by Simon Brett
“Who may still be living at her place. I suppose we’ll have to try Ayland’s again, though whether Kath’ll be there, who knows? She must take a day off sometime.”
A call to the boatyard produced nothing but an answering machine message. Jude sighed despondently. “If only we had a home number or a mobile for her…”
Her neighbour beamed. “But we do. I made a point of getting both from Rupert when I visited him on Thursday.”
“Oh, well done, Carole. I think a call might be in order, don’t you?”
“A call saying what?”
“A call asking whether Kath Le Bonnier would care to join us in the Crown and Anchor for an early evening pint of Guinness.”
∨ The Shooting in the Shop ∧
Thirty-Six
Kath did not seem fazed by the request for a meeting, nor, when she arrived at the Crown and Anchor, was she fazed by the fact that Jude had brought Carole along. And, remarkably for someone who had just lost the love of her life, she did not show any signs of grief.
After her introduction, Carole went to the bar to get the drinks and Jude expressed her condolences about Ricky’s death.
“Yes, but he hasn’t really gone,” said Kath. “He’s just in a different dimension.”
“Ah. And where is that dimension?”
“It’s around us.” The woman smiled beatifically. “It’s all around us.”
“So is Ricky in a better place than he was when he was alive?”
“Oh yes.” Kath giggled. “The Devil Women can’t get at him where he is now. Only I can get at him now.”
The drinks arrived, and Jude felt quite relieved that her neighbour hadn’t witnessed the recent exchange. Carole and New Age mysticism were a potentially combustible mix.
“Did you actually see Ricky yesterday afternoon?” asked Jude.
“Oh yes, I saw him.”
Carole came in with the next question. “Did you talk to him?”
“I talked to him, yes.”
“And what did he say to you?”
Kath looked at Carole curiously. “He didn’t say anything. He was no longer in the dimension where he could speak.”
Seeing the exasperation building in her friend, Jude said quickly, “You mean Ricky was already dead when you saw him yesterday?”
“Dead? What do you mean when you say ‘dead’?”
“She means,” said Carole severely, “that he had stopped breathing and was showing no other vital signs.”
“Ah. In this dimension, yes.”
“What?” asked Carole.
“Kath,” Jude intervened hastily, “did Ricky ring you to say he was coming to Fethering yesterday?”
“No. I just knew he was coming. I felt his aura.”
Avoiding Carole’s eye, Jude asked whether there had been anyone else with Ricky.
“No. He was on his own in the car, leaving his body there while the real him moved into another dimension.”
Covering Carole’s snort, Jude went on, “You don’t know whether Ricky contacted Rupert Sonning yesterday?”
“Rupert Sonning? I don’t know anyone called Rupert Sonning.”
“Sorry. Old Garge. Who’s staying at your place at the moment. You don’t know whether Ricky contacted him?”
“I don’t think so. Anyway, Old Garge isn’t staying with me anymore.”
“Do you know where he’s gone to?”
The response was a shrug which announced that she didn’t know and she didn’t much care.
“But Ricky did ask you to put him up, didn’t he?”
“Oh yes. I don’t like Old Garge. I don’t like having anyone in my flat except for me and Ricky. But Ricky asked me to, so I let Old Garge stay.”
“Kath,” asked Jude, “you haven’t seen Ricky’s latest Devil Woman recently, have you? The blonde one from the shop?”
“Not since I saw her in the car with him before Christmas, no.”
“But do you think Ricky came to Fethering yesterday to see her?”
Kath took a sip of Guinness before replying. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now. None of the Devil Women can reach Ricky now. Only I can reach him. Everything is perfect now. Things have been arranged as they should be.”
Carole and Jude exchanged looks which contained not only exasperation, but also an element of suspicion. If Ricky’s death brought Kath such a sense of peace and resolution, was it not possible that she might have helped him on his way?
