The Fethering Mysteries 02; Death on the Downs tfm-2

by Simon Brett

  “And as to what you were saying about serial killers, Will my old darling…” The manager didn’t look pleased to be the recipient of such an endearment. “They’ve all got to start somewhere. You need the first murder before you can move on to all the others. We’ve only had the first one so far here in Weldisham, but that’s the one with which he defined his ritual. Mm, I think I might make a very close study of this case – could be the basis for my next bestseller. Very gory it’ll be. Watch out, young girls. The Weldisham serial killer is going to spend the rest of his days repeating in exact detail the way he killed Tamsin Lutteridge.”

  Jude thanked any god who might be listening that Gillie and Miles weren’t in the pub at that moment.

  ♦

  After she had dropped Jude at her home, Woodside Cottage, Carole put the car in the garage and went inside to the martyred whimpering of Gulliver. She felt frustrated. Jude had something to do. She was going to try to get a lead on the whereabouts of Tamsin Lutteridge. But there was nothing Carole could do that was in any way connected with the case.

  Case? Was there a case? And if there was, what could it possibly have to do with her?

  The telephone rang.

  “Hello. This is Graham Forbes. We met in the pub just now.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I mentioned the possibility of your coming to dinner with us at Warren Lodge. Well, as soon as I got home, my wife, Irene, said she’d had a call from one of our friends who was going to join us this coming Friday. Been called away by a family bereavement. And I apologize that it’s awfully short notice…but I wondered, Carole, if you might by any chance be free that evening?”

  She accepted. But, as she put the phone down, she thought, that was quick.

  ∨ Death on the Downs ∧

  Eleven

  Jude was glad Carole wasn’t with her. Much as she liked her new Mend, she recognized that there were subjects on which they were unlikely ever to see eye to eye. And though Carole hadn’t said much when talk of alternative therapies arose, her expression and body language had immediately invoked scepticism.

  Jude’s attitude was more tolerant. She knew the dangers of being too susceptible and relished the quote she’d heard somewhere that ‘if you have an open mind, people will throw all kinds of rubbish into it’. But she was prepared to approach an idea without prejudice and assess it on its merits. The fact that something didn’t work for her never led her to reject it out of hand. She didn’t rule out the possibility that it might work for someone else.

  Jude had never been drawn to organized religion and the belief system she held was one built up over more than fifty years of life. It wasn’t rigid; as new thoughts came and old ones slipped away, the contents changed, but its overall principle remained the same. Jude believed that there was some purpose in human life, that it had been designed and was monitored by some kind of greater power. She believed that the most important relationships in life were not with that greater power, but with her fellow human beings.

  And some of those relationships were easy and some were difficult. The relationship with the man who she’d just been travelling with fell into the second category. That one, Jude knew, was going to need sorting out soon. The prospect was not one she relished. She was glad she had the search for Tamsin Lutteridge to occupy her mind.

  As a result of her instinctive tolerance, wandering round Soul Nourishment in Brighton’s North Lanes, Jude saw nothing that prompted her to ridicule. She enjoyed the smell of incense and was untroubled by the sound of wind-chimes. Most of the stock in the tiny shop was books – studies of astrology, crystallography, ley lines, synchron-icity and the meaning of dreams. The Road Less Travelled, The Prophet. The Alchemist.

  But Soul Nourishment also sold New Age life-aids. Some of them had worked for Jude and some hadn’t. Though admiring their beauty, she had never received anything spiritual from crystals, but she knew people to whom they meant a lot. The same went for the tarot and angel cards. But she had benefited from aromatherapy and so checked Soul Nourishment’s stock of oils with interest. Acupuncture she believed in strongly, though she questioned the wisdom of selling needles and charts to the unqualified.

  As with all tools for medical or spiritual healing, they were only as good as the practitioners using them. In her contacts with New Age healers, Jude had met very few out-and-out charlatans, but she’d met a distressing number of incompetents.

