with the kind of antique furniture, upholstery and curtains that didn’t come cheap. Like the garden, everything was irreproachably tidy, suggesting perhaps that the Playfairs had live-in staff.
While Oenone went through to the kitchen to make coffee, the two visitors were seated on the large cushions of a sofa whose box-like back and sides were tied at the top with silken ropes. They looked round at the effortless elegance of the recessed fireplace and the grand piano. Jude noted that the only photographs on display, except for some black and white ones of presumably deceased relatives, were of Oenone and Reggie. It confirmed the impression she had somehow received on the Sunday, that the Playfairs didn’t have children.
Over the fireplace hung a portrait of a young woman in a green ball dress. The fashion of the gown and a residual likeness declared it to be of Oenone in her twenties.
Entering with the coffee, she saw that they were looking at the painting and grimaced. ‘A lot to be said for putting that in the attic,’ she commented. ‘A bit masochistic to have such a constant reminder of the ravages of