“While Old Garge was staying with you,” asked Carole, “did he say anything about – ”
“I didn’t listen to him when he talked.”
Carole continued evenly, “Did he say anything about Polly’s death?”
The eyes Kath turned on her questioner had a new shrewdness in them. She may have been loopy, but some bits of her brain worked extremely well. “What sort of thing should he have said?”
“Old Garge has been described as ‘the eyes and ears of Fethering Beach’. He told me he’d seen Ricky setting fire to Gallimaufry. I was wondering whether he’d said anymore to you about what happened that night. I mean, he told me he had no idea who killed Polly. I thought he might have opened out a bit more to you.”
“Why should he? He was staying in my place under sufferance. I didn’t encourage conversation while he was there.”
“Are you sure he didn’t say anything about it?” asked Jude in a gentler tone than Carole’s.
“All he said was that Polly’s death was payback time for Ricky. He said there are some people you offend at your peril.”
“But he didn’t mention any names?”
A resolute shake of the grey, sixties hair. “No names.”
Carole let out a frustrated sigh. “Oh, it’s so infuriating. If only we could talk to Old Garge…”
“I don’t see why you can’t,” said Kath. Both women looked at her. “I’ll lay any odds that what he did the minute he left my place was to go back to his beach hut.”
“When did he actually leave?”
“Yesterday. The minute I’d told him that Ricky had gone to another dimension.”
“How did he react to the news?”
“He said, ‘Good, if Ricky’s dead, then that lets me off the hook’.”
♦
The winter air prickled against their faces. The damp, cold smell of the sea assailed their nostrils. They could see the tiny square of light from Pequod when they reached the Promenade, and as they drew closer they could hear the strains of Radio 3. Rupert Sonning’s anxieties about being found overnighting in his beach hut had clearly been allayed.
Inside Carole and Jude’s heads the same questions were churning. What had he meant by saying that Ricky’s death had ‘let him off the hook’? What precisely had been his movements, in his Old Garge persona, on the night of Polly’s death? And still at the back of both their minds was the thought that he might have some closer tie than he claimed to the Le Bonnier family.
Carole, as the one who had visited Pequod before, knocked on the wooden door. It was a cautious moment or two before a slice of Rupert Sonning’s face appeared at the crack. “Ah, it’s you.” There was the sound of him disconnecting a chain on the inside. “Can’t be too careful after dark. Sometimes get some louts in from Brighton whose idea of a good night out is beating up an old man in a beach hut.”
He ushered them into the warm. Back in his own environment, the Jack Russell Petrarch was totally relaxed, and showed no more than polite interest in the visitors. “Thought I might be hearing from you again,” said Rupert.
“This is my friend Jude.”
“Oh, Jude and I know each other, don’t we?” To Carole’s annoyance, he winked. “Talked on the beach many a time, haven’t we? Always guaranteed to get more than a Fethering nod from the lovely Jude. Usually a nice cuddle, I’m glad to say. Would you find something to sit on? Coffee?”
They both declined the offer and he seemed to note the seriousness of their demeanour. As he resettled into his arm
chair, he asked, “So what are you accusing me of now?”
“Nothing. We just want a bit of clarification,” replied Carole.
He grimaced. “Sounds ominous. Are you still asking me to admit that I’m the late Ricky’s father?”
Carole blushed. “No.”
“What we do want you to tell us,” said Jude, “is why you said that Ricky’s death ‘let you off the hook’?”
“Oh, is that all?” He relaxed visibly. “Very simple. Ricky’s death will have wound up the investigation into the death of Polly Le Bonnier. There won’t be any homicide police snuffling around Fethering Beach anymore. Ergo, I’m let off the hook and can return safely to my possibly illegal domicile – which is where you find me.”
Carole wasn’t buying that, it sounded far too well prepared. “Why do you think that Ricky’s death will stop further investigation into Polly’s?”
