Fethering 09 (2008) - Blood at the Bookies

by Simon Brett

There had been so many sixties revivals, but Jude was still surprised to hear the songs that Magic Dragon had chosen. It was mostly the Joan Baez back catalogue. Given Sophia Urquhart’s voice, this made sense. The songs suited her pure soprano. But they seemed an odd choice for a student group in the early twenty-first century.

  ‘Farewell Angelina’, ‘Banks of the Ohio’, ‘Go ‘Way from My Window’, ‘There But for Fortune’, ‘With God on Our Side’…they all brought back Jude’s youth and she loved hearing them, but she wondered who had made the selection. Was one of the band members an enthusiastic researcher of the period? Had there been some influence from Tadek, with his love of sixties music? Or from Andy Constant, who seemed never to have left the sixties? Maybe Jude would find out when she finally spoke to Sophia. Though she had more serious things to discuss with the girl than her musical tastes.

  Carole and Zofia arrived in the pub at about twenty to ten. Which was good timing—more synchronicity, thought Jude—as Magic Dragon took a break, after their first set, at nine forty-five. So she was up at the bar buying drinks when the thirsty band approached.

  “Sophia!” she cried. She was aware once again of the girl’s expensive perfume, the smell that Andy Constant had detected on his attacker. “I’m Jude—remember?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Wanted to hear your band. Your father was telling me how good you were. Wonderful stuff! Can I get you a drink by way of congratulation?”

  “Well, erm…”

  “Go on, what would you like?”

  Like most students, the girl didn’t prevaricate long over the offer of a free drink. “Pint of Stella, please. I get very thirsty singing.”

  “I’m sure you do.” Jude added it to her order. “Do come and join us. I’ve got a couple of friends who’d love to meet you.”

  “Well, I…” She didn’t want to, she wanted to be with her mates, but Sophia Urquhart was a well-brought-up girl and knew that accepting a drink from someone did involve certain social responsibilities. “Yes, fine. But I’d better not be long, because we don’t get much of a break before the next set.”

  Sophia helped Jude carry the drinks across to her table, where she was introduced to Carole and Zofia. By first names only.

  “Excellent music.” Carole had only heard one number, but she knew it was the appropriate thing to say.

  “Not much of a turn-out tonight, though.” Sophia Urquhart looked round the room with disappointment. Now she had a chance to study the girl, Jude could see that she looked stressed and tired. The gold-red hair didn’t quite have its usual lustre, and there was a redness around the eyes.

  “Our type of music’s not very popular, I’m afraid. Most of the people at uni want stuff they can dance to. Think this could be the last gig we do here.”

  “Oh?”

  “Landlord said, if we didn’t pull in a bigger crowd, that’d be it.”

  “Well, hopefully you’ll be able to get booked in somewhere else.”

  “Maybe.” The girl sounded listless, as though the fate of Magic Dragon didn’t matter one way or the other.

  Jude decided it was time to move into investigation mode. “Sophia, Zofia is the sister of Tadeusz Jankowski.”

  The shock took their suspect’s breath away. She looked at the Polish girl with a mixture of incredulity and fear.

  “I think you knew him,” said Jude.

  “No. I…don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sophia Urquhart’s hastily scrambled-together defence didn’t sound convincing.

  “You met at a music festival in Leipzig last summer.”

  In the face of the facts, her resistance crumbled. “Yes,” she admitted apathetically.

  Zofia took over the interrogation. “We know you play music together. Pavel has sent me recordings.”

  “Pavel,” came the echo.

  “I have come from Warsaw to England to find out what happened to Tadek…to my brother.”

  “He was killed.”

  “I know that. I want to know why he was killed. And who killed him.”

  The English girl slumped like a rag doll. Her spirit was broken. “Everyone wants to know that. Everyone always asks the same questions.”

  “When you say everyone,” asked Carole, “do you mean the police as well?”

  Sophia looked puzzled. “Presumably the police will be asking questions, if they’re investigating Tadek’s death.” She was now making no pretence of not having known the murder victim.

