by Simon Brett
“I see.” And now she almost did.
“And it keeps me off the streets.” He smiled rather wanly. “I’m not sure how I would fill my time without my regular attendance at the betting shop.”
There was a moment of silence before Gerald Hume, realizing the danger of sounding pitiable, abruptly changed the direction of the conversation. “Still, enough about me. I don’t have nearly that amount of information about you yet, Carole.”
“No.”
Her retirement from the Home Office and divorce were established with the minimum of comment.
“I see,” said Gerald. “I never married.”
“Is that a cause for regret?”
“Rarely. I think I am probably not designed for connubial bliss. I tend to be rather analytical in all my dealings, which may lead to a level of detachment in my behaviour. And I have been given to understand that marriage requires engagement with the partner rather than detachment from them.”
“I think that is usually thought desirable, yes.”
Carole was touched by his quaintness, and found her own speech beginning to echo the formality of his. She had also by now realized that Gerald Hume wasn’t and never would be a ‘date’. The attraction between them was not physical, it was purely intellectual. This revelation did not bring her even the mildest flicker of disappointment. In fact it reassured her, clarified her feelings.
“May I go off on a complete tangent, Gerald…?”
“By all means.”
“…and ask whether you do crosswords?”
As Carole knew he would, he confirmed that he did. “I do the Times and the Telegraph every morning before I go to the betting shop. One might imagine, given my interest in numbers, it would be the Su Doku that monopolized my attention, but no, it’s words. Maybe because words are more resonant than numbers, because they carry with them a greater burden of semi-otic information. And do I gather you are also an aficionado of the crossword…?”
“I usually do the Times,” said Carole.
“I knew you would.” This confirmation of his conjecture seemed to make him particularly happy. “I am very glad that we have met, Carole. I think there are a lot of similarities in our personalities.”
Deciding that this was not a completely undiluted compliment, she moved on to another possible area of mutual interest. “Gerald, have you ever applied your analytical mind to the subject of crime?”
He smiled with relish. “I most certainly have. I enjoy the process of deduction, very similar in fact to that required in the solution of a crossword. But I’m afraid the crime writing I favour is of an older generation. The so-called Golden Age, when authors played fair with their readers in regard to plotting. Though contemporary crime fiction may have gained in psychological reality, that has always been at the expense of the puzzle element. And for me it is in the puzzle that the appeal of the genre lies.”
“But have you ever applied your deductive powers to a real crime?” asked Carole.
“Might you be thinking of the recent regrettable incident, which occurred at the place where I spend a large portion of my days?”
“I was thinking of that, yes, Gerald.”
“Hm. The first time I have been so close to a murder, outside of fiction. I’m afraid, in my professional life – though accountants may frequently be thought to get away with murder…” He let out a small dry laugh at this small dry joke “…they are – perhaps fortunately – rarely involved in the real thing.”
“So have you joined in the increasingly popular Fethering pastime of trying to work out whodunit?”
“I have.” He sighed. “But without much progress. I regret in this instance the Almighty Author has provided us with an inadequacy of information. Dame Agatha would never have been so parsimonious with the clues. Though we habitues of the betting shop were witnesses to one part of the tragedy – and your friend Jude witness to a further part – we have very few facts that link the poor young man to his penultimate destination.”
“Were you particularly aware of him when he came in that afternoon?”
“I can’t say that I was, Carole. Yes, I noticed a young man I had not seen before come into the shop. The noise of the hailstorm was very loud when the door was opened, so I looked in his direction. But I very quickly returned to my investments. I can’t honestly say that the young man made any impression on me at all.”
“Gerald, you said then that you had not seen the victim before…”
“That is correct, yes.”
“But last week’s visit was the second time he had been in the betting shop.”
“Was it?” The ex-accountant looked genuinely amazed by this news. “I had certainly never seen him before.”
“And you are there most days during opening hours?”
“Well, not opening hours – betting shops tend to be open for an increasingly long time these days – but I’m there during afternoon racing hours. I tend to arrive about half an hour before the first race and stay there until after the last.”
“And would you say you tend to notice everyone who comes in and out?”
“I do. I make a point of that. My researches into the randomness of gambling are obviously related to the demographic profile of the people who participate.”
“So you’re sure you’d never seen Tadek before last week?”
“Tadek?”
“I’m sorry, Tadeusz Jankowski was always called Tadek.”
“I understand. No, I had definitely never encountered him before last week. When was he seen?”
“Round the beginning of last October.”
Gerald Hume’s brow clouded as he tried to explain the anomaly, but then it cleared. “Last October, yes. I remember now. I was unwell. I had a serious throat infection which kept me to my bed for a few days. I think it must have been during that period. Did Ryan the Manager see him?”
“It was while Ryan was on holiday.”
“So how do you know the young man was in there?”
Carole explained about Jude’s conversation with Pauline.
“Ah yes. That would make sense. Pauline never does much in the way of gambling, but she always keeps her eyes on everything that’s going on. A habit that she learnt from her late husband.”
