Fethering 02 (2001) - Death on the Downs

by Simon Brett

  Sebastian Trent stood with an arm resting nonchalantly along the mantelpiece of his artfully lived-in sitting room. His unruly grey curls were reflected in the large arched mirror over the fireplace. He was dressed, with calculated casualness, in chunky brown brogues, loose-cut chinos, a slightly frayed button-down Oxford shirt and a shapeless grey cardigan into whose pockets his fists were pushed down.

  On a shelf behind him, adjacent to the mirror—conveniently, had a photographer been present—were copies of his thin literary oeuvre. Carole had thought it politic to consult a reference book before meeting the author, and found that Sebastian Trent had published five novels. They had all been critically lauded for ‘playing with the concepts of magic realism and postmodernism and subverting both to produce a synthesis that is uniquely Trent’.

  Carole was surprised that writing books of that kind made enough money for the three-storey Hampstead pile in which the author lived. But then she didn’t know much about the world of publishing.

  It was clearly his novels Sebastian Trent wished to pontificate on. Carole now understood why he had shooed away the details of what she wanted to ask him about. He would have said the same, whatever the questions. She and Jude were being treated to the authorial overview of his own work, and it was clearly a routine that he’d wheeled out many times before. No doubt his audiences in Malaysia in 1987 had been treated to something very similar.

  His manner was that of a skilled lecturer or interviewee. The timing was practised, the jokes honed and the whole presented with that particular brand of self-depreciation which masks huge arrogance.

  Carole recognized that they had a problem. Getting Sebastian Trent off his literary tramlines was not going to be easy.

  “I am interested,” he continued, “not in the mere meanings of words but in their resonance. In some ways, I suppose, I could be called a semioticist, except that I’m not solely interested in the adumbration of covert references which get attached to words. I am also concerned by their sounds, the anomalies of homonyms, the latent misunderstandings inherent in assonantal rhymes, the misleading potential of the word half-heard. This is what gives such a rich texture to my writing. And this is why I feel readers only get the full experience on a second reading of my novels. Take, for instance, the Tuscan idyll sequence in my—”

  “I’m sorry,” said Jude, “but this isn’t what we came here to talk about.”

  Sebastian Trent was so taken aback to be stopped in mid-flow that he could only mouth helplessly. This was the first time in his authorial experience that he’d been interrupted. Listeners usually hung with rapt attention on his every insight and apergu, frequently taking notes.

  Carole grinned inwardly. Now she knew why her instinct had told her to bring Jude along.

  “The reason we came,” her Mend went on with an engagingly innocent smile, “was to talk about a trip you made for the British Council to Malaysia in 1987.”

  “Oh.” The supremely articulate Sebastian Trent was still so much in shock that he was reduced to a monosyllable.

  “Now, as we understand it, Sebastian, you were in Malaysia in October of that year…”

  He gave a bewildered nod.

  “You spent most of your time in Kuala Lumpur, but also travelled to Ipoh and Penang.”

  He couldn’t deny that either.

  “And while you were out there your British Council host was Graham Forbes.”

  Another nod.

  Carole wondered how long this could go on. It was wonderful while it lasted, but surely at some point Sebastian Trent was going to ask why he was being grilled in this way. She didn’t have to wait long.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “but what is this all about?”

  “Oh, didn’t Carole say on the phone?” asked Jude coolly.

  No, thought Carole, she’s not going to throw this over to me, is she? She needn’t have worried.

  Glibly, Jude continued, “We’re trying to contact Graham Forbes’s wife, Sheila.”

  He didn’t ask why. Having apparently come to terms with the fact that they weren’t after his pearls of literary wisdom, Sebastian Trent now seemed keen only to send them on their way. “Presumably you contact her through Graham. He’s retired now, but I think I’ve got an address for him. Somewhere in Sussex, I seem to remember.”

  Carole came in to do her bit. “You didn’t know that he’d remarried?”

  “No.” Sebastian Trent didn’t sound particularly interested in the information. Graham Forbes may have been his host in Kuala Lumpur, but no closeness seemed to have developed between them.