  “But have the police questioned you?”

  “About Tadek’s death? Why should they?”

  “Didn’t they know about him being in love with you?”

  “I don’t think so. Nobody knew.”

  “We managed to find out about it,” said Carole. “It’s pretty difficult to keep a love affair a complete secret. The participants may think nobody knows, but that’s very rarely true.”

  “Where did you meet after he came to England?” asked Jude more gently.

  “We went to his room in Littlehampton. First he found me at the college. He had been texting and calling me and sending me songs ever since we met in Leipzig. He kept saying that he would come to England, and I didn’t believe him. Then one day, early in the term, there he was on the campus. And he’s telling me he loves me.”

  “Were you pleased?”

  “Yes. But it was difficult. I didn’t want people to know about him.”

  Zofia was offended by this apparent slight on her brother. “Why you not want people to know about him?”

  “Because…” The English girl looked confused. “Because things were more complicated than he thought. Tadek thought if we loved each other, everything would be fine. That was all that mattered. We wouldn’t have to think about practical things. He wanted me to drop out of uni, travel Europe with him, play music. I told him life could not be as simple as that. You have to get qualifications, make a living, get on with things. You can’t just drift.”

  As her brother had, Sophia Urquhart sounded as though she were parroting her father’s sentiments. No relationship between the idealistic Pole and this conventional product of the Home Counties could ever have had a long-term future. But would Sophia have regarded the young man as enough of an inconvenience to murder him?

  “Tadek thought that was possible,” responded Zofia sadly. “All he wanted to do was just drift. Write his songs, play music and drift.”

  “Well, that’s no way to go through life.” Sophia Urquhart was once again her father’s daughter.

  “Did you love him?” asked Jude.

  “Maybe for a while. I liked him, certainly. In Leipzig it was very romantic. Yes, I think I was in love with him then. It was a kind of unreal time, I was away from home and…yes. But that was an exotic dream, and it’s difficult to recapture that kind of dream in somewhere like Fethering or Clincham. So the relationship had to end.”

  “But he still loved you?”

  “Probably.” She spoke as though the boy’s continuing adoration had been a minor irritant. “He kept phoning and texting me, and writing the songs. I got sick of it. Every time I heard his voice, saying, ‘Fee this, Fee that’.”

  “‘Fee’?”

  “It was his nickname for me. He could never pronounce ‘So-fie-ah’. He always said ‘So-fee-ah’. So he called me ‘Fee’.”

  “Ah.” Finally Jude had her explanation for Tadeusz Jankowski’s dying words. But she didn’t pursue it at that moment. Who knew how the girl might react on hearing that the boy had died with her name on his lips? Anyway, there were more urgent questions to be asked. “You say you didn’t want anyone to know about the connection between you. Is that why all of his music had to be taken from his room?”

  Sophia Urquhart hesitated before replying, as though she needed to prepare her answer. “Yes. Once he’d died, there was bound to be a police investigation. I didn’t want to get involved in anything like that.”

  “So what did you do with the CDs and things?”

/>   “I put them in a litter bin-on the street.”

  “But not the guitar?”

  “No, it wouldn’t fit. I was looking for a skip to dump it in on my way to uni the day after Tadek died. But then I met one of my friends from the Drama set and she asked me what I was doing with the guitar. I remembered that Andy had asked us to bring instruments in, so that’s how I explained it away. I thought it would be safely hidden in the Drama Studio. The police investigation wouldn’t go as far as uni.”

  “You mentioned Andy Constant,” said Jude.

  “So?” The girl looked defiant, but a blush was spreading up from her neck.

  “Might he have been another reason why your relationship with Tadek had to end?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’ve just come from the hospital where Andy Constant is recovering from being stabbed.”

  There was a silence around the table. The raucous-ness of a small group of students round the bar was suddenly loud.

  “Andy told me about the affair that you and he had been having,” Jude went on. “He told me about using the nickname ‘Joan’ for you.”

