The Corpse on the Court

‘Tom said you mentioned the story of Agnes Wardock’s ghost to him some years ago. .’

‘Yes. I hope you’re not going to ask me how many. When it comes to time these days I always have to double the number I first thought of.’

‘No, that wasn’t going to be my question. I just wondered whether you’d told the ghost story to anyone else more recently?’

‘Funny you should ask that, because there was a chap came to see me within the last month who seemed extremely interested in Agnes Wardock’s ghost. You probably know him, Tom. He’s a member of the real tennis club.’

‘Oh? What’s his name?’

‘Reggie Playfair,’ said Cecil Wardock.

It had started to rain while they had been talking, so the other two waited under the porch of Lockleigh House while Carole went to fetch the Renault from the car park.

‘Cecil didn’t seem to know about Reggie Playfair’s death, did he?’ Jude observed.

‘No. Otherwise he’d have been bound to mention it when the poor old bugger’s name came up.’

‘There didn’t seem to be any point in saying anything.’

‘Absolutely not. He’d only met Reggie the once.’

There was a silence. The rain looked set in for the afternoon.

‘Pity you haven’t started playing tennis yet,’ said Tom Ruthven.

‘You still looking for a fourth for your Wednesday doubles?’

‘That’s it. I suppose Jonty’s gout might be better — he’s such a hypochondriac with his ailments, and not above using them for a bit of gamesmanship too — but I’d like to have a back-up.’

Jude had a good idea. Her lover was due back from Paris the following day. She didn’t know his plans for the next week, but he always seemed ready to drop everything for a game of real tennis. ‘Why not ask Piers?’

‘Oh, I asked him. He couldn’t do it. Some business meeting, he said.’

‘In Paris?’

‘He didn’t mention Paris.’

Jude felt a disturbing trickle of anxiety. ‘Did you speak to him on his mobile?’

‘No, his home number.’

‘In Bayswater?’

‘No, no. Down here. In his house at Goffham.’

‘When was this?’

‘Yesterday evening.’

But Piers Targett was supposed to be in Paris till Sunday. Jude’s manner gave no sign of the turmoil in her mind as she said lightly, ‘Thank goodness you mentioned that, Tom.’

‘Oh? Why?’

‘Well,’ she lied glibly, ‘I’d made an arrangement to meet Piers at the house this afternoon. Make sense if I went straight there now. Trouble is, I’d made a note of the address, but I left it at home. You don’t know it, by any chance, do you, Tom?’

Tom did.

FIFTEEN

Jude didn’t give any hint of her feelings as Carole drove them back through the rain to Fethering. They talked about what they had just heard from Cecil, and the possibility that Reggie Playfair’s fascination with the ghost of Agnes Wardock might have been the reason for his final visit to Lockleigh House tennis court. It didn’t seem likely, but then none of their other lines of enquiry were leading anywhere so the notion was worth exploring. Carole was unaware of her neighbour’s preoccupation and didn’t notice that she was doing most of the talking.

When the Renault dropped her outside Woodside Cottage, Jude said she just had to dash out to get some shopping at Allinstore, Fethering’s uniquely inefficient supermarket. Carole went into High Tor to face the baleful looks of a disgruntled Gulliver, a process of blackmail that would almost inevitably lead to his being taken for another walk on Fethering Beach.

Jude didn’t go to Allinstore. Instead she cut across the village to the railway station, beside which was a Portakabin displaying the legend ‘Fethering Cars’. A minicab was procured and she gave the Goffham address that Tom Ruthven had passed on her. Fortunately the driver had no desire to engage in conversation because, atypically, Jude didn’t feel like talking that afternoon.

In the spare bedroom at High Tor, Carole found on her laptop an email from Susan Holland. She wrote that she had enjoyed their meeting at Bean in Love and, if Carole was genuinely interested in helping find out what had happened to her daughter, she gave a phone number for one of Marina’s best friends from school, Donna Grodsky. Susan had talked to the girl endlessly in the immediate aftermath of the disappearance. Donna hadn’t been able to provide much information then, but maybe her lack of cooperation had been due to simple teenage bolshiness. Perhaps, now a few years had passed, and if the girl was approached by someone different, she might be more forthcoming.

Carole Seddon checked her watch. It was five forty-five. Not a respectable time on a Saturday to ring someone you hadn’t met before. Particularly someone young. Young people — young women, certainly — would be busy preparing for the evening ahead. Choosing the most revealing minidress, the most vertiginous heels, and loading up with cheap supermarket vodka to set them up for a night of excess. Though Carole took The Times, many of her preconceptions were more likely to have come from a Daily Mail reader.

She would definitely ring Donna Grodsky, she decided. Just not then.

The cottage outside which Jude’s minicab drew up was on the edge of the village of Goffham. There was an air of neglect about it. The paint on the window frames was peeling and the rough grass in the front garden had not been mown all summer.

But it had been an attractive house and, with a little care and attention, could be again.

On the weed-ridden gravel in front of the house stood Piers Targett’s E-Type. In the manner of the Royal Standard flying over Buckingham Palace, it was a bright red announcement that the owner was in residence.

Jude paid off the driver, still with mercifully minimal dialogue and, as the car eased away, walked towards the house.

One of the hinges had sheared off the garden gate and she had to lift the upright out of a rut to open it. The unwillingness with which the gate gave suggested that not many people had been through recently.

Jude walked boldly along the weed-fringed brick path to the front door. She was hardly thinking, certainly not planning how she was going to conduct the conversation that lay ahead. She seemed to be on automatic pilot, but she knew that she couldn’t take any other course than the one she was taking.

She lifted the discoloured brass knocker on a front door whose green paint had blistered and flaked, and let it fall. There was a silence, then she heard the sound of someone approaching from inside.

The door opened. And when Jude said, ‘Good afternoon,’ the expression of Piers Targett’s face was one which she had not previously seen during what she now realized had been a very brief relationship.

Piers was extremely fluent in his explanations. No surprise there, he’d always been good with words.

No, he hadn’t lied to her about going to Paris. He had caught the Eurostar from Ebbsfleet as planned on the Thursday morning. But the business he was due to do in France hadn’t taken as long as anticipated, so he’d returned to England on the Friday afternoon.

They were sitting in the kitchen. Jude had refused his offer of ‘tea, coffee or maybe something stronger. .?’ She was struck again by how shabby the place looked. The interior matched the exterior — not squalid but with an air of neglect. Though it was starting to get dark outside, she could still see the dust and cobwebs on the windows. The mess of the house was in such sharp contrast to the antiseptic neatness of his Bayswater flat that Jude couldn’t help feeling that the difference must express something in Piers Targett’s personality. Another secret perhaps, something else that would require explanation.

In spite of the circumstances, she hadn’t stopped finding Piers attractive. There was something impossibly