  “He remarried someone called Irene. Chinese woman. I wondered if you’d met her while you were out in Malaysia.”

  He shrugged. “I met a lot of people. And obviously, because I was giving lectures and things, they’d remember me a lot better than I’d remember them. I’d have made much more of an impression. Anyway, we are talking thirteen years ago. I can’t be expected to remember all the names now, can I?”

  “No,” Carole persisted, “but you might have noticed if Graham Forbes was making a particular fuss of Irene, if he was treating her like a girlfriend…?”

  “Well, he’d be unlikely to do that in public, wouldn’t he? Whatever their private relationship might have been.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Men don’t usually flaunt their girlfriends when their wives are present.”

  It was Carole’s turn to be struck dumb. So it was left to Jude to clarify the situation. “Sheila Forbes was in Kuala Lumpur with her husband while you were out there?”

  “Yes. We even travelled from Heathrow on the same plane.”

  “Really? On the morning of Monday 19 October 1987?” asked Carole.

  “I can’t remember the exact date, but if you say that’s when it was, I’m sure you’re right. I remember it was the Monday after that terrible storm, because my wife had to go off down to Hampshire to assess the damage to our country place.”

  A country place too, thought Carole. There must be really serious money in writing experimental literary fiction.

  “Did you know you’d be travelling out with Graham Forbes?”

  “No. But he recognized me of course at Heathrow and introduced himself and his wife.”

  “Ah.” Carole felt her whole edifice of conjecture tumbling around her ears.

  “And at the other end, did you travel from the airport into Kuala Lumpur together?” asked Jude.

  “I can’t remember after all this time.” He tapped his chin testily, trying to dredge up the recollection. “Oh, I think what actually happened was that Mrs Forbes went off in a taxi and Graham Forbes came with me in the British Council car to show me my hotel. The Ming Palace, as I recall. Yes, I remember now. There was a new driver, only just started that day. He didn’t know the way to the hotel.”

  “And did you see a lot of Sheila Forbes while you were in Kuala Lumpur?”

  “Not a lot, no.”

  “But you did see her?”

  “I must have done. I can’t honestly remember.”

  “Did you get much impression of her personality?”

  He shrugged. “She seemed quiet, not very interesting.” Sebastian Trent gave the impression he didn’t find many other people very interesting.

  “But you couldn’t judge whether she and her husband were getting on well?”

  “No, I couldn’t judge that.” He was beginning to find the interrogation irksome. “For heaven’s sake. Look, Graham Forbes was simply the British Council representative in Kuala Lumpur who made the arrangements for my tour. I didn’t get to know him and I certainly didn’t get to know his wife.”

  And that was it, really. Sebastian Trent had nothing else to tell them. And though he could no doubt have been prompted by the proper cue to continue his dissertation on the genius of Sebastian Trent, Carole and Jude felt too shattered by his revelations to want to do anything other than leave as soon as possible.

  In the large hallway, t
hey met the author’s wife coming in. She was instantly recognizable as the star of one of the country’s most popular and dumbed-down television soaps.

  So that was how a writer of recherche literary novels could afford a mansion in Hampstead and a country place in Hampshire.

  THIRTY-ONE

  They travelled back together from Victoria to Fethering on a train that was crowded and filthy and rattled through endless stations, getting a little further behind schedule with each one. The market for public transport to that part of West Sussex has always been a finite one, so no effort has ever been made to improve the service. Carole Seddon had become inured to the third-world squalor of her local railway system and so travelled up to London as little as possible.

  They didn’t say much on the train. This was partly because the compartments were so full, loud with the hubbub of shrieking adolescents and businessmen on mobile phones.

  But their silence was also, in a way, because there was nothing to say. The links of logic, so durable on the Friday, had been shattered by a single blow. The connection between the freshly turned earth in one old barn and the bones in another had been destroyed the instant Sebastian Trent said he’d travelled out to Kuala Lumpur with Graham Forbes and his wife.

