Guilt at the Garage

by Simon Brett

‘A bit of basic mechanics, I gather. Bill Shefford had been very generous in taking him on. The Kendricks’ family cars were always serviced at the garage and she persuaded him to give the boy a chance.’

  ‘I can imagine.’ Jude had encountered too many women of Natalie Kendrick’s type to have any doubts about their powers of persuasion.

  ‘But, of course, Tom screwed up. After a couple of months, he was asked to leave.’

  ‘What for? Anything specific?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Just general inefficiency, turning up late, skiving, you name it. The customary behaviour of a layabout with a private income.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Apparently, Bill Shefford was very upset by Tom’s behaviour. He’d bent over backwards to give the boy a chance, and he’d had his generosity thrown back in his face. According to what I heard, Bill Shefford was the mildest of men, never lost his temper, never even raised his voice. But when he finally sacked Tom Kendrick, there was a great shouting match.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. In front of all the staff and customers, I gather.’

  ‘Who told you this?’

  ‘Tom himself. Well, his version was slightly different from what I’ve just told you. In his version, he’d done nothing wrong. He was just trying to do his job, but Bill Shefford kept picking on him. Tom was still clearly very angry.’

  ‘Was he?’

  ‘Yes. There was a lot of bad blood there.’

  ELEVEN

  ‘I don’t know about cars,’ said Carole, with some pride. There were some areas of life where she felt it was permissible – even admirable – to admit ignorance.

  ‘But you must have noticed,’ Jude insisted. ‘You saw the car that was over the inspection pit, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, of course I did.’

  ‘Then what make was it?’

  ‘As I told you, I don’t know about cars. But someone told me’ – she was still circumspect about mentioning Adrian to Jude – ‘that it was a Triumph.’

  ‘What kind of Triumph?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  Jude sighed with exasperation, sat back in their Crown and Anchor alcove and produced her mobile from a pocket. Her fingers flew over the tiny keyboard.

  Carole watched with suspicion and a tinge of jealousy. She distrusted the fluency with which some people conducted their whole lives on mobile phones. Rather in the way her neighbour was doing at that moment. It couldn’t be healthy. It was part of some Faustian pact. What would happen if all of the mobile networks in the world ceased to function simultaneously? Carole Seddon was big on apocalypse scenarios.

  But then she reminded herself she must be on top of the video-making capacity of her new phone before her granddaughters arrived in March. All that WhatsAppery, she must get it right.

  Jude found what she was looking for and thrust the screen towards her friend. ‘There! That is a Triumph Tr6. Was the car whose gearbox killed Bill Shefford a Triumph Tr6?’

  ‘It does look quite like it,’ Carole admitted. But she wasn’t going to give up her treasured ignorance so easily. ‘But I don’t really know about cars.’

  ‘You have made that point,’ said Jude, with a rare flash of asperity. ‘At least I presume you can tell me what colour it was.’

  ‘Red,’ said Carole penitently. It was so unusual for her neighbour to snap at her that she felt a little subdued.

  ‘Then,’ said Jude triumphantly, ‘I’m pretty sure I know who owns it. And I also think that we may have to reconsider our conclusion about Bill Shefford’s death being an accident.’

  Excitement sparkled in the pale blue eyes behind Carole’s rimless glasses. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked breathlessly.

  So, Jude told her about seeing Tom Kendrick’s Triumph Tr6 at Troubadours. This obviously led to questions from her neighbour about what had taken her to the Shorelands Estate. And her answer prompted the entirely predictable response of a sniff and ‘Oh, one of your healing things.’

  ‘As it turned out, it wasn’t “one of my healing things”.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I didn’t reckon he needed healing. Tom Kendrick is just a lazy young man who has his mother entirely wrapped around his little finger.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘And if I was doing any healing there, I certainly wouldn’t be talking about him.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course. Your precious client confidentiality.’