  And few of them had been helped by the kind of patients attracted to such alternative approaches. Many of these were ‘therapy junkies’, men and women who felt there was something wrong with their lives and were looking for the quick fix that would, at a stroke, sort everything out. Such people tended to butterfly from one alternative solution to another, moving speedily from yoga to shiatsu to reiki healing to reflexology to colonic irrigation. It was the patients, more than the healers, who gave New Age remedies such a bad public image.

  Silver, the owner of Soul Nourishment, was busy behind the counter, showing a display of scarabs to a bearded Californian tourist, so Jude moved to the back of the shop, where there was a cork board dotted with cards from counsellors, healers and therapists. Most of them offered solutions to problems of stress management, anxiety, phobias, personal relationships, alcohol and smoking dependency. Personal growth and major life changes were also catered for. Other cards raised the hopes of a cure for more specifically medical problems – eating disorders, depression, irritable bowel syndrome. Jude took down the numbers of the two that specifically mentioned ME or chronic fatigue syndrome.

  “Jude, how’re you doing?”

  Silver had finished with his Californian and she had his full attention. As she planted a kiss on his cheek and gave him a warm hug, Jude wished, not for the first time, that he didn’t dress so much like a stereotype. Everything about Silver seemed to say ‘owner of New Age shop’, from the Turkish cap on his head, past the chunky silver rings threaded into his ears, over the Indian cotton shirt, worn under a thick Bolivian waistcoat, down across the shiny striped harem pants to the thonged Greek leather sandals. His pale eyes blinked through blue-tinted thin-rimmed spectacles. How could Silver hope for his ideas to be taken seriously if he insisted on dressing like a caricature?

  On the other hand, thought Jude, ever slow to condemn, perhaps it goes with the territory. Just as the checkout girls in Sainsbury’s wear hygienic, almost medical-looking tabards, so Silver was dressed in livery appropriate to his surroundings. One thing she did know, it wasn’t done for effect. Silver was wearing the clothes he liked wearing and – even more remarkably, given their cacophony of styles – clothes he must have thought he looked good in.

  Maybe he still got the thrill of nonconformity every morning when he got up and dressed. Silver, then known as ‘Mr Silver’, had spent twenty-two years teaching geography in comprehensive schools before he saw the glint of alternative light at the end of the tunnel. He had earned the right to make whatever sartorial statement he chose.

  “I heard you were in Spain,” said Silver.

  “Just got back on Sunday.”

  “Terry said he saw you.”

  “He was teaching yoga first week I was out there.”

  “Did you do the whole fortnight?”

  “No, just the first week. Did some body- and voice-work. Second week I went off to the coast. Seafood therapy.”

  “On your own?”

  “With a friend.”

  She was upset by the pang even the mention of him caused her, but Silver didn’t probe. Jude’s private life was her own affair.

  “You been busy?”

  He nodded. “Not bad. Particularly running up to Christmas.”

  “Funny, really, isn’t it…the major Christian festival of the year and people come here to buy things that very positively have nothing to do with Christianity.”

  Silver shrugged. “I’m cool with that.”

  “Me too.”

  He indicated the cork board. “You thin
king of enrolling in something? I’m doing a course in transcendental meditation. He’s really good, the guy who leads it.”

  Jude shook her head. “I know the basics. Don’t need to take a course.”

  “No.” He blinked at her, clearly interested, but too laid-back actually to ask why she’d come.

  “In fact, I was trying to trace someone. Girl I came in here with once. Probably last September, October…Name’s Tamsin.”

  He shook his head. “Lot of people come through, Jude.”

  “I know. Tall, blonde girl…very pale…very pretty…”

  “Oh, now that does ring a bell. She was ill, wasn’t she?”

  “Chronic fatigue syndrome.”

  “Yes, I do remember. Because she came in with you that time, and then, only a few days later, she was here again, on her own.”

  “Oh? What was she after?”