  Carole and Jude’s investigation had run into a brick wall.

  §

  They could both have gone back to their separate houses in Fethering High Street, but the Crown and Anchor seemed a more cheerful prospect. Not that it felt particularly cheerful when they arrived. Apart from anything else, the landlord was in subdued mood.

  “You two been having a good time then, have you?” he asked gloomily.

  “Not bad,” said Jude.

  “Carole?”

  She was so caught up in her thoughts, trying to make new connections in the case, that it took her a moment to realize he was addressing her.

  “What? Oh yes. You know, all right.”

  Her tone must have sounded more deterrent than she’d intended, because led Crisp went off to serve another customer before returning to take their order. And then he was distinctly offhand, particularly with Carole. She couldn’t think what she’d done to offend him, but Ted’s behaviour seemed just another symptom of her uncanny ability to read signals wrong.

  She sat down with Jude at a table some way away from the bar. Her friend yawned and raked her fingers through her blonde hair. Carole wondered what she’d been doing in London all weekend. Needless to say, Jude hadn’t volunteered anything about the person whom she ‘ought to see’.

  But something seemed to have got her down. Carole had never seen Jude so subdued. Her customary energy had been replaced by a kind of lethargy.

  “Is anything the matter?” Carole asked.

  “What? Oh, nothing that won’t get better.”

  “Is it what happened with Sebastian Trent?”

  Jude let out a little wry laugh. “No, no. Obviously that was disappointing, but…No, that’s not what’s got me down.”

  “What then?”

  “Oh, a bloody man. It usually is a bloody man, isn’t it?”

  This was closer to a confessional mood than any other moment Carole had shared with Jude. “If you want to talk about it…” she said.

  For a moment, Jude looked undecided. Then she shook her head. “No. No need to burden you with my troubles.”

  “I don’t mind. And you’re always saying that troubles should be shared.”

  “Yes, thanks, Carole, but…not in this case, I think.” Another brisk shake of the head. “No, there’s a certain kind of man who gets pleasure from knowing he’s upset you. It’s some kind of validation of his masculinity, the fact that he can make women suffer…”

  “Yes,” agreed Carole, hoping for more.

  “And so talking about how much that kind of man has upset you is really just playing into his hands, joining his conspiracy, building up his self-image as a heart-breaker…”

  “Well…”

  “Which means the best thing is to think very deliberately about something else.” She swept her hands back from her nose, as if wiping away unpleasant memories. “OK. Let’s get back to your bones.”

  “All right,” said Carole, disappointed.

  “Well, it seems like your wonderful Graham Forbes wife-murderer theory is shot out of the water…”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “But don’t worry. Some of the thinking you’ve done may still be relevant. I mean, that newly dug earth in the barn…It can’t have anything to do with Graham Forbes, but it still might be where the bones were buried. And, if that is the case, then we’ve got to work out who else it was who dug them up.”

  “Right.”

  “Ooh, and there’s one thing I can certainly follow up on.” Jude’s vitality may not have been spontaneous, but she was willing it back with renewed energy as she took out her mobile phone and punched in a number. “I can ask Tamsin Lutteridge what she saw in the barn that night when she was back in Weldisham. I should have done that earlier, but I was so caught up in thoughts of—Ah, hello,” she said, as she got through on the phone. “Could I speak to Charles Hilton, please? How long will he be there? Right. Is that Anne? This is Jude. Jude. We met the other week when I came over to Sandalls Manor. Yes. In fact, it’s not really Charles I’m trying to contact. I’d like to speak to Tamsin Lutteridge. No, as a matter of fact, Anne, I know she’s there. I—”

  But the phone had been put down on her. Jude grimaced as she switched off.

  “Hung up on me. Charles’s wife’s maintaining the fiction that lamsin’s not there. I’ll have to speak to Charles himself.”

  “You can get round him?”

  “Oh yes.”

  Jude rubbed her hands over her brown eyes. Carole noticed how tired she looked. Her weekend had been tough. Whoever the man was, he had caused her a lot of stress.