  Jude sighed. It was sometimes very tiring engaging in conversation with Carole. But she did relay what she’d heard from Jeremiah about the bad blood between the young man and Bill Shefford. ‘I don’t know,’ she concluded. ‘May be simple coincidence, but if one was looking for evidence of foul play …’

  ‘I’m definitely looking for evidence of foul play,’ said Carole, completely hooked. She didn’t realize until that moment how disappointed she had been by the accident theory of Bill Shefford’s death.

  ‘I think the first thing we need to find out,’ said Jude, ‘is whether the murder method is feasible.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Would it be possible to sabotage a Triumph Tr6 in such a way that the gearbox could fall down on top of someone inspecting it? I suppose I could look online. There’s always plenty of stuff about vehicle mechanics, but I’m not sure that kind of information would be easy to track down. Or indeed whether I’d understand it if I did track it down.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Carole, once again feeling ascendancy. ‘I can find that out.’

  ‘How? As you keep saying, you know nothing about cars.’

  ‘No,’ Carole agreed complacently, ‘but I know a man who does.’

  ‘I know there’s nothing one can say about foreigners that isn’t classified as racist these days.’ The pontificating voice came, unsurprisingly, from Barney Poulton. He was incapable of being in the Crown and Anchor without pontificating, and how long he’d been at it could usually be judged by the thickness of the glaze on Ted Crisp’s eyes. Customers like Barney Poulton were one of the hazards of a landlord’s life. Every pub had at least one person who fitted the brief and the Crown and Anchor had quite a few. Unfortunately, that night Barney was the only one of them present, which ruled out the possibility of someone else with an equally large ego interrupting his monologue.

  ‘But,’ he went on, ‘if you aren’t allowed to mention people’s nationality, then how are you going to pass any comment? Whether that comment be commendation or criticism?’

  Carole looked across at the bar, then turned back, eyebrows raised in annoyance. ‘He does go on, doesn’t he? I’m glad to say he hardly knows me, so I think I’m safe from having to hear his opinions.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it. Barney talks so loudly no one can avoid his opinions.’ Jude swallowed down the last of her Sauvignon Blanc and moved to rise from the alcove. ‘I think we need to get another drink.’

  ‘But if you go up to get them,’ Carole hissed fiercely, ‘he’s bound to buttonhole you.’

  ‘Exactly. But haven’t you noticed who he’s with?’

  Carole gaze strayed back to the bar. ‘Ah. I see what you mean.’

  She too downed the remains of her glass and followed Jude across the room.

  By now, Barney Poulton was naming names. ‘If there were to be any official investigation, I think there’s no question that Malee Shefford would be the first person the police would want to interview.’

  ‘With you there,’ said Frankie, whose presence it was that had hurried Jude to the bar with a second order of Sauvignon Blanc. Frankie was drinking something that looked like Coca-Cola but smelt strongly of rum. On the counter in front of Barney Poulton was the half-empty pint glass which was such an essential prop for his self-appointed role.

  Jude saw the relief in Ted Crisp’s eyes at their approach. ‘Two more of the usual, is it?’ he asked her, glad to have something else to do, apart from listening to the Sage of Fethering.

  Jude greeted Barney and Frankie
warmly. Though she didn’t know either of them well, she didn’t suffer from her neighbour’s hang-ups about the difference between ‘people who you know who they are’ and ‘people who you’ve been introduced to’. Carole had had many dealings with Frankie at Shefford’s, so she reckoned that was the equivalent to being introduced. She had, however, previously managed to avoid one-to-one conversation with Barney, so her greeting to him was appropriately awkward and aloof.

  ‘We were talking,’ he explained, as though his voice hadn’t been loud enough to fill the entire bar, ‘about the recent death of the much-lamented Bill Shefford.’ He made it sound as though he’d been cruelly deprived of the company of an old friend. Whereas, if they had once or twice had a discussion about repairs to his car, that was the extent of their acquaintanceship. But to his mind, Barney Poulton’s fiefdom covered all of Fethering.

  ‘And I was expressing the opinion that his wife – now widow – Malee could not be excluded from any discussion on the subject. Of course, I don’t say that because she’s of foreign extraction.’

  How often in Fethering, Jude wondered, had she heard people say the exact opposite of what they felt?

