by Simon Brett
“Well…” He was silent, then a bit tearful as he went on, “It can’t hurt her now for me to say what I really thought.” He took a deep breath before announcing, “The writing was clumsy and, from what I read of it, the plot just didn’t hang together.”
“So you don’t think she’d have had any chance of getting it published?”
“God, no.”
“But she said an agent friend had also liked it a lot.”
“Wishful thinking. I know the agent friend in question, Serena. I was up at Cambridge the same time she was. And Serena didn’t want to hurt Polly’s feelings, so she said what she wanted to hear. It’s significant she didn’t offer to represent her as an agent once the book was finished. I’m afraid the situation was that…well, Polly always wanted to be as good as other people, particularly as good as me. When we first met, we were both in the National Youth Theatre. And she was always a better actor than me, I’d never argue about that. I mean, I can do revue and stuff, funny faces, funny accents, but I’m not really an actor, not like Polly. So when we first met, she was kind of the dominant partner. Then I went up to Cambridge and I got involved with the Footlights, so I was writing and appearing in revues and what-have-you…and Polly, on the weekends she came up, was consigned to the role of a hanger-on. You know, she’d be down in London during the week, trying to get acting work, and I’d be in Cambridge having a whale of a time, surrounded by lots of extremely bright and privileged people…”
“People like Lola?”
“Yes, exactly. People like Lola.” He seemed for a moment to lose the thread of his narrative. “Anyway, with all that happening…the dynamics of me and Polly changed.”
Carole remembered the difficulty Polly had hinted at of maintaining their affair through Piers’s time at university.
“And then after Cambridge and after I’d done shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, we moved in together. In a flat just near Warren Street tube station, where we still are, actually. Or were.” He didn’t want to dwell on the thought. “Anyway, I started having some success as a writer and poor Polly was still finding the acting work hard to come by and…well, it put even more pressure on the relationship. You know, I was kind of mixing with supposedly glamorous people in the comedy world, and the prospects for me getting my own sitcom away were looking good, and then there’s Polly sort of in my wake. She hated being seen as an appendage or a parasite. I think that’s what got her thinking about writing something herself.”
“‘Anything you can do, I can do better’ syndrome,” suggested Jude.
“Exactly that.” The memory seemed to depress him. He sank back into silence.
Carole decided it was time to move into investigative mode. “You say you got a text from her from Fedborough Station saying she was about to catch the London train…?” He nodded. “Have you any idea why she might have changed her mind and come back down here to Fethering?”
“None at all. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I thought you might know something.”
“Sadly not,” said Jude.
“Oh well.” He picked up his coffee cup in a shaking hand and downed the remaining contents. “Thank you for your time. I’m sorry if I’ve interrupted your evening. It’s just I feel so powerless. Polly’s dead and I’ve got to do something to find out why!”
“I know how you feel,” said Jude, her voice sounding even softer after his outburst. “One thing…” she said, as he rose from his chair.
“Yes?”
“You talked about the dynamics of your relationship with Polly changing, the balance changing. How much have they changed?”
“What do you mean?”
“One of the first things you said when you came here this evening was that what had happened to Polly made you feel ‘guilty’. You presumably mean you feel guilty because you think you should have been around, protecting her?”
“I suppose so. In a way, yes.”
“I was just wondering whether there might be another reason why you felt guilty…?”
He controlled another flash of instinctive anger, then said, “Are you suggesting that I might have had something to do with Polly’s death? Because I was in London at the time and I do have an alibi for the night of the fire, someone who can vouch for where I was and – ”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Jude raised a hand to calm him. “I’m not making any accusations here. All I was wondering was whether the cause of your feeling guilty might be because your relationship with Polly was coming to an end?”
“I didn’t say that.” Piers was blushing furiously.
“No, but was it?”
