by Simon Brett
‘That’s the second time you’ve used the expression “scene of the crime”. Are you suggesting that it wasn’t suicide?’
‘I’m keeping an open mind on that.’ Though whether Carole Seddon’s mind, cluttered as it was by a tangle of prejudices, could ever be described as ‘open’ was an interesting topic for discussion. ‘Anyway, suicide was a crime in this country right up until 1961. And a lot of people still think it is. But don’t let’s get sidetracked. I’m asking you if you saw anything odd at the scene of the crime.’
Jude gave another firm wipe to her nose and put away the handkerchief. ‘Well, the was one thing, but it’s more “a dog in the night-time”.’
‘Something you were expecting that wasn’t there?’ asked Carole, instantly picking up the Sherlockian reference.
‘Yes.’
‘So what was it?’
‘Fennel’s mobile phone. She certainly had it with her during the evening. I even have a vague recollection of her holding it when she went out of the yurt. But there was no sign of it at the . . . all right, I’ll use your expression . . . at “the scene of the crime”.’
ELEVEN
The phone call from the police to Woodside Cottage came the following morning, the Sunday. The woman’s voice said that it was in relation to the death of Fennel Whittaker and asked whether it would be convenient for a Detective Inspector Hodgkinson to visit Jude and discuss a few details with her. The request was put in the form of a question that was very definitely not expecting the answer no.
Detective Inspector Hodgkinson, who arrived just before noon, turned out to be female. She was a tall woman, a large woman actually, though she moved with considerable grace. She was not in uniform, but wore a light green fleece, well-cut jeans and pointy-toed ankle boots. Her manner was easy and her vowels sounded privately educated.
‘Call me Carmen,’ she said, after accepting the offer of coffee. (‘Just black, please.’)
Jude made a broad gesture towards the variously swathed items of furniture in her front room. ‘Sit where you want.’ And she went off to make the coffee.
By the time Jude returned, Carmen Hodgkinson had a reporter’s notebook open on her lap and was consulting some sheets of printed-up emails. ‘Just checking what you said to my colleagues yesterday.’
‘Ah.’ Jude handed across one cup of coffee and sat down opposite the Inspector with the other one, waiting for the interrogation to begin.
The first question was not one she would have predicted in a hundred years. ‘Do you ever watch rugby, Jude?’
She admitted that she did. ‘I’m not a diehard fan, but come the Six Nations, I’m sometimes found to be glued to my television screen.’
‘Me too. I used to play, for my school and at uni.’
Jude let out another cautious ‘Ah’, not quite sure in which direction the conversation was leading.
‘Well, if you’ve watched a game recently, you’ll know that they now have a “TMO” – television match official, video referee, and it frequently happens that the match referee will consult him when a try appears to have been scored, but there’s a slight doubt about whether the ball was touched down properly. And the match referee will ask the TMO: “Is there any reason why I shouldn’t award this try?” Well, that’s really why I’m here today. I’m asking you: “Is there any reason why we should not feel that the death of Fennel Whittaker is as straightforward as it appears to be?” Do you get my drift?’
‘I do, yes.’
‘It’s the old “if it looks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.” This looks like a suicide.’
Jude was silent for a moment, as the realization sank in that, for all her folksy roundabout manner, Carmen Hodgkinson was a highly intelligent woman.
‘So,’ the Inspector nudged, ‘do you have any reason to believe that Fennel Whittaker didn’t kill herself?’
‘Well . . .’
Hodgkinson picked up on the hesitation. ‘Right, so you do have some doubts. Can we establish a few background facts first of all? You spent the night in the yurt with Fennel Whittaker. Was that because you were in a relationship with her?’
‘“In a relationship”? Are you asking if we were lovers?’
‘It seems a reasonable question to me. What you have to remember, Jude, is that you have a lot more information than I do. I heard this morning that I was being assigned to this case. I’ve read the existing paperwork which, given the fact that the death only occurred yesterday, is pretty minimal. I’m starting really with a tabula rasa.’
‘A blank slate?’