  “She was looking for some books, you know, on the relationship between mind and body. I pointed out a few titles for her.”

  “Did she buy any?”

  “She got Setting Free the Soul.”

  “Charles Hilton?”

  “Right.”

  Jude looked at the board. One card was larger than the others and better printed. Beneath a picture of a large country house, she read:

  Weekend Breaks for the Body and the Mind

  SANDALLS MANOR WESTRIDGE

  Get Close to Nature and Close to Your Own Nature

  Find the Self That Sometimes Can Get Lost

  Proprietors: Charles and Anne Hilton

  There was a Brighton-area phone number. Jude looked at Silver.

  “Did Tkmsin know about this?”

  “Yes. I pointed it out to her.” Jude nodded grimly.

  ∨ Death on the Downs ∧

  Twelve

  Silver had given her a brochure for Sandalls Manor and Jude looked at it in the taxi on the way there. She knew Carole would happily have given her a lift, but she still felt that this part of the investigation should be private.

  The TUesday morning was clear, the green of the Downs and the blue of the sky brittle in their brightness. Outside the car, Jude knew the cold would sting her cheeks. They were driving north of Brighton, where West Sussex and East Sussex meet and the Downs change identity, flattening out in preparation for mixing into the Weald of Kent.

  The Sandalls brochure, like the card in Soul Nourishment, was expensively produced. It wasn’t aimed at dispossessed hippies; instead it offered a taste of New Age attitudes to rich city dwellers.

  Is your life so busy you haven’t time to know you’re alive? Have success and materialism taken away your identity as a human being? Have you lost your relationship with the earth that bore you and that nurtures you still?

  If that’s the case, then the Sandalls Manor experience could be for you. On one of our Midweek or Weekend Breaks, get back in tune with the rhythm of the seasons. What’s more, get back in tune with your own rhythms. Spend some time with the self that you want to spend time with.

  Sandalls Manor is set in the splendour of the South Downs, an area rich in history and spiritualism. Leave the cares of the city behind and look at nature as if for the first time. With small groups of like-minded people, enjoy vigorous – but not too vigorous – walks in some of England’s most beautiful countryside. Then, with your appetite sharpened by all that fresh air, sit down to a nourishing organic dinner, lovingly prepared from the freshest local ingredients by our award-winning chef.

  And, while the concerns of your body are being catered for, we do not neglect your more spiritual dimension. You’re under no obligation to participate, but during your stay there will be a regular programme of classes in meditation, relaxation, yoga, body-mapping, soul-journeying and other consciousness-raising exercises. All of these are conducted by Charles Hilton, a fully qualified Jungian psychotherapist and teacher, whose book Setting Free the Soul has become an international bestseller.

  Sandalls Manor may help you to shed your other addictions, but you’ll certainly find its own atmosphere addictive. Many of our guests come back time and again, knowing that they’ll leave, as one participant put it, ‘feeling that I’d just had a full MOT on my Body and on my Soul’. Sandalls Manor can provide that kind of cleansing experience for you too.

  Arrive as the person who gives you problems.

  Leave as the person you want to spend the rest of your life with.

  There was then a list of dates and prices. The latter confirmed Jude’s opinion that Sandalls Manor certainly was an experience for the well-heeled.

  The house, approached by a long gravel drive, was impressive. It had been the centre-point of an extensive farm, owned by Anne Hilton’s parents in the days when farming was both respectable and profitable. They’d sold most of the land, leaving their only daughter extremely well provided for when they died within three months of each other. At the time of their deaths they had assumed she would soon marry one of her own kind, ex-Army perhaps, and stay at Sandalls Manor, breeding children and golden retrievers.

  Had they known that Anne would end up marrying Charles Hilton, her parents would have turned in their graves with enough vigour to power the National Grid.