  Carole was about to make solicitous enquiries, but Jude steepled her hands up to her mouth and puffed through them in an irritated way. “Right. What else can we do about the case? What other leads have we got to follow?”

  “Nothing very definite. I’m afraid I’ve been so caught up in the Graham Forbes scenario, I haven’t really considered any other options.”

  “No…But, whatever really happened, the whole thing does go back quite a long time in the history of Weldisham…”

  “Probably.”

  “So we need to talk to people who’ve been around the village a long time.”

  “Not that there are many of those. The majority of residents only moved there to retire.”

  “Yes, but we still have the ones who grew up there…”

  “Lennie Baylis and Harry Grant.”

  “And wasn’t there someone else? I’m sure when I met Harry in the Hare and Hounds, he said…” But Jude’s thought was overtaken by a more urgent one. “What about Brian Helling?”

  Carole shuddered. She didn’t want to be reminded of their encounter on the previous Friday. The wildness in Brian Helling’s eyes still disturbed her. “I’m not sure whether he actually did grow up in Weldisham. I think he was probably an adult by the time his mother had her pools win and bought Heron Cottage.”

  “Hm. So she…what’s her name?”

  “Pauline Helling.”

  “She didn’t live in the village before that?”

  “Don’t think so. Mind you, Brian did say that she used to work there.”

  “Really?” There was now almost a sparkle in Jude’s eyes. “Well, if the way she snooped at you is anything to go by, I should think Pauline Helling knows everything that’s ever gone on in Weldisham.”

  “Possibly.”

  “So it’s obvious what you have to do next, isn’t it, Carole?”

  “Is it? What?”

  “You have to go and see Pauline Helling.”

  §

  Carole had spent the rest of the evening trying to find a reason that might justify a visit to the owner of Heron Cottage. She and Jude hadn’t stayed at
the Crown and Anchor for a meal. One more drink and they’d gone. led Crisp hadn’t even looked up from the bar when they called out their goodbyes.

  Carole woke on the Tuesday morning with her problem still unresolved. There was no plausible reason why she needed to call on Pauline Helling, other than the true one—that she wanted to pick the old woman’s brains to help her unauthorized enquiries into the bones found in South Welling Barn.

  She continued to chew through the possibilities as she took Gulliver for his early morning walk on Fethering Beach, and while she drove the few miles from Fethering to Weldisham.

  But nothing came. And, given the antisocial malevolence which was all she had seen of Pauline Helling’s behaviour, as she stood on the doorstep after ringing the bell of Heron Cottage, Carole fully expected to have the door slammed in her face.

  Certainly the old woman’s eyes, close-set on either side of her beaky nose, radiated suspicion. There was also recognition. If Pauline Helling was as much of a social outcast in Weldisham as Detective Sergeant Baylis had suggested, God only knew through what network she got her information, but she was definitely aware that the woman on her doorstep was the one who’d found the bones.

  “Good morning?” The words may have been polite, but their delivery was distinctly deterrent.

  Carole still had no plan of what to say. In desperation, she tried the truth. “Mrs Helling, good morning. My name’s Carole Seddon. I wanted to talk to you about something your son Brian said to me.”

  There was a moment’s impasse, then, with bad grace, Pauline Helling moved back into the gloom of her hall. “You’d better come in.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  Carole could hear barking as she entered Heron Cottage. Presumably Pauline Helling’s black and white spaniel was locked away in the kitchen.

  The sitting room into which she was ushered looked at odds with the exterior of the house. She had been in enough modernized country cottages to have certain expectations—white walls, exposed beams, open fireplaces, details which accentuated the building’s rustic origins. Pauline Helling’s home had none of these. If there were any beams—and the cottage’s age suggested there must have been—they’d been covered over with plasterboard, and the fireplace had been filled in. The walls were a dyspeptic green colour, not a gentle eau-de-Nil, but a sharp acidic tone. On a carpet whose multi-hued swirly design was too large for the space sat a three-piece suite in purple velour. The same material was used for the orange curtains.