There was a silence which Carole eventually broke. “Interesting that you said you had an alibi for the time of the fire…someone who could vouch for where you were all night…”
Any barrier of defiance Piers might have put up instantly crumbled away. “Yes, all right. I was with another woman.” He went on, recklessly, “I’ve met someone else. One of the cast of the new sitcom I’m writing. This is the real thing. I was going to tell Polly as soon as we got Christmas and New Year out of the way. I didn’t want to hurt her over the holiday.”
“Ah,” said Jude.
“How thoughtful of you,” said Carole.
∨ The Shooting in the Shop ∧
Twelve
Jude disclosed as little information about her ‘clients’ as she could, so she hadn’t told Carole that her first contact with the owner of Gallimaufry had been professional. Before she’d taken her son Henry along for help with his asthma, Lola herself had needed to call on Jude’s healing skills. After the birth of her first child Mabel, she had suffered terrible post-natal depression. Exceptionally intelligent, coming from a high-powered job in music PR, used to having her own way, Lola had found the shock of being stuck at home as a mother totally drained away her self-confidence. Sessions at Woodside Cottage (and with an acupuncturist to whom Jude referred her) had sorted out the problem, and it had not recurred after the birth of Henry. But Jude remained aware of the woman’s inner fragility and was worried about how she would be coping with the shock of Polly’s death.
So she rang Lola again on the Wednesday morning, Christmas Eve. “Are you surviving?”
“Yeah, it’s not easy, but having the kids around is helping. They don’t realize what’s happened, so they kind of take my mind off things. Mabel’s had an ear infection, but that’s better, thanks to good old antibiotics. She’s fantastically excited about Father Christmas coming. Henry’s still a bit young to take all that in, but he’s pretty bouncy too. And one of the Dalmatians has just had puppies, so they add to the feeling of new life about the place. I’m surviving.”
“Good. Just wondered if you’d like to meet. You know, if I could be of any help?”
“Not a bad idea. I’ve got some last-minute shopping…which I could do in Fethering. Apparently the rest of the parade’s open now…apart, of course, from Gallimaufry,” she added sardonically.
They agreed to meet at the swings by the beach.
♦
Lola, Mabel and Henry looked as though they’d stepped out of a catalogue for upmarket winterwear. The Yummy Mummy and her two adorable kids, the little ones muffled up in so many layers that they looked like multicoloured Michelin men. Mabel was extremely articulate about which swing she wanted to go on, a grown-up one with no restraining cradle. Henry, who couldn’t yet speak, made his desire to be put into one of the baby ones equally clear. Having taken an immediate shine to Jude, Mabel wanted to be pushed by her, and Henry seemed happy for his mother to do the job. As they pushed the swings, the women talked.
“How’s Ricky taking it all?” asked Jude.
Lola screwed up her face in puzzlement. “Always hard to know with him. I mean, he’s usually so up, so positive about everything, that it takes time for a real disaster to get through to him. I think he is suffering – he must be. But there’s always been quite a distance between him and Polly…you know, she kind of came in a
job lot when Ricky married her mother. They didn’t see that much of each other, there was a bit of history from when the marriage broke up, and then her mother dying didn’t help.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that.”
“It was ugly. Drugs overdose, thought to be accidental, though no one’s quite sure. Heroin. It’s amazing, actually, that Polly was as sane as she was. Anyway, their relationship could be pretty spiky, but Ricky did care for Polly a lot, in his own way. Mind you, you’d never know it from the way he’s behaving now. I asked if he wanted me to pull the plugs on Christmas, you know, minimize the celebrations with a view to what’s happened, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Wants to leave all our arrangements in place, even through to our New Year’s Eve party. I did send you an invitation to that, didn’t I, Jude?”
“Yes, thank you, I’ll be there.” A sudden thought came to her. “I say, would you mind if I brought a friend with me?”
“Fine. The more the merrier.”
“It’s Carole, my next-door neighbour. You know, you met her in the shop.”
“She’ll be very welcome.”