  ‘I say it because, when there is an incident of a suspicious death, one’s first question has to be: “Cui bono?”’ Barney seemed to decide that using Latin tags did not chime appropriately with his image as a salt-of-the-earth Fethering local, so went on to explain, ‘Who benefits from the crime? And when a married man is murdered, the most likely beneficiary is his wife.’

  ‘That may be the case,’ said Jude, not liking the assumptions that were being so quickly made. ‘But that doesn’t mean that the wife is guilty of any crime. We don’t even know that we’re talking about a murder, do we?’ This was in spite of what she had just said to Carole. Jude didn’t want to encourage further gyrations of the Fethering rumour-mill.

  ‘I think we are,’ said Frankie firmly.

  ‘Talking about a murder?’ asked Carole.

  ‘Yes. I’ve worked with Bill Shefford for more than twenty years. One thing he could never be accused of is carelessness, particularly when it came to Health and Safety. All right, he was old-fashioned in some ways. He preferred working in the inspection pit to using the hydraulic lift, which caused a few arguments with Billy. Billy wanted to fill in the pit and buy a second hydraulic lift, one with a higher spec that they could use to do MOTs. God knows how many times I’ve heard him say, “There’s money in Ministry of Transport testing, Dad.” Billy always had new ideas for updating the facilities, but Bill always found ways of avoiding further investment. He wasn’t mean, mind you, just cautious.’

  ‘Probably more cautious after he’d married Malee,’ Barney contributed.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Jude.

  ‘She would have discouraged him from spending, so that there was more for her to inherit.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘Oh, I do, Jude, I do. You see, the thing is with “Mail Order Brides” …’ He launched into another subject on which he apparently had encyclopedic knowledge. ‘When UK men marry them, they don’t realize that they’re not just taking on the upkeep of the bride herself, it’s her whole family. Just you watch – as soon as probate’s sorted, Malee’ll be back in wherever-she-came-from, introducing hordes of relations to a much better lifestyle than they have any right to expect.’

  Jude pursed her lips. She wasn’t enjoying this xenophobic diatribe. She looked across for support from Carole, but her neighbour’s expression was ambivalent. Carole could be distressingly blinkered about certain subjects. Jude decided not to protest further, just see if any useful information emerged from the conversation.

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard that,’ said Frankie. ‘Moment I saw Malee for the first time, the expression came into my head. “Gold-digger”. She was only ever after Bill’s money. He was a sitting duck, really, once she’d got her claws into him. Bill was so lonely after Valerie died. Cancer it was. Her last couple of years weren’t much fun. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Bill had married soon after that, you know, kind of on the rebound after Valerie’s death. There were plenty of women in Fethering who would have been glad to have him. Didn’t talk a lot, but he was a really kind man, not many like him around.’

  Jude wondered for a moment whether Frankie herself might have been one of the women who ‘would have been glad to have him’. She spoke with definite fondness. Maybe that might explain her violent antipathy to Malee. Or maybe Jude was reading too much into the situation.

  ‘Which means, of course,’ Frankie continued, ‘that he was a pushover for someone like Malee. It’s very sad, really. I thought she would at least have waited till he died naturally to get his money. But no, she was too greedy.’

  Jude couldn’t keep quiet any longer. ‘Do you know for a fact,’ she asked, ‘that Malee was going to inherit everything?’

  ‘Well, of course she was,’ said Frankie. ‘Otherwise what would have been the point of killing him?’

  The argument was totally illogical, but Jude didn’t take issue with it. She just said, ‘Quite often, when older men remarry, they draw up wills which make provisions for their existing family as well as their new wife. And from what you say about Bill’s kindness, that sounds just the kind of thing he might have done.’

  ‘He might have wanted to do that,’ said Frankie stubbornly. ‘He might have intended to do that. But Malee would’ve persuaded him against the idea. She’d have made sure he named her as his sole beneficiary.’

  ‘Do you actually know that?’ asked Jude again. ‘Did he tell you what was in his will?’

