The Corpse on the Court

age.’

‘Did Reggie commission it for you?’ asked Jude.

‘No, my parents had it done. Before Reggie and I had met. Part of being a debutante.’ She shuddered at the memory. ‘It was a vital ingredient in my parents’ sales pitch to entrap a suitable husband for me.’

‘And was Reggie that suitable husband?’

‘Good heavens, no. Not in their eyes. My father was an earl, I’m afraid. When I started going round with Reggie, they very definitely thought I was slumming.’

‘Was he of very humble origins?’ asked Carole.

‘By their standards, not by anybody else’s. No title, you see. And only from a minor public school. Then he was very successful in the City, which they thought was a bit infra dig.’

‘What did he do?’

‘Stockbroker.’

‘Was he still. .?’ asked Jude. ‘I mean, had he retired?’

‘Oh yes, in theory he retired about seven years ago. The company was sold off back then. But Reggie still spent a lot of the time studying the markets and dealing. It was his hobby, really. Though he was doing it with our money rather than other people’s.’ As if anticipating a question they were too tactful to ask, she continued. ‘Very successfully. I have no reason to complain.’ She looked around at her beautiful surroundings with some satisfaction.

Carole and Jude were both struck by how composed she seemed for a woman whose husband had died the previous day. But then British aristocrats were not renowned for wearing their hearts on their sleeves.

‘Anyway. .’ Oenone’s tone changed to a more businesslike one, ‘I told Jude on the phone about the recommendation Suzy Longthorne gave for your investigative skills. I gather up at the Hopwicke you solved a murder for her. Obviously this case is nothing like that — ’ Carole and Jude exchanged almost imperceptible looks — ‘but Reggie’s death has left me with some unanswered questions.’

‘Including, no doubt,’ said Jude, ‘the one that’s been puzzling me. What was he doing at the tennis court at that time of day?’

‘Precisely.’

‘I mean, that seems to me to be the most obvious thing anyone would have asked. And yet all the time I was there yesterday morning nobody asked it. And I had lunch with some of the members yesterday. .’

‘Really? Who?’

‘Wally, who you introduced me to on Sunday, and three others.’

‘Oh, the Old Boys. Of course, yes, they do their doubles on a Wednesday morning. So you were at the Lockleigh Arms?’

‘Mm. And I kept trying to get on to the subject of what Reggie was doing there, but they kind of avoided answering it, almost as if I was asking something distasteful. Even Piers wasn’t very helpful when I asked him last night.’

Carole pounced on the little detail. ‘Did Piers stay with you last night?’

‘Yes,’ Jude replied wearily.

‘Oh,’ said Carole, as only Carole could say ‘Oh’.

‘That in a way,’ said Oenone Playfair, ‘is what worries me about the situation.’

‘Sorry? What do you mean?’ asked Jude.

‘The way the men are all clamming up. It suggests to me that they probably do know what Reggie was up to, and it’s something he shouldn’t have been up to.’

‘Isn’t it also possible,’ suggested Carole, ‘that they don’t know what he was up to, but they’re clamming up because they think he might have been up to something he shouldn’t have been up to?’

Oenone conceded the possibility. ‘Yes, men do that, don’t they?’

‘Let’s work back from when you last saw him,’ said Jude. ‘Did you see him before he left the house yesterday morning?’

‘No.’

‘Oh?’ Carole was instantly alert.

‘No, but I wasn’t expecting to. We’d said our goodbyes, such as they were, the previous day.’ Catching sight of the expression on Carole’s face, she explained, ‘There’s nothing sinister about it. We have a flat in town. On Tuesday evening Reggie was going to a dinner at his livery company. When he does that he leaves the car at Pulborough and takes the train up to London. So he went off after lunch on Tuesday.’ For a brief moment there was a slight tremor in her voice as she said, ‘That was the last time I saw him.’

‘And do you know whether he actually made it to the dinner?’ asked Carole.

‘Yes, I called a friend who’s a member of the same livery company. Reggie had definitely been there at the dinner — and apparently in raucous good form, as only he can be — could be.’ She made the correction automatically, not wishing to give way again to emotion.

‘Would there have been anyone at your flat, who might have seen when he left there — or indeed if he arrived there?’

Oenone Playfair shook her head. ‘No, there’s no concierge or anyone there. And we hardly know the owners of the other flats. I suppose it’s possible that someone might have seen Reggie arrive or leave, but it’s unlikely.’

‘What about the clothes he was wearing? Had he changed after the dinner?’

‘No, he hadn’t. I. .’ Again the slightest of tremors. ‘I saw him at the hospital yesterday. And they. . gave me his clothes. The shirt he was wearing was the one he’d worn to the dinner. Reggie always insists on wearing a clean shirt every day. And clean boxer shorts.’

‘So the implication,’ said Carole, ‘is that he perhaps didn’t go to your London flat.’

‘He may have gone there. But he certainly didn’t sleep there.’

‘So he could have gone down to the court any time after the dinner ended,’ suggested Jude.

‘Well, just a minute, no,’ Carole objected. ‘Remember he’d left his car at Pulborough Station. Assuming the livery dinner ended too late for him to have got the last train back from Victoria. .’

‘Which it certainly would have done,’ Oenone confirmed. ‘I’ve been to those dinners when they have ladies’ nights and, God, do they go on? Also, the friend I spoke to said that when he left, round eleven thirty, Reggie was very much still there, in his customary role as the life and soul of the party.’ Some slight nuance in her voice suggested that that was one aspect of her late husband’s character she wouldn’t miss too much.

‘So. .’ Carole pieced things together slowly, ‘unless for some reason your husband got a taxi or a lift from someone down to Pulborough, he couldn’t have picked up his car until the first train of the morning had got there. If I had my laptop here, I could check what time that is.’

Except of course, thought Jude, you never move the laptop out of the spare room at High Tor, do you?

Oenone Playfair, however, had the relevant information locked into her memory. ‘There’s a five fifteen train from Victoria — I’ve had to catch it on a few occasions. Gets into Pulborough at six thirty-four.’

‘And how long would it have taken your husband to get from the station to the tennis court?’ asked Carole.

‘A quarter of an hour, if that.’

‘So he could have been there round ten to seven,’ said Jude, ‘which would be about three-quarters of an hour before Piers and I got there.’

‘Did Piers and you arrive together?’ asked Carole with some sharpness.

‘No, he was there when the taxi dropped me.’

‘And how long had he been there?’

‘I assumed he’d just arrived.’

‘But you don’t know that?’

‘No, I don’t.’ Jude looked at her neighbour with slight puzzlement. She knew that Carole resented the appearance of Piers Targett in her life, but surely she wouldn’t be crass enough deliberately to build up suspicion of him?

Carole seemed to read her thoughts and said, ‘I’m sorry, but these are the kind of questions we’d be asking if