Jude was glad Lola didn’t ask why she wanted Carole along on New Year’s Eve. Partly, it was because she didn’t like thinking of her friend on her own that night, but she had another motive too. There had been an unexplained death in the Le Bonnier family. If any investigation was required, Jude would be glad to have Carole’s rational mind helping her on the case.
“So you say Ricky’s OK?”
Lola nodded, then sighed with frustration. “It’s strange…you can be very close to someone, love someone very much and then suddenly realize that there are whole areas of their personality that you just don’t know at all.”
“At the party Polly told Carole that she’d introduced you and Ricky.”
“Sort of, yes. It was through her, well, through Piers, really.”
Jude picked up a subtle flicker of intonation in the voice, and she made a connection with Piers’s reaction when he’d talked about their time together at Cambridge. Her brown eyes found the woman’s hazel ones. “You and Piers used to be lovers, didn’t you?”
Lola did not hesitate with her reply. “Yes. It’s a long time ago now. When we took a Footlights revue up to the Edinburgh Festival. We were sharing a flat and sort of living in each other’s pockets up there and…well, it was inevitable.”
“Did the affair continue after Edinburgh?”
“Not for long. We both had other people. Piers was with Polly, as he had been from before he started at Cambridge, and I was with…a Classics don at Caius.”
“Another older man,” Jude suggested.
“I do seem to be a sucker for them, you’re right.” Lola grinned ruefully. “And, to save you the trouble of working out the psychological reasons for that…yes, my father was a strong presence in my life, and he did die when I was in my early teens.”
“Thank you. Has Ricky talked to you much about Polly’s death?”
She shook her head. “Only about practical things. For someone who seems so open to everyone who meets him, he’s surprisingly reticent about saying what he’s feeling.”
Jude gestured to the children on the swings. “And presumably these two haven’t shown any reaction to what’s happened?”
“I haven’t told them anything about it. Mabel adores Polly – Polly goes into a kind of grown-up naughty sister routine when they’re together. Or, that is, she did. But she’s not here that often, so Mabel, having seen her on Sunday afternoon, won’t be aware that she’s not around for quite a while. By which time…” Lola sighed “…I will have worked out something suitable to tell her.”
“So, in spite of the tragedy – the double tragedy – life in the Le Bonnier household continues as normal.”
“As normal as I can make it. Though the real difficulty I’m having is with Ricky’s mum.”
“Flora?”
“Yes. She’s never been easy. Partly just the actressy temperament. And her disability doesn’t help. She can hardly use her hands at all now and Flora is…well, let’s say she’s not the kind of person to make light of adversity. But also she was always on the side of Ricky’s previous wife.”
“Polly’s mother?”
“No. God, no. She loathed that one, apparently. Regarded her as the evil seductress, luring Flora’s precious son into a life of substance abuse. Though, from things Ricky’s said, I think it was actually him leading Polly’s mother astray.”
“What was her name?”
“Vanessa.”
“But then you said there was another wife before Ricky married you?”
Lola smiled ruefully. “Mm. Always very generous with his favours, my husband. Yes, he married this woman called Christine, who nobly dragged him out of what the tabloids would call his ‘drugs hell’. Sanctimonious prig, from everything I’ve heard about her. Organized Ricky to within an inch of his life.”
“And I now know about all of Ricky’s wives, do I?” asked Jude.
“All you need to know is that I’m the fourth.” Lola grinned. “And last. He’s not going to get away from me.” There was a lot of love and determination in her words. “Anyway, Flora and Wife Number Three got on very well together – which I think may be part of the reason why the marriage broke up. Wife Number Three – I’m sorry, I do have great difficulty thinking of her as Christine – got Ricky back on to the path of righteousness. I think he was grateful to her for getting him off the drugs, but as time went on, he began to find the path of righteousness very boring, so the marriage sputtered to a halt.
“Anyway, Flora has never made any secret of the fact that she thinks I’m a very poor substitute for Wife Number Three. Still, she’s fond of the children, we don’t actually meet that often, and we’ve worked out a kind of modus vivendi, whereby we’re polite to each other and avoid open rows.”