  ‘He didn’t have to tell me.’ Logic was clearly not a strong point with Frankie. ‘But I know what I know. And I know Malee killed Bill.’

  ‘You may remember,’ said Carole, after a brief silence, ‘that I was actually in the garage when he died …’

  ‘Course I remember,’ said Frankie. ‘Billy was sorting out your wipers, right?’

  ‘Yes. And I was just wondering … how Malee could have had anything to do with Bill Shefford’s death. I mean, she wasn’t there, was she? She arrived some time after he died.’

  ‘I know that.’ Frankie’s tone was almost pitying. ‘But she didn’t have to be there when he got killed. In fact, she couldn’t have been, because Billy would have seen if she got up to anything dodgy. Certainly, if she went down into the inspection pit. No, she’d sabotaged the Triumph Tr6 earlier, loosened the gearbox screws so that it came down on Bill as soon as he touched it.’

  ‘When could she have done that?’ asked Jude.

  ‘Night before,’ Frankie pronounced with great certainty. ‘She’d got keys to the garage, see? Bill’d given her a set, though why she needed them I don’t know.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be unusual for a wife to have a set of keys to her husband’s place of work.’

  ‘You reckon?’ Frankie almost sneered at Jude’s suggestion. ‘I think she made him give them to her, so that she could snoop around. I think she looked through the files on my computer.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’

  ‘Doing evening classes in book-keeping, wasn’t she? I’m sure she got into my files, looking for some mistakes or dodgy doings, she may even have planted stuff on the computer. Incriminating stuff, so that Bill would be left with no alternative but to give me the elbow. That Malee definitely had her eyes on my job.’

  Jude was surprised by the level of paranoia in the woman’s words. ‘If she did do that,’ she said, ‘and I think it’s very unlikely that she did, that still doesn’t mean she committed murder.’

  ‘It meant she had the opportunity to commit murder,’ Frankie insisted. ‘And she wasn’t just doing evening classes in book-keeping. Car maintenance as well. Why would she be doing that if it wasn’t to find out how to sabotage a car?’

  Frankie’s logic was becoming ridiculous. Jude objected, ‘There are lots of reasons why she’d want to do car maintenance. If you marry someone who owns a garage
, then it’s quite normal that you’d be interested in his work. You might even want to be able to help him out at times.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Frankie very definitely took this the wrong way. ‘So, you’re saying she was after Billy’s job as well as mine, are you?’

  ‘I am certainly not saying that. I’m just saying that if anyone’s going to go around making public accusations of murder, they should be pretty sure of their ground.’

  ‘I am sure of my ground,’ Frankie countered. ‘I’d put money on the fact that Malee tampered with the gearbox fixing on the Triumph Tr6. She wanted to kill Bill and she wanted it to look like an accident.’

  Carole joined the conversation. ‘If that was the case, and if there was any suspicion of foul play, then surely the police would investigate?’

  ‘Haven’t heard anything from the police,’ said Frankie. ‘And the garage had recently had an HSE inspection and—’

  ‘HSE?’ Jude queried.

  ‘Health and Safety Executive. Everything was up to date there. Then, obviously the ambulance people came. They seemed to think it was an accident. And there was a doctor.’

  ‘Who was the doctor?’ asked Carole. ‘One from the Fethering Surgery?’ She knew who they were, though she hadn’t been introduced to all of them.

  ‘I didn’t recognize him,’ said Frankie. ‘But apparently Bill’d been to see him quite recently. So, there was no problem about signing the death certificate.’

  ‘That sounds rather odd,’ said Carole. ‘Surely the body would have been taken by ambulance to the hospital and—?’

  Frankie, however, didn’t want her narrative interrupted. ‘It was all above board, from that point of view. And, as I say, Health and Safety too. But it was made to look like an accident, so the police didn’t need to be involved. I haven’t heard a dicky bird from them.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Barney Poulton insinuated, ‘the police will only take action if someone tells them there’s a suspicion of foul play …?’

  ‘Some public-spirited local resident?’

  Unaware of the sarcasm in Jude’s voice, the Sage of Fethering replied, ‘Yes. Exactly.’