The Fethering Mysteries 02; Death on the Downs tfm-2
Page 26
The old woman’s spaniel, incidentally, was never seen again in the village after Heron Cottage burnt down. The police initially put the dog into their kennels, but soon arranged to have it adopted by a nice family with three young children in the adjacent village of Blundon. Nobody in Weldisham knew of the spaniel’s fate. Blundon was three miles distant, and that was a long way away.
Graham Forbes didn’t die immediately. He stayed in hospital, too ill to be moved to prison, too ill to appear in court, and his adoring second wife went to visit him every day. Sometimes he could do a few clues of the Times crossword; other days he looked at it as though it were in a foreign language.
Like Graham’s, the health of Tamsin Lutteridge hovered between the positive and the negative. After Brian Helling’s arrest, when his threat to her life no longer posed a danger, the girl had been visited at Sandalls Manor by her mother and Jude. They had gone in the full expectation of bringing Tamsin home to Weldisham with them. But they found her unwilling. She really thought that Charles Hilton’s treatment was beginning to work.
And some days it was. Then she felt optimistic and positive. Other days she was listless and ached all over. But, until a real cure for her debilitating illness was found, what Charles Hilton did seemed neither better nor worse than any other treatment on offer.
He meanwhile continued to offer therapy, understanding and personal attention to his patients. The young, pretty female patients continued to get more personal attention than the others, and Anne Hilton continued to have suspicions but no proof.
Within two months of Brian Helling’s arrest, Gillie and Miles Lutteridge had quietly separated and set divorce proceedings in motion. Gillie lived alone in Weldisham for a few months more and then their showhouse was sold to another Londoner who’d ‘always wanted to live in the country’.
When he met this newcomer in the Hare and Hounds, Freddie Pointon put him at his ease, asserting what a wonderful place Weldisham was, and when he got out of the train at Barnham how really uplifted he felt by that first breath of country air.
Meanwhile, in their weekend cottage, Pam Pointon continued to get noisily pissed.
At a Ladies’ Night of the local Rotary Club, Barry Stillwell met the widow of another past president. Since they both found life very interesting, they decided to get married.
♦
It was a couple of weeks after her abduction, and Carole was sitting in the Crown and Anchor having an early evening drink with Jude. Carole had noticed her friend seemed a little subdued recently and deduced that the change of mood had something to do with the man Jude had spent the weekend with in London. But when she tried to find out more about the situation, the conversation kept doing its old trick of moving on to other subjects.
“You going to be all right this evening?”
“Yes, sure,” said Jude. “I’ll probably grab something to eat here, and then go back for a really long soak in the bath.”
“With all your aromatherapy oils?”
“You bet. My idea of bliss.” Jude didn’t say that, before her bath, she planned to look through some estate agent’s details for houses in Ireland. The break-up with that man had really unsettled her and she’d never stayed anywhere for long. She hadn’t made any firm decision about moving yet, but it was a thought…
As usual, Carole had no idea what was going through her friend’s mind. Her own was happily full, particularly of the new blouse she was wearing that night. Marks & Spencer’s were getting in some quite designery things these days. Carole wouldn’t have thought she could wear red, if she hadn’t been so firmly told that it made her look great.
The door from the kitchen clattered open and Ted Crisp appeared. He was wearing a suit. Not only that, it was a suit he had had cleaned. And he was wearing the tie Carole had given him.
His hair and beard remained as unkempt as ever, which caused her a momentary pang of annoyance. But she quickly reassured herself. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Time enough to get his hair – and a few other things – sorted.
Jude let out a low whistle. “My God, it’s Rudolph Valentine!”
“Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer more like,” said Ted.
Then he stepped round the bar and crooked out his arm in a self-consciously gallant manner.
“Mrs Seddon…are you ready to accompany me? And may I say how well you look in the red? Positively in the pink, if you’ll pardon the expression.”
“Thank you,” said Carole, dropping a mock-curtsy before she took his arm.
“Where is it you’re off to tonight?” asked Jude.
“New Mexican place just opened in Worthing,” Ted replied. “Won’t be able to move in there for sombreros and zimmer frames. Are we set then, Carole?”
“Certainly are.”
“Right. Good luck,” he called out to his bar staff. “Don’t drink all the profits. See you, Jude.”
“Yes, sure,” she said, and looked down into her drink.
Carole Seddon liked the bulk of led Crisp’s arm against hers. And she looked forward to the evening ahead. She didn’t have much to thank Barry Stillwell for, but at least he’d reminded her what a date was.
FB2 document info
Document ID: 7cbd05a8-854a-4ee7-b9d1-ecd39f4191eb
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 31.5.2012
Created using: calibre 0.8.53, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
Document authors :
Simon Brett
About
This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.
(This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)
Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.
(Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)
http://www.fb2epub.net
https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/