‘Yes. I know nothing about you or the Whittakers. All I do know is that you and Fennel spent last night in a yurt in the grounds of Butterwyke House, a house where she had her own bedroom. So I ask myself why you did that. And I come up with a possible explanation.’
‘That I’m lesbian?’ said Jude with a smile, imagining how Carole would have reacted to the suggestion if it had been aimed at her.
‘Yes. A lot of us are,’ said Detective Inspector Hodgkinson calmly.
‘Well, no, not in my case. My main relationship with Fennel was a professional one.’
‘Of what kind?’
‘I’m a healer, alternative therapist, whatever you want to call it.’
Jude anticipated the reaction that statement quite frequently elicited from more conventional members of the public, but it didn’t come. Instead Carmen Hodgkinson asked. ‘And you were treating Fennel Whittaker?’
‘That’s right.’
‘For depression, bipolar tendencies?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you knew that she had a history of self-harming and suicide attempts?’
‘Of course.’
‘Hm.’ Detective Inspector Hodgkinson wrote something down. Though she couldn’t read the words, Jude noticed that the handwriting was very neat, almost calligraphic in its precision. ‘What kind of treatments do you use, Jude? Acupuncture?’
‘No. I’m not qualified to do that.’
‘I’ve found acupuncture very effective . . . for quite a lot of complaints . . . both physical and mental.’
Jude had not been expecting this kind of openness from a police officer. She said, ‘I have no doubts about its efficacy. I keep telling myself I should get trained in it, but never get round to it.’
‘So what kind of therapies are you trained for?’
It was a shrewd question, posed without heavy intonation, but still a probing one. Anyone could call themselves an alternative therapist, and the Inspector was assessing where Jude fitted in on the scale between serious professional and complete charlatan.
‘I did a massage therapy training, so I do use massage a lot. But the healing is really a matter of channelling energy.’
Carmen Hodgkinson nodded and asked, still without scepticism, ‘Like reiki?’
‘I suppose it does have some elements in common, but it’s not reiki. Anyway, I’m not trained in reiki, nor have I ever claimed to be.’
‘I see. So the healing power comes from within you?’
Jude found herself uncharacteristically embarrassed by the question. ‘I suppose it does, yes.’
‘I used to be a complete cynic about that kind of thing, but I have seen healing work. On humans and animals. I think it was the animals that convinced me. I mean, you can fool a human being with a load of blarney and mumbo-jumbo, but you’re never going to get away with that with a police Alsatian, are you?’
‘No.’
‘Right,’ said Carmen Hodgkinson, suddenly businesslike. ‘Let’s put you back in your TMO role. Is there any reason why you think that Fennel Whittaker did not commit suicide?’
‘My main reason is that she seemed so together on Friday evening, so positive.’
The Detective Inspector consulted one of the printouts on her lap before echoing, ‘“Together”? From what I’ve heard about how Fennel Whittaker behaved at the Cornelian Gallery Private View, “to
gether” would not be the first word that came to mind.’
‘No, I agree. She was drunk and she did make a big scene. But the scene she made did have a therapeutic effect on her. She got a lot of stuff off her chest.’
‘Stuff like having a go at her former boyfriend Denzil Willoughby?’
‘Yes. Have you spoken to him yet?’
For the first time the glaze of police officialdom came over Carmen Hodgkinson’s face. ‘I’m sure he will be interviewed at the appropriate time,’ she replied, in automaton mode. Then, reverting to her more relaxed manner, she continued, ‘You also used the word “positive”, Jude. You said that Fennel Whittaker seemed “positive”.’
‘Yes. She said for her to die “would be a terrible waste”. She actually said that she wanted to go on living.’
‘You mean she was making plans for the future?’ Jude nodded. ‘Moving into a more manic than depressive phase on her bipolar scale?’
‘That’s how it felt, yes. Though “manic” is not really the right word. Fennel seemed very in control.’
‘In spite of having consumed at least two bottles of wine?’
‘In spite of that.’
‘Hm.’ The Detective Inspector was silent for a moment. ‘Presumably, having had dealings with a lot of bipolar patients, you are aware that the period of emergence from a depressive period can be a very dangerous one.’
‘I know that.’
