The Killing in the Café

by Simon Brett

  ‘Well, I was mildly intrigued, yes.’ Jude was once again struck by how confident Phoebe Braithwaite was in the absence of her husband. Gone was the twitchy nervousness that she’d demonstrated when lurking in the kitchen during committee meetings. Now she was a woman fully in control of everything – to the point of actually being bossy. Jude wondered whether the twittery Phoebe was an act created during the course of their marriage to build up her husband’s confidence and demonstrate her utter dependence on him. It wouldn’t be the first time she had seen the same kind of ritual in a relationship.

  ‘Well, it was, needless to say, in connection with Polly’s Cake Shop that I wanted to talk to you, what with you being on the committee and everything …’

  Jude thought she should sound an early note of caution. ‘I may not be staying on the committee for very long.’

  ‘No, but you are on it at the moment, which means that you must be in favour of Quintus’s plans for the development of Polly’s Cake Shop as a Community Project.’

  The logic of what Phoebe had just said would not have stood up to close scrutiny, but Jude let it pass as her hostess went on, ‘Now would you believe that muggins here has got delegated to sort out the Volunteer Rota for when the Community Project starts.’

  And I wonder who did the delegating, thought Jude, and had no difficulty finding an answer. It struck her that Quintus Braithwaite had no right to take that kind of decision off his own bat. The organizer of the Volunteer Rota was an appointment that should be made by the whole SPCS Action Committee. Though Jude herself didn’t care about the niceties of ‘meeting protocol’, she knew a lot of her colleagues on the committee would deeply resent the Commodore’s unilateral action. But she got the feeling the Braithwaites were very practised in running things their own way.

  She was also amused by Phoebe’s reference to ‘muggins here’, implying that she had unwillingly taken on the burden of the Volunteer Rota rather than being chuffed to bits at being given the responsibility.

  ‘Now, a little bird told me, Jude, that in the course of your varied career, you did at one stage work in a restaurant …’ It was true, but how did she know that? Jude didn’t let the question trouble her for long. She had lived in Fethering long enough never to be surprised by the efficiency of its bush telegraph. Any piece of information dropped casually into conversation with anyone very quickly became public property. Fethering had had its own highly efficient non-electronic social media long before the creation of Facebook or Twitter.

  ‘So I was wondering,’ Phoebe went on, ‘whether when we set up Polly’s as a Community Project, we could count on your expertise …?’

  ‘In what way?’ came the cautious reply.

  ‘Well, you know, pick your brains about things.’

  ‘My brains are open for picking at any time. You’re welcome to anything you can find in them.’

  ‘Thank you, that’s very generous.’ Phoebe Braithwaite smiled graciously. ‘The fact is, I also wondered whether you might be ready to help in a more active capacity …?’

  The ‘Oh?’ with which Jude responded was also cautious.

  ‘I think we’re so fortunate in Fethering to have such a wonderful supply of hidden talents. You meet people for the first time and you know nothing of their history, and then slowly you discover that there are all these things they can do. I mean, for instance, until Quintus mentioned it on Monday, a lot of people didn’t know about my running coffee mornings when we were posted to Dar es Salaam. And I mean, I’m not blowing my own trumpet about it or saying that I did anything particularly wonderful out there, but the fact remains that the whole thing was my initiative and, though I say it myself, it was damn well run.’

  ‘I’m not quite sure how this relates to my experience in restaurants.’

  ‘No, well, it was just an example about hidden talents. And I was thinking that, with you having worked in a restaurant … I mean, what exactly did you do?’

  ‘It was a long time ago, but I suppose I … well, I helped out with the cooking when required, but basically I ran the place.’

  ‘You were, kind of, the manager?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jude wondered whether Phoebe had picked up on what she’d said on Monday about Polly’s Cake Shop possibly needing a paid manager, and was planning the excuses that she would make if offered the job, when Phoebe said, ‘Well, I was wondering whether I could include you in my rota of volunteer waitresses?’

  Jude was too shocked to speak. The way the offer was put forward, it was as though she were being offered a rich gift, of which she was not really worthy.