“So what’s happened to her now?”
“She’s taking Polly’s death terribly hard. Seems to have fallen apart completely.”
“Were they very close?”
“Not in recent years, from what I can gather. Flora was apparently all over Polly when Ricky first married Vanessa. Glamorous actress with glamorous little girl accessory. And Polly wasn’t actually a grandchild, so she didn’t cast too unflattering a light on Flora’s age. But then adolescence kicked in with its usual destructive force, and from what Ricky’s said, Polly started to cast a more critical eye over her famous ‘grandmother’. So, having once been very close, they became…I don’t know what you’d say…estranged? I mean, Polly can still be polite in Flora’s company, though she doesn’t find being with her easy, so she tries to avoid it whenever possible and – ” Lola’s progress was stopped by a sudden thought. “That is, she tried. Did try. I must get used to saying ‘did’.”
“You say Flora’s falling apart completely. What do you mean by that?”
“She’s staying in her room, doesn’t want to eat anything. And the times I’ve been in to see her, she’s actually been crying. That’s very unlike her. Flora was always of the ‘stiff upper lip’ persuasion. She’s an actress, she can disguise her emotions. So, anyway…” Lola sighed wearily – “that’s just another thing I have to cope with.”
Jude stopped pushing the swing for a moment and reached across to touch the girl’s arm. “And how are you coping?” she asked.
“With difficulty,” came the reply. And, as Mabel shouted for more pushing on her swing, tears welled up into her mother’s eyes.
♦
On the local television news bulletin that evening, as well as the normal Christmas Eve stories about the last-minute rush to the shops, there was a sobering update on the tragedy at Gallimaufry in Fethering. Forensic examination, the police announced, had revealed that the victim, Polly Le Bonnier, had not been killed by the fire. The cause of her death had been a single bullet wound.
An accident investigation had suddenly become a murder inquiry.
∨ The Shooting in the Shop �
��
Thirteen
Of course, Christmas Day, when it happened, was fine. Stephen and family arrived soon after noon, as anticipated. Lily had slept most of the way in the car, but had woken before they reached Fethering, so was at her most wide-eyed and enchanting to greet her grandmother. Gaby said that Father Christmas had left a stocking for her that morning and, as was expected – indeed demanded – of someone her age, when opening its contents, Lily had been much more interested in the wrapping paper than she had been in the presents.
Needless to say, Carole had overcatered in every area of the lunch, particularly the alcohol. Stephen, as the designated driver, wasn’t drinking. While his mother saw the wisdom of this, particularly since he now had the additional responsibility of a baby in the car, she did wish he might just have had one glass to celebrate the occasion. But she didn’t put any pressure on him; she knew Stephen was doing the right thing. And Gaby, now that Lily had been weaned, was very much up for drinking a lot. So the two women managed to get through a bottle of champagne and most of a Chilean Chardonnay.
The food went down very well. Lily was tried on a bowl of specially puréed turkey and sprouts, but turned her nose up at it, preferring a familiar jar of her Lamb and Tasty Vegetables. But when they got to the mince pies, she was much more enthusiastic, nearly consuming a whole one – or at least spreading its contents over her face and high chair tray.
The adults enjoyed their food, though, and Gaby raised a glass with ‘compliments to the chef ‘. It was a long time since Carole had cooked such an elaborate meal. Going through the processes reminded her of dinner parties in her early married life, and of the satisfaction she had sometimes got from seeing David and Stephen well fed. The success of her Christmas lunch gave her confidence a boost. Carole Seddon was actually quite good at cooking. She ought to do more of it. Maybe give the odd dinner party, expand her Fethering social network…
The only threat to the harmony of the occasion was a phone call on the dot of one o’clock. Unable to think of anyone likely to ring on Christmas Day, Carole went to the hall and answered the phone in some bewilderment. She was not happy when she recognized the voice at the other end of the line as that of her ex-husband.