“It’s obvious.” He explained as if he were talking to a child. “The case is neatly rounded off. Ricky can’t live with the guilt of having killed his stepdaughter, so he comes back to near the scene of her death and tops himself.”
“When we last spoke, you said you had no idea who had killed Polly.”
“Well, I didn’t, did I? Ricky hadn’t topped himself then, had he? But now he has – and I can’t imagine a clearer admission of guilt than that.”
Strangely, in their responses to Ricky’s death, neither Carole nor Jude had considered the possibility of suicide. Such a robust, positive figure would be the last person they could imagine taking his own life. But when Rupert hazarded that there might be a history of depression in Ricky’s family, they were forced to admit that was true.
“And he’d taken a hell of a battering over the last couple of weeks, hadn’t he?” the old actor went on. “God knows how it feels to have killed someone, least of all your own stepdaughter. I’ve never had children – either my own or inherited – but if I had, I’d like to think I wouldn’t raise a hand against them. The sense of guilt must be appalling. And then Ricky had the stress of the police sniffing around everything, and the strong likelihood that they might find evidence to charge him with the murder. All that, plus a relationship breaking up as well, I’m not surprised it was more than he could handle.”
“Relationship?” asked Jude. “What relationship? He and Lola seemed fine.”
“Not his relationship with his wife,” said Rupert Sonning patiently. “His bit on the side.”
“Anna?”
“Yes, the Marilyn-Monroe-lookalike-I-don’t-think-so.”
“But had they split up?” asked Carole. “When I last saw Anna, she spoke as if the relationship was still ongoing.”
“It didn’t sound very ongoing when I heard them talking about it.”
“When was that?”
“That Sunday. The evening before the fire.”
“Tell us exactly what happened,” said Carole.
“Well, I quite often walk along the beach after dark. Petrarch loves it then, somehow the smells seem sharper for him. That night we were on the dunes and I had a clear view of the back of Gallimaufry. I saw Ricky and his bit of stuff coming out – not the first time I’d seen them either.”
“Anna thought no one had ever seen them together.”
“Well, that just goes to show what a short time she’s been living here, doesn’t it? Nothing in Fethering happens unseen. There’s always someone watching.” Ever the actor, Rupert Sonning deepened his voice to increase the drama of his narrative. “Anyway, as I say, Petrarch and I were on the dunes and I could see Ricky and Anna through the tufts of grass, but they couldn’t see me. And I could hear what they were saying too. Quite clear it was. He said, ‘We’ve got to stop this. It’s not working anymore.’”
He took on different voices for the two characters as he continued, “And she says, ‘It is. It is working, Ricky. I need you. I can’t live without you.’ He says, ‘You managed to live without me for a good few years before we met.’ She says, ‘But now I have met you, I can’t go back to how I was before. If you end it, I won’t be responsible for my actions.’ He says, ‘Oh, please don’t try that line. I’ve met more than my share of women who say they’re going to kill themselves. And they never do.’ And she says, ‘Be careful, Ricky. It might not be myself that I kill.’”
There was a silence, then a rather cross Carole said, “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Because you didn’t ask,” said Rupert Sonning.
Jude looked across at Carole. “I think we’d better find Anna as soon as possible.”
“We’ll have to wait till tomorrow morning, on the off-chance that she’s taking Blackie out for a walk.”
“Oh, surely there must be some way we can find out where she lives.”
“There is,” announced Rupert Sonning. “It’s not for nothing that I am called ‘the eyes and ears of Fethering Beach’. Would you like me to give you Anna Carter’s address?”
∨ The Shooting in the Shop ∧
Thirty-Seven
It might have been better if they’d had a phone number to warn Anna of their visit, but they hadn’t. Anyway, such a call might have alerted her to danger and allowed her time to make good her escape.
Carole and Jude went back from the beach to High Tor and got in the Renault. The address they had been given was on the extreme edge of Fethering’s gentility, bordering the less salubrious area of Downside. There would have been no problem walking there in the daylight, but after dark they felt more secure in the car.
