there was nobody we knew involved.’
Jude nodded, accepting the point. ‘Yes, all right, I don’t know how long Piers had been there.’
‘But you can ask him,’ said Oenone.
‘Of course.’ But Jude wondered if that was another subject on which she might find her lover evasive.
‘Presumably,’ said Carole, ‘if your husband had caught the train from Victoria, there’d be CCTV footage of him at the station. That could be checked.’
‘I don’t think that’s very likely,’ said Oenone.
‘Why not?’
‘Well, who would check it?’
‘The police, presumably.’
The older woman sat back in astonishment. ‘The police? Why on earth should it have anything to do with the police?’
‘Well, they-’
‘There’s no crime involved here. Reggie died of a heart attack, there’s not much doubt about that, after a dinner where he, typically, over-indulged himself. God knows he’d had enough warnings. Saw the quack only last week and had another lecture about changing his lifestyle.’
‘So if he’s seen the doctor that recently,’ said Carole, ‘there won’t have to be an inquest.’ She was good at details like that.
‘Won’t there? Thank God for small mercies. Anyway, for heaven’s sake, don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to involve you two in a criminal investigation. I’m just — as any widow would be — curious about how my husband spent his last hours. And I thought maybe you could help me out on that.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Jude, as she and Carole exchanged covert looks, realizing how much they had let their instincts to see any suspicious death as a potential murder run away with them.
Carole moved into practical mode. ‘I suppose an obvious starting question might be whether your husband had any tennis-related reason to be on the court at that time in the morning.’
‘How do you mean — tennis-related?’
‘I know nothing about real tennis — even less than Jude does, but I imagine, because it’s a competitive sport, people do train for it. So is it possible that your husband was there so early to do some kind of training session?’
‘Reggie? Training?’ Oenone Playfair’s grief was not so deep that she couldn’t still see the incongruity of the idea. ‘For a start there’s very little training you can do on a real tennis court on your own. You could practise a few serves, I suppose, that’s about it. But the idea of Reggie doing any kind of training is just too incongruous for words. There was a time when he was younger, maybe, when he used to do a bit of running and what-have-you, but back then most of his training just came from playing the game. He’d be up at the court three, four times a week.’
‘With Piers?’ asked Jude, remembering what her lover had said about a similar period of intense real tennis.
‘With Piers, yes. There was a whole bunch of them, all incredibly keen, all incredibly fit. Wally Edgington- Bewley, though a decade or so older than the others, was part of the group. They lived for real tennis, used to go off on jaunts to foreign courts. . Bordeaux, New York, a couple in Australia. But that’s a long time ago. So no, Carole, there is absolutely no chance that Reggie was on the court for training purposes. Apart from anything else, his kit had been in the wash since Sunday and our help doesn’t do the ironing till Friday.’
‘Right. I see,’ said Carole, who couldn’t help feeling that she had received something of a put-down.
Jude picked up the investigation. ‘Well, if we can also rule out the possibility that Reggie had simply gone back to the court because there was something he had left there on Sunday. .’
‘Which we can,’ asserted Oenone. ‘You may remember I helped him get his stuff together on Sunday. I made sure he’d got everything.’
‘That being the case, the only other reason I can think of for Reggie to be there was because he had arranged to meet someone.’
‘Yes, Jude,’ said Oenone Playfair wretchedly, ‘that’s what I’m afraid of.’
TEN
Carole instantly picked up on the implication. ‘You mean there’s someone you know who Reggie might have been meeting?’
For the first time in their encounter Oenone Playfair looked embarrassed. Up to that point she had been keeping good control of her emotions, the strongest of which seemed, not surprisingly, to be grief. Embarrassment was new.
‘Would you like more coffee?’ she asked, playing for time.
They both said that they would like their cups refilled. After Oenone had poured for them and placed the silver pot back down on the silver tray, she began, ‘Look, this probably sounds silly and perhaps I am just an old woman maundering on, but although generally speaking Reggie and I had a very happy marriage, there was one time, many years ago, when he hurt me very much.’
‘Are you talking about an affair?’ asked Jude, always sensitive to that kind of hidden implication.
‘Yes. Well, I don’t know how far the relationship ever went, but Reggie certainly did fall in love with another woman and it did have a profound effect on us. . on me, certainly.’
‘The trust issue?’
‘Exactly that, Jude. The relationship, affair, infatuation, whatever it was, didn’t last very long. I think it may have started when they were both on some trip to Paris, but I really don’t know. And I don’t believe Reggie was ever actually thinking of leaving. He said he’d never stopped loving me, he’d just been surprised by his capacity to love two women at the same time.’
‘Men often say that in such circumstances,’ Carole observed drily.
‘Maybe. I’m sorry, this sounds ridiculous — a woman in her seventies being as jealous of a man as a schoolgirl protecting her first boyfriend from her predatory friends.’
‘It’s not ridiculous at all,’ said Jude. ‘The capacity to fall in love — and to be hurt by the people one loves — that’s nothing to do with age. It’s just something we’re stuck with all the way through our lives. Betrayal doesn’t hurt any less in your nineties than it did in your teens.’
‘Mm. Anyway, Reggie and I settled down, got back on an even keel. And he was very good to me — he was always very good to me, even when the. . relationship was going on. And I suppose the whole thing lasted. . well, I don’t believe it was more than three months, which in retrospect seems a tiny portion of time.’
‘But felt longer while you were living through it.’
‘Exactly, Jude. Anyway, at the time, when my head was buzzing with ever more destructive thoughts and imaginings, I became obsessed with the question of where Reggie was managing to meet this woman. I’m sure he’d never have brought her here — I was around most of the time, apart from anything else — and this was before we’d bought the flat in London, so that wouldn’t have been available for them. Reggie had let slip that the other woman was married, so I’d have thought it unlikely they’d meet at her place. . though I suppose it is possible.’
‘Hotels are traditional places for illicit assignations,’ Carole pointed out.
‘Yes, but. . well, I suppose he could have afforded it. Reggie was already doing very well by then. But — oh God, I feel dreadful saying this, particularly in the current circumstances. I went through Reggie’s credit card receipts. It’s something I’d never have dreamed of doing before. It’s amazing how corrosive suspicion can be, turning you into the kind of person you never wanted to become — or thought you ever would become. Anyway, there was nothing. No receipts from stays in hotels that I didn’t know about. I felt guilty for being so untrusting, but. . Anyway, as I say, I just became obsessed with the question.
‘All kinds of silly ideas were going through my head. I knew the local young people who lacked tolerant parents tended to conduct their sex lives in cars. . or there was a favoured wooded area on the local golf course, but I thought Reggie would have a bit more sophistication than that. And then the thought came to me. . that maybe they met at Lockleigh House tennis court.’