  ‘I mean, obviously,’ Phoebe Braithwaite went on, ‘I do have to have a quality control of the people who act as waitresses for Polly’s. We have standards to maintain. And some of my friends were a little dubious as to whether I should ask you.’

  I see, thought Jude, with a seething fury that rarely visited her. My name has been bandied round with all the Joannas or Samanthas to see if I qualify to be one of their number.

  But Phoebe hadn’t finished. ‘Some of them thought you dressed a bit scruffily, you know, and ought to spruce up appearance-wise.’ She smiled magnanimously. ‘But I came to your rescue and pointed out to them that, as a waitress, you would be wearing the black and white livery of Polly’s Cake Shop – or whatever livery we end up using – so nobody would see what you normally wore. And then some of them said: What about your hair? But I assured them that it was not beyond the wit of man to come up with a less flamboyant style which would fit neatly under a Polly’s mobcap. So I was very much your defender, Jude, and I said you should definitely be considered as one of our volunteer waitresses,’ she concluded, Lady Bountiful graciously vouchsafing charity to her inferior.

  ‘Well, thank you very much,’ said Jude with an uncharacteristic iciness. ‘I am obviously very grateful for your offer. But what you seem to be forgetting is that I already have a full-time job.’

  ‘Do you?’ Phoebe Braithwaite looked confused for a moment, but then reminded herself, ‘Of course, you do that healing business, don’t you? But surely that’s only a side-line?’

  ‘It is my profession,’ said Jude with some dignity, ‘and it is one whose demands, I’m afraid, preclude the possibility of my taking on any other work, voluntary or otherwise.’

  ‘Oh well, that’s that then,’ said Phoebe, not sounding too upset by the reaction. ‘Just as well, probably. There were still one or two of the others who were a bit dubious about including you.’

  Jude, who was not very good about staying angry for long, found that her mood was shifting. The humour of the situation now seemed more compelling than its offensiveness. That Phoebe Braithwaite could be completely unaware of how insulting she was being … Jude couldn’t wait to tell Carole about it.

  Another thought struck her at the same time. The public announcement of Kent Warboys’ purchase of Polly’s Cake Shop had been made at the EGM on the Monday. Only three days before. Phoebe Braithwaite hadn’t had time to marshal all her Joannas or Samanthas into a Volunteer Rota by then. Quintus must have tipped her the wink and she must have started her planning before the news was public knowledge. That casual disregard for democracy, she was beginning to realize, would have been entirely characteristic behaviour for the Braithwaites.

  ‘Anyway, Phoebe,’ she said, ‘I’m sure you’ll be able to find a full rota of volunteer waitresses without me.’

  ‘Yes,’ Phoebe agreed, ‘no problem about that.’

  Now, as each unwitting insult slammed home, Jude was beginning to feel an irresistible instinct to giggle. To avoid giving into it, she looked out down Hiawatha’s back garden towards the sea. ‘Lovely position you have here,’ she said, just as if she were one of Phoebe Braithwaite’s regular coterie of Joannas or Samanthas.

  ‘Oh, it is, isn’t it?’

  ‘Pity you have to have the razor wire on the fence and gates.’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t agree with you more, Jude. So unsightly
, isn’t it? But I’m afraid one has to adjust to the times one lives in, doesn’t one? I’d get rid of all the razor wire tomorrow … if there weren’t so many immigrants around.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It used to be the Poles, now it’s Romanians and Bulgarians, I believe. I’m the last person to be racist, but …’ And as Phoebe Braithwaite’s rant continued, Jude wondered how many times Josie Achter had heard similar sentences started like that. She wasn’t part of the latest influx from Romania and Bulgaria; she belonged to a race that had arrived in the British Isles many centuries before. But maybe Josie’s allegations of anti-Semitism in Fethering weren’t so far off the mark, after all.

  Jude came out of her reverie to hear Phoebe continuing, ‘… steal anything that’s not nailed down. Do you know, some Romanian youths actually tried to steal that dinghy down the garden only a few weeks back.’

  ‘Oh, did you see them doing it?’

  ‘No.’

  Then how, Jude was tempted to ask, did you know that they were Romanian? Or youths, come to that?