  “Which is the name Tadek used,” said Zofia.

  “I didn’t know…Andy…had been stabbed.” Sophia spoke haltingly, with great difficulty.

  “No?” asked Carole sceptically.

  “I thought it possible that someone might have attacked him…but I didn’t know he had been…stabbed,” she said again. “You say he’s in hospital. Is he badly hurt?”

  “He’ll survive. Though he was lucky that his attacker was frightened off before more damage could be done.”

  “Good,” said Sophia Urquhart softly.

  “Andy also said,” Jude went on inexorably, “that he recognized the perfume his attacker was wearing.”

  “Perfume?” Sophia mouthed, uncomprehending.

  “Yes. Andy Constant said his attacker smelt of the perfume that you use.”

  The girl looked bewildered, but whether her bewilderment was genuine Carole and Jude could not guess.

  Then suddenly a memory came to her, and her hand went up to her mouth. “Oh, my God. My Barbour!”

  “What?”

  “My Barbour jacket. I couldn’t find it last night. That would smell of my perfume.”

  Carole thought this sudden recollection was too neat. She felt sure the girl was just play-acting. “And what time did you go out last night?”

  “About eight. I went to meet Daddy in a restaurant for dinner.” Sophia Urquhart caught sight of the other members of Magic Dragon, who were gesturing that they should start playing again. She half-rose from her seat.

  “No, you can’t go yet.” Carole said this so fiercely that the girl sat back down again. “Tell me, were you at home before you went out to meet your father?”

  “Yes, I’d left uni early. I wasn’t feeling too good. So I got back to Fethering at about four.”

  “And didn’t go out again till eight?”

  “No, I didn’t.” If that were true, then Sophia Urquhart couldn’t have been in the Drama Studio at the University of Clincham at six, stabbing her lecturer and former lover. “It was when I went out to meet Daddy that I couldn’t find my Barbour.”

  “I don’t suppose,” asked Carole cynically, “that anyone could vouch for the fact that you were at home yesterday at the times you say you were?”

  “As a matter of fact,” the girl replied almost smugly, “there’s someone who can. It was fairly slack in the office yesterday, so my brother Hamish was home by five. And he was still there when I left.”

  With that and a curt nod, Sophia Urquhart went across to join the rest of Magic Dragon. The moment she arrived, the guitars and fiddle started the intro to ‘All My Trials’, and, whatever emotions were going through her mind, they were suppressed as her pure voice took up the song.

  Hush little baby don’t you cry,

  You know your mama was born to die.

  All my trials, Lord, soon be over.

  Just like Joan.

  Carole and Jude looked at each other. And the identical logical progress was going through both their minds.

  Thirty-seven

  There was no difficulty the next morning in making an appointment with Ewan Urquhart. Though it was a Saturday, business in the offices of Urquhart & Pease remained slack. “Won’t really pick up again till the spring, when the sun comes out,” he had told Jude when she rang through. He sounded, as ever, urbane, the Old Carthusian to the last polished vowel.

  If he thought it strange that Jude arrived with a friend to discuss the valuation of Woodside Cottage, he was too well bred to articulate his feelings. He and Hamish were both in the outer office when the women arrived. The younger man sat at a desk, looking blank. Despite the potential seriousness of the situation, Jude couldn’t help being reminded of the old joke:

  Why don’t estate agents look out of the window in the morning?

  Because it gives them nothing to do in the afternoon.

  There appeared to be no other staff on duty that morning. Maybe ‘in the spring, when the sun comes out’, there would be more. Ewan Urquhart offered them coffee, but Carole and Jude said they’d just had some. He then invited them to join him in his back office. “You hold the fort out here, Hamish. Fight off the hordes of eager purchasers, eh?”

  His office gave the impression of the library of a gentlemen’s club. There were shelves showing the leather spines of unopened books, and the intervening areas of wall were dark green, with a couple of framed sporting prints. In pride of place was an etching of the neo-Gothic splendour of Charterhouse school. The desk was reproduction mahogany, the chairs were reproduction leather. And Ewan Urquhart’s vowels were reproduction upper-class.