“Oh?”
“He was a fairly considerable crook. Or so Fethering gossip has it…and this is another instance when I would be inclined to believe Fethering gossip.”
“Jude said that Pauline was one of very few women who go into the betting shop.”
“That is true. It is more of a male enclave…though a lot of the ladies put in an appearance round the Derby or Grand National. Or down here when Glorious Goodwood is on, of course.”
A new thought came suddenly to Carole. “Ooh, that reminds me. Other women in the betting shop!”
“I’m sorry?”
“Apparently when Tadeusz Jankowski went into the betting shop last year, he spoke to a woman who was often in there. Another regular. Very well-dressed, middle·class woman…does that ring any bells, Gerald?”
“Well, there are one or two fitting that description who come in from time to time…”
“This one used to be very regular, but then stopped coming…round about last October. Any idea who it might be?”
Gerald Hume beamed as the recollection came to him. “Oh yes. I know exactly who you mean. I’m sorry, with her not having been in for a few months, I’d completely forgotten about her. But yes, she fits your description exactly.”
“Did you ever talk to her?”
“No. She kept herself to herself.”
More or less exactly what Pauline and Ryan had said. Carole asked, without much hope, “So you wouldn’t know her name, would you?”
This question produced another beam. “As a matter of fact I do. Melanie Newton.”
“But if you didn’t speak to her, how do you know that?”
Gerald Hume’s expression combined shame with pride as he replied, “One
day when she was in the betting shop, she had made a note of her fancies on an envelope. When she went, she screwed it up and left it on a shelf. I’m afraid, out of pure curiosity – and because she seemed rather different from the average run of betting shop habitue – I uncrumpled the envelope and looked at it.”
“So do you have an address for her too?” asked Carole excitedly.
Gerald shook his head apologetically. “I’m afraid I don’t have a photographic memory for such things. Though I do have a vague recollection that she lived in Fedborough.”
♦
Carole still felt good about herself when she got back to High Tor at about eight o’clock. She had a new lead. Melanie Newton. She was going to share the good news with Jude, when she remembered that her friend was out seeing some theatre show at Clincham College.
But as well as a new lead, she thought she might have something else. Though Gerald Hume would never be a lover (which was, if she was honest with herself, quite a relief), it was not impossible that over time he could turn into a very good friend.
∨ Blood at the Bookies ∧
Eighteen
Jude picked up the ticket that Andy Constant had promised would be left at the box office and went through into the theatre. The building was named after the company which had stumped up the money for its construction, with a view to raising their local charitable profile. (They had made a very favourable deal with the university, which would allow them free use of the halls of residence for conferences during the vacations.) As Andy had said, the theatre was new, new even to the extent of still smelling of paint and freshly varnished wood. And it was a rather splendid structure.
The auditorium was buzzing with the sounds of young people, fellow students there to support their mates, but there were also quite a few parents, coming to see what all those tuition fees were being spent on.
Jude had been presented with a programme, just an A5 sheet printed in black with a list of actors and production credits. The title of the evening’s entertainment was Rumours of Wars: The Interface Between Society and Violence. She noted that the show had been ‘Conceived and Directed by Andy Constant’.
She saw him briefly before the show. He gave her a wave of acknowledgement as he bustled busily up the aisle from the pass-door by the stage. He was dressed exactly as when she’d last seen him, but there was now a greater aura of importance about him. In his wake scuttled the pretty dark-haired girl who had summoned him from the university coffee shop on their last encounter. As he passed Jude, Andy Constant said, “If I don’t see you in all the confusion after the show, let’s meet up in the Bull. Just opposite the gates of the campus – do you know it?”
“I’ll find it.”
“Won’t be such a scrum there as there will in the student bar.”
“Can I set one up for you?”
“Pint of Stella would be wonderful.”
And he whisked his important way to the back of the auditorium, where the dark-haired girl was now waiting for him.
Just as the lights were dimming, Jude caught sight of Ewan and Hamish Urquhart a few rows in front, presumably there to cheer on Sophia.
The show was not bad, but it did feel slightly over-inflated for its own good. The subject of war is a big one and Rumours of Wars tried to take on all of it. There were the obligatory scenes of carnage from 1914-18, juxtaposed with the clinical battles of new technologies. There were scenes of everyman squaddies punctiliously obeying orders given to them by idiots, of bereaved mothers weeping over the deaths of children in air raids, of blimpish generals planning mass slaughter over post-prandial port.
All of this was realized in a form that involved much shouting, a certain amount of dance, some a cappella singing and a lot of mime (which was about as interesting as mime usually is). The show was built about a lot of tableaux of human bodies, dramatic images precisely engineered. It was all impressive and just a tad worthy.
Also old·fashioned. Andy Constant must have been very young during the sixties, but that was definitely the period when his ideas of theatre had been formed. Jude got the feeling that he’d definitely seen Oh! What A Lovely Wars at an impressionable age. There was a simplicity in his anti-war message which accorded better with the protest years of Vietnam, when there were still perhaps some illusions remaining to be shattered, than the cynical wartime of Iraq. The show seemed to be taking a battering ram to a door that was already wide open.