  ‘But there was no doubt there’d been a break-in. Quintus found the evidence the following morning. They’d used wire-cutters to get through the chain that holds the gates together and they’d definitely been messing about with the dinghy.’

  ‘But it was still there, was it?’

  ‘Oh yes. Though Quintus wondered whether the youths might have actually taken it out during the night and rowed it about in the sea.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘Sheer vandalism. That’s what happens if you grow up in a country that has no respect for property. Places like Romania and Bulgaria may not still be called communist states, but that’s what they are. And the communists have never had any respect for property.’

  Jude had a feeling that what was being quoted at her were the undiluted opinions of Commodore Braithwaite. She looked down to the end of the garden to the blue rowing boat under discussion.

  ‘Anyway, that morning, when Quintus inspected the dinghy, he found there was water and some shingle in it. He was convinced the youths had actually taken it on the sea during the night.’

  ‘Well,’ Jude said with a grin, ‘at least they had the good manners to bring the boat back.’

  ‘Huh,’ said Phoebe, who clearly didn’t believe that any excuses should be made for the Romanian youths (or whoever actually broke into Hiawatha’s garden).

  ‘And when did you say this was?’ asked Jude. ‘A few weeks back?’

  ‘I remember exactly when it was, because Quintus and I had just come back from visiting one of our sons who’s at university in St Andrews. We arrived back late on the Saturday, the third. So Quintus found that the boat had been tampered with on the morning of the Sunday. Sunday the fourth of October.’

  Jude didn’t show any outward sign of the impact that Phoebe Braithwaite’s words had had on her. The fourth of October was, of course, her birthday.

  Not only that, it was also the morning that Sara Courtney had found no sign in Polly’s store room of the corpse she had seen there the previous night.

  A corpse which might have been rowed out to sea, had weights tied to its legs and then been dropped off the side of a small boat.

  EIGHTEEN

  The launch for the new incarnation of Polly’s Cake Shop had been scheduled for the Saturday before Christmas. Some members of the Action Committee, including Jude (who still hadn’t managed to get off the bloody thing) and Arnold Bloom (who saw it as his mission in life to oppose any proposal made by Quintus Braithwaite), had been of the opinion that this was not a good date, because everyone would be scurrying about preparing for the festive season and wouldn’t have time to spend drinking free coffee and eating free cupcakes.

  But they were overruled by the Commodore, whose view was that Fethering Parade was never fuller than in the weeks before Christmas. Also there would be a bonhomous Christmas Spirit in the air, which could only help to make the launch a joyous occasion. And given the media blitz that Lesley Tarquin was going to unleash about the event, soon no one in West Sussex would be unaware of Polly’s Cake Shop’s resurrection.

  It had also been agreed by the SPCS Action Committee that Polly’s Cake Shop would be closed from the Monday before the launch for ‘necessary refurbishment’. And Lesley Tarquin had had the idea of having ‘a mega-countdown’ sign on the door, starting on the Monday with ‘FIVE DAYS TO REOPENING’, and building to ‘REOPENING TOMORROW’ on the Friday. There would be lots of streamers and lametta and balloons for the Saturday, and every visitor would have a ‘WELCOME TO POLLY’S COMMUNITY CAFÉ’ badge stuck on them on arrival. Lesley knew ‘some really good places in London that do that kind of party/event stuff’.

  When Jude passed on this information to Carole, it was greeted by a predictable blast of cold air. Being a grandmother twice over had not diluted her cynicism about certain things. ‘“Christmas Spirit”?’ she’d echoed derisively. ‘If Christmas Spirit does exist at all, there’s certainly no evidence of it in the weeks running up to the event. Everyone stressed to bits, pressured into excessive purchasing of presents, anxious about all the cooking that will have to be done, and paranoid at the prospect of having to spend a fixed sentence of time with relatives they can’t stand.’

  Good old Carole, Jude had thought, she can always be relied on to cast a wet blanket over any potential ignition of jollity. But as Christmas – and the relaunch – drew nearer, Jude found she was developing more sympathy with her neighbour’s views. Scrooge ruled in High Tor and Woodside Cottage.