  He gestured them to chairs and said, “Now do tell me what I can do for you, ladies? I didn’t gather, Mrs Seddon, do you actually live at Woodside Cottage with, er…Jude?”

  “Good heavens, no.” She didn’t know whether he actually was making a suggestion of lesbianism, but it was a notion she wanted to dispel as quickly as possible. “I live next door. High Tor.”

  “I know it well. Part of my business to know the names of all the houses in the immediate vicinity. Never know when one might come up for sale, and one likes to keep a step ahead of the opposition. A highly competitive business, ours, you know.”

  “I’m sure it is.” There was a silence. Having built themselves up to the confrontation, neither of the women was sure how next to proceed. They should have planned what to say.

  “So, Mrs Seddon, am I to gather that you are also thinking of putting High Tor on the market? I would be more than happy to arrange a valuation for you too if—”

  “No, no. I’m quite settled there at the moment, thank you.”

  “Good.” As another silence extended itself, Ewan Urquhart pushed his fingers through the greying hair of his temples. “So, please tell me. What can I do for you?”

  Jude had had enough of prevarication.

  “We’ve come to talk to you about Tadeusz Jankowski.” He looked surprised. “Don’t pretend you don’t know the name.”

  “I am making no such pretence. I read the newspapers and watch television. I know that Tadeusz Jankowski was the name of the young man stabbed here in Fethering a couple of weeks ago. But I don’t know what he has to do with me.”

  “He has to do with you the fact that he was in love with your daughter Sophia.”

  Ewan Urquhart chuckled lightly. “My dear Jude, I’m sure there are a lot of young men who have been in love with my daughter. She is an exceptionally beautiful and talented young woman. It is inevitable that she attracts the interest of the opposite sex. Whether she would give any encouragement to a Polish immigrant, though, is another matter.”

  “Your daughter met Tadeusz Jankowski at a music festival in Leipzig last summer,” Carole announced. “While she was InterRailing in Europe.”

  He did look shaken by this revelation, but th
ey couldn’t tell why. It could have been new information to him, or he could have been surprised by how much detail they knew of his daughter’s life.

  “They had an affair out in Germany,” Carole went on, “and then Tadeusz Jankowski came over to England to look for her.”

  For the first time Ewan Urquhart began to lose his cool. “My daughter would not have a relationship with a foreigner!”

  “What you mean, Ewan,” said Jude, “is that you wouldn’t like your daughter to have a relationship with a foreigner. I don’t have children, but I’ve seen often enough that they do not always turn out as their parents Want them to.”

  “Sophia is an intelligent girl. She wouldn’t mix with people who’re unworthy of her.”

  “And what makes you think Tadeusz Jankowski was unworthy of her?”

  “His nationality, apart from anything else. All right, I know we have reason to thank some Polish airmen for the help they gave us against Hitler, but as a race they’re not to be trusted. Sophia has been brought up to keep foreigners at a healthy distance.”

  “Didn’t it occur to you,” asked Carole, “that if she went InterRailing round Europe, she might meet some foreigners?”

  “Yes. I wasn’t keen on the whole idea of a gap year, but Sophia managed to persuade me. She went against my better judgement. But I can assure you you’ve got the wrong end of the stick if you think she’s been having affairs with foreigners. When Sophia does get to the point of having affairs, I’m sure she will be very selective in her choice of men.”

  “‘When she gets to the point of having affairs’?” Jude echoed. “How old is your daughter, Ewan?”

  “Nineteen, nearly twenty.”

  “Well, surely you know from the media that these days most young women of nearly twenty have been sexually active for some years.”

  “Most young women, maybe,” he snapped. “Not Sophia!”

  For the first time they realized the depth of his obsession with his daughter, and his obsession with her purity. In her father’s eyes, no man would ever be good enough for Sophia Urquhart. He had built up an image of her as untouchable, and what he might do to anyone who threatened that image was terrifying.