And the acting wasn’t terribly good. The kind of slick ensemble playing required by that kind of theatre was beyond the capacity of the University of Clincham’s Drama students. Though individual talents shone through in various areas, none had the all-round versatility that the piece demanded. And of all the cast Sophia Urquhart was probably the weakest. She looked pretty enough and went through the motions of what she had rehearsed, but didn’t convince. However much she threw herself around the stage, she remained quintessentially a young lady of the Home Counties who had been to all the right schools. Wherever the girl’s future lay, it wasn’t in acting.
Her singing voice, though, was something else. In the one solo number she had, she was transformed. This, again harking back to the sixties, was Pete Seeger’s ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone?’ As the girl’s pure unaccompanied soprano spelt out the message of pacifism, she seemed not only to evoke an earlier era, but also to swell with confidence and to take effortless control of the whole auditorium. As a singer, Sophia Urquhart might make it.
The best thing about Rumours of Wars, in Jude’s view, was its length. An hour and twenty minutes with no interval. Quite long enough to preach to the converted that war is a bad thing.
Jude’s overall impression of the evening was the dominance of Andy Constant. The show was supposedly built up from improvisation, but had all the hallmarks of contrivance. Yes, the students may have come up with individual ideas, but they had been welded into a preconceived form by the director. The iron will of Andy Constant lay behind every line and every gesture. In a way, the weakness of the material served only to highlight the skill with which it had been pressed into theatrical shape.
In her brief experience as an actress Jude had come across directors like that. For them the written text was an irrelevance, an obstacle to be overcome by their stagecraft. And working from improvisation gave them the perfect opportunity to impose their wills on actors. The aim of the production was only to show how clever they, the directors, were. The whole exercise was an ego-trip.
Jude knew that that was exactly how Andy Constant would have treated his students during the rehearsal period. What he was after was control, pure and simple.
And even as she identified the kind of man he was, she was aware of the way she was drawn towards him. She could regret, but she couldn’t deny it.
Andy had said that the Bull pub would be less of a scrum than the student bar, but it was still pretty crowded, the regular clientele augmented by parents who had just experienced Rumours of Wars. From the conversations Jude overheard as she struggled towards the bar, they had thought rather more of the show than she had. Or maybe it was just because their offspring had been participating.
There were also quite a few of the students who’d been in the show, and a lot of their friends who hadn’t. Jude saw the girl with long dark hair at the centre of a giggling bunch of youngsters.
Given the crowd, she was glad she’d suggested setting up a drink for Andy Constant. One trip to the bar took long enough. As she eased her way through the crowd with a Chardonnay and a pint of Stella, she found herself face to face with Ewan and Hamish Urquhart, both dressed in Drizabone coats over their corduroy.
“Ah, Jude, isn’t it? I thought I saw you in there. So, what did you think of my little Sophia, eh?”
“I thought there was a lot of talent there,” she said tactfully.
“Yes. Bloody stupid thing for a girl to do, though, isn’t it? No security in acting. Hope she’ll see the light soon and start doing something sensible. Mind
you,” he couldn’t help saying, with a father’s pride, “she is rather gifted, and she’s pretty enough to make a go of it.”
“Let’s hope so. Her singing is really excellent.” No need to say anything about the acting.
“Yes. Hamish, you get them in, will you?” Ewan Urquhart’s son obediently scuttled into the mêlée around the bar. “No, she’s a good little singer, my Soph. You can catch her singing in here most Friday nights.”
“Really?”
He pointed to a poster pinned on to a board nearby. It had been printed up on a home computer by someone who had only just discovered how many fonts and colours it was possible to use, and advertised ‘MAGIC DRAGON, Clincham Uni’s Number One Folk⁄Rock Band’. A rather smudged photograph showed a longhaired figure who was recognizably Sophia Urquhart fronting two guitarists and a fiddler.
“Obviously they’re not doing it tonight because of the show. But most other Fridays during term-time you’ll find her in here singing her little heart out.”
“I must try and catch them one day. As I say, she has got an exceptional voice.”
“Yes.” Ewan Urquhart agreed in a voice that mixed pride with scepticism. “Trouble is, if she goes into that kind of business – singing, acting – God knows what kind of riff-raff she’s going to mix with. Funny lot, actors, aren’t they?”
“Some of them. So there isn’t any showbiz in your family?”
“Good God, no. I went to Charterhouse, spent all my time doing sport. No time for bloody acting.” Ewan Urquhart seemed to need to shoehorn his status as an Old Carthusian into every conversation.
“I thought maybe Sophia’s mother…”
“Sophia’s mother and I parted company some years ago,” he responded with some asperity. “And if you’re wondering whether Sophia got her acting or singing talent from that source, let me tell you my ex-wife had no talent of any description.”
Jude deduced from the vehemence of this response that it was Mrs Urquhart who had left her husband, rather than vice versa. And she didn’t blame her.