  She’d met him through a friend who, as Anne herself put it, ‘had gone a bit doolally’ and set out to ‘find her soul’. Since most of the people Anne mixed with were unconcerned about whether they had souls or not so long as there was plenty of champers, at first her friend’s quest seemed ‘an absolute hoot’. But all that changed when she accompanied her ‘doolally’ friend to a north London literary institute, where a session on ‘soul-searching’ was being conducted by Charles Hilton.

  It was love at first sight – certainly as far as Anne was concerned. If the subject ever arose – and they were the kind of couple who brought it up with regrettable frequency – Charles maintained that he’d felt exactly the same.

  But Jude, not normally given to cynicism, questioned the truth of his claim. She had the blasphemous thought that, for Charles, it might have been love at second sight, once he had found out about Sandalls Manor and the generous provisions Anne’s parents had made for her.

  She also found it hard to take at face value the seam-lessly perfect – though childless – marriage about which the Hiltons went on so much. There were suggestions that Charles was not above taking advantage of the emotional one-to-one situations in which he frequently found himself with young women. His recurrent travels abroad on conference and teaching assignments provided him with plentiful opportunities, and sometimes he came back from these surrounded by a whiff of rumour.

  Under normal circumstances, Jude was extremely resistant to rumour, but in this case she gave it credence. Once, when they’d been alone doing a co-counselling exercise, Charles Hilton had made a pass at her – so unambiguous that it was in fact more of a pounce than a pass. She had dealt summarily with the advance, pointing out to Charles that he was married, that she didn’t fancy him at all, and that, even if he had been attractive to her, the manner of his approach would very quickly have cancelled that out.

  But that moment of embarrassment gave them a history and even, Jude felt, gave her a sense of power over him. There was always the potential threat that she might tell Anne. It was for that reason that Jude had arrived unannounced at Sandalls Manor that Tuesday morning. She felt confident Charles Hilton would make the time to see her.

  She paid the cab driver, but agreed that he’d come to pick her up in an hour, unless she gave him a call on her mobile to make other arrangements. He looked up at the impressive frontage of Sandalls Manor and shook his head wryly. “Number of loonies I’ve brought up to this place you wouldn’t believe.”

  Jude was gratified that what he’d said presumably meant he didn’t include her in the category. “What do they do up here then?” she asked, faux naive.

  “You name it. Frolicking around naked in the summer, painting themselves, banging drums, screaming and shouting a lot. Down in Lewes,”
he confided, “I’ve heard people say they’re into black magic.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh yes.” He chuckled. “So if I come back in an hour and you’re not here…I’ll know you’ve been used as a human sacrifice, won’t I, darling?”

  He was still chuckling as his car sped off in an unnecessary flurry of gravel.

  ∨ Death on the Downs ∧

  Thirteen

  Though in many ways run like a hotel, Sandalls Manor kept its front door closed and Jude had to ring the bell. Anne Hilton came to open it. Jude had met Charles’s wife before, but she didn’t expect to be remembered.

  She was right. There was no recognition in the woman’s blue eyes as she uttered a deterrently interrogative ‘Good morning?’

  Anne Hilton was a large woman, designed for the heavy labour that had supported her family in previous generations. Although dressed in a long purple crushed-velvet dress, she would have looked more comfortable in a tweed skirt, jumper and pearls.

  “Good morning. My name’s Jude.” She spoke breathlessly, as if in the grip of anxiety. “There’s something I need to talk to Charles about.”

  The approach had been carefully pitched. Charles Hilton, as a psychotherapist, would have a lot of patients unknown to his wife. And, though Anne’s natural instinct might have been to send such unexpected arrivals packing, her husband would have instructed her to be more careful. He dealt with damaged people, and knew how destructive rejection could be to some of them. The last thing he wanted professionally was a suicide on his hands.

  “It’s extremely inconvenient,” said Anne Hilton, asserting what she really felt, before grudgingly standing back to let Jude enter the hall. “Charles is busy conducting a session at the moment. You’ll have to wait. And he won’t be able to give you long when they do break.”

  “I won’t need long. I just need a quick word with him.”