  Since her encounter with Phoebe in the kitchen of Hiawatha, Jude had had no further calls from the woman. Her Volunteer Rota was undoubtedly being worked out, but she had got the message loud and clear that Jude had no wish to be a part of it, a decision which, undoubtedly, all of her Joannas and Samanthas would have supported.

  In the run-up to the relaunch a predictable ritual had been played out between the two neighbours. As soon as the date was fixed, Jude mentioned it to Carole and got the huffy response that: ‘I’ve got better things to do with my time than go to that kind of event.’ So the subject wasn’t mentioned again until Carole herself raised it in a casual way. ‘What was the date when they’re going to do the relaunch of Polly’s Cake Shop?’

  Jude had told her and then asked, ‘Why, were you thinking of coming?’

  ‘Oh, good heavens, no. Just wondering when it was supposed to be happening. Because I haven’t seen any publicity for it locally.’

  ‘Don’t worry, you will soon. We have a publicity officer on the committee, fresh from a London PR job, who is going to “carpet-bomb the punters”. Soon everyone in the southeast will know about the launch.’

  Carole sniffed. In her view all publicity was evidence of the trait that her parents always discouraged in her – ‘showing off’.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come?’ Jude asked mischievously.

  ‘No, of course I don’t. I may be in Fulham looking after Chloe that weekend.’

  ‘Ah. Fine.’

  But as the relevant weekend approached, it turned out that Carole’s services would not be required in Fulham. So, with characteristic lack of grace, she said to Jude that she ‘might come along to Polly’s, just to see what kind of a mess they’d made of the place’.

  By the Friday, the day before the launch, Carole Seddon was positively excited about what she was going to see in Polly’s Cake Shop – or, as it was now called, Polly’s Community Café. She also felt good because she reckoned she had finally tracked down perfect Christmas presents for both Lily and Chloe.

  The impression they had, on entering the premises for the relaunch (and having their ‘WELCOME TO POLLY’S COMMUNITY CAFÉ’ badges stuck on), was of considerable change. During the five days of the café’s closure, the rough white plaster of the walls had been smoothed down and painted a duck-egg blue. The red and white gingham table cloths had been replaced by ones in French navy, and the horse brasses and
warming pans hanging from the beams had given way to impressionistic splurges of local seascapes. ‘Done by this wonderful little woman we know,’ Phoebe Braithwaite explained later. ‘So talented. We bought all the pictures from her outright, which means we can sell them to customers – who I’m sure will just love them – and then all the money we make will of course go straight into Polly’s funds.’

  Whereas the previous décor of the café had had a distinct retro style of the 1940s, its new incarnation seemed to Carole stranded in time, not fussy enough to be archaic nor yet minimalist enough to be modern. Jude had similar views, and also wondered how much of Kent Warboys’ twenty grand had been eaten up by the refurbishment. ‘At first,’ Phoebe Braithwaite explained later, ‘we had thought of getting together a huge community group to strip the place down and do the redecoration ourselves. But wiser counsels prevailed and we decided we didn’t want to spoil the café for a ha’porth of tar and it would be cheaper to get in a professional to do the job. And we’ve got this wonderful little man who’s done all the decorating work at Hiawatha and …’ Jude also wondered how much that had cost.

  But the expense of the decorating must have been small beer compared to that of the new costumes for the waitresses. Gone were the black and white uniforms of Agatha Christie adaptations (and popular sexual fantasies), which had toned so well with the previous retro style. In their place, Phoebe Braithwaite’s cohort of Joannas or Samanthas were wearing short-skirted tunics in French navy, on the front of which were embroidered the anchor and cannon motif which had distinguished Quintus Braithwaite’s notepaper. ‘We wanted a completely fresh look,’ Phoebe Braithwaite explained later. ‘And I know this wonderful little woman in London who runs up stuff like that on an absolute shoestring. She’s done so many “special occasion” dresses for me. Her own original designs are but so, so economical.’

  Jude again wondered how much of Kent Warboys’ twenty grand was left.

  She overheard Phoebe responding to compliments on the café’s new look. ‘Well, I think it’s very important that we take the place a bit upmarket. The Seaview Café on the beach is always there for day-trippers and people from the Downside estate. We want Polly’s to have a bit more cachet …’