The woman who answered the door was presumably the landlady, whom Anna had described as ‘a nosy cow’. When they asked about her tenant, she certainly seemed to know a lot of detail. “She’s been in her room all day today. Hasn’t come out even to get anything to eat. She’s been crying a lot, and all. You can hear it from outside her door. And all over the house,” she added hastily, to cover up her surveillance activities, before continuing, “I think it’s because she heard about that man dying down by the Fethering Yacht Club. She worked for his wife at the shop that burnt down, the one with the silly name. I think there was something going on there.”
“Something going on?” asked Carole.
The landlady very nearly winked as she said, “Something going on between my Miss Carter upstairs and that Mr Le Bonnier. That’s why she’s taking his death so hard.” Again, so much for Anna’s blind faith that no one in Fethering knew of their liaison.
“I wonder if we could see Miss Carter,” said Jude.
“Well, I don’t know that she’d want to see anyone, but I could ask. And then she could come down and talk in my sitting room through there. I’ll leave you on your own, just be through in the kitchen.” A kitchen which no doubt commanded an excellent position for eavesdropping.
“It’s all right. We’ll talk to her in her room,” said Carole.
The landlady looked disgruntled at that. Crying might be audible all over the house, but the intricacies of conversation could not be heard by anyone who wasn’t actually lurking on the landing. And even the most inveterate snoopers have their pride.
She led them upstairs and knocked on the door. They heard a sharp yap from the West Highland terrier. “What is it?” asked a pained voice from inside.
“Two ladies come to see you, Miss Carter.”
The door was opened to reveal a very depleted Anna Carter. The peroxide blond hair was straggly and her face, deprived of make-up, looked sad and old. Her eyes were rimmed with red. She looked at Carole and Jude blankly.
“Thank you very much,” said Carole to the landlady and then, uncharacteristically assertive, she stepped into the room, quickly followed by Jude. Blackie, barking suspiciously, came towards them, but a sniff at their ankles seemed to reassure him and he moved back to his basket.
The room’s furnishings were minimal – a single bed, a dressing table, an armchair and an upright chair, all probably salvaged from the second-hand stores of Worthing. Clearly Anna Carter’s reinven
tion of herself had been minimally funded.
The glass of water and box of tissues on the table beside the armchair showed where she had been sitting and when she gestured her visitors to sit down, Carole took the hard chair and Jude sat on the edge of the bed.
“What’s all this about?” asked Anna feebly.
Carole didn’t have anything prepared, but she improvised, saying she’d heard about Ricky’s death and knew that Anna would be devastated, and had come along to see if there was anything she could do to help. She explained Jude’s presence by saying she was ‘a friend and a professional counsellor, used to dealing with bereavement’.
“Well, that’s very kind of you, but I don’t think anyone can do anything at the moment. I’ve just got to get through this on my own…though God knows how long that’s going to take.” The thought brought on a new outburst of crying. She rubbed savagely at her eyes with a tissue, careless of the discomfort it might cause.
“When did you last see Ricky?” Jude spoke very gently.
“You mean when did I last see him to talk to?” Anna asked through receding sobs.
“If you like.”
“Well, the time I told you about, Carole. That Sunday just before Christmas.”
“You didn’t see him yesterday?” Anna bowed her head, but didn’t answer Carole’s question. “Did you have a call from him yesterday?” Still silence. “Anna, Ricky was going to come and see Jude and me yesterday afternoon. He said he had to see someone else in Fethering first. Was that someone you?” Nothing. “I ask you again, did you have a call from Ricky yesterday?”
The lack of response continued, so Jude tried another tack. “Old Garge – you know, the one who lives in a beach hut, has a Jack Russell – he overheard a conversation between Ricky and you that Sunday before Christmas, the night of the fire. He said Ricky was threatening to end your relationship, and you threatened to kill him if he did.”