‘At the really low point the sufferers may have suicidal intentions, but they are too lethargic to be capable of taking any action about anything. As the mood lifts, however, the thought is formed: I’m not going to put myself at risk of that kind of misery again. Now, while I’m actually capable of action, I’m going to do what I’ve been wanting to do for the past weeks. I’m going to top myself, and I’m going to plan it in such a way that there is no possibility of failure.’
‘I am aware that that can happen.’
‘And wouldn’t you say that Fennel Whittaker fitted that archetype rather well? She had made suicide attempts before . . . As you say, she was emerging from a bad bout of depression. Might not that be the moment for her to put into practice a sequence of carefully-planned actions?’
‘“Carefully-planned”? I don’t quite get that.’
‘We haven’t got all the information yet, but the way things look . . . the kitchen at Butterwyke House had been locked by Ned Whittaker on Friday evening, so—’
‘Why?’
‘Why did he lock the kitchen?’
‘Yes.’
‘Apparently there was something wrong with the back door lock. He wanted to ensure that anyone who broke in would get no further into the house than the kitchen.’
‘Was he expecting someone to break in?’
‘They have had problems with burglaries before. The Whittakers have quite a lot of stuff.’
‘That’s certainly true.’
‘Anyway, with the kitchen being locked, it means that Fennel couldn’t get in there when she came back after the Private View. Which means that, if the Sabatier knife that was used came from the Butterwyke House kitchen, she must have planted it there for use when required.’
‘Do you know that the knife did come from the Butterwyke House kitchen?’
‘That’s being investigated.’
‘But—’
‘What’s more,’ Carmen Hodgkinson continued implacably, ‘though we haven’t had the results of the lab tests back yet, we are pretty certain that the contents of one of the wine bottles left at the scene of her death had been laced with liquid paracetamol. Sounds like some pretty detailed planning had gone into Fennel’s death.’
‘But was it she herself who had done that planning?’
The Detective Inspector pursed her lips. ‘I see. Conspiracy theories? “The murder that was made to look like a suicide”.’
‘It has happened.’ Jude knew as she said the words how feeble they sounded.
‘Yes, it has happened, but not very often. And more often in the world of crime fiction than in the real world.’
‘Hm.’ Jude tapped her plump chin thoughtfully. ‘Inspector Hodgkinson, do you mind if I ask you how you got into this kind of work?’
‘Why? Do you want me to show you my ID? Are you suggesting I’m impersonating a police officer?’
‘No. Far from it. It’s just that you’re not the kind of person I would have imagined in this role.’
There was a silence, then a slow smile broke across the policewoman’s features. ‘I think I’ll take that as a compliment. Are you suggesting that you expected a police officer to come clumping in in hobnail boots?’
‘Well, maybe a bit.’
‘All right. I did my first degree in Psychology and Social Anthropology at St Andrews. I then went to Edinburgh to do an MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice. That led to seven years in HM Prisons. Then into the police force, where I’ve worked as a psychologist for eleven years. Enough information?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ said Jude, feeling uncharacteristically cowed.
Detective Inspector Hodgkinson looked at her watch. ‘Now, as I’m sure you know, time is money in police work, as it is in most other areas of life. And it’s going to become even more precious with all the new government cuts that are coming in. What this means is that at any given time we have to make hard decisions about where our resources are channelled. Getting together the paperwork for a suicide for the Coroner’s Court is boring but straightforward. Investigating the possibility that an apparent suicide was in fact a murder would take a huge amount of police time and is therefore not something we would wish to embark on, unless we had cast-iron evidence for our suspicions. So, Jude, I come back to a variation on my original question. The TMO question. Do you have any cast-iron evidence to support the thesis that Fennel Whittaker was murdered?’
‘Not evidence as such.’
‘But . . .?’
‘But I do think it’s odd that her mobile phone seems to have disappeared.’
‘On what do you base the assumption that it has disappeared?’
‘I didn’t see it in the yurt when I found her body.’
‘No, but that was hardly the moment when you were going to be at your most observant, Jude. You were probably in shock. You knew you were about to face the unpleasant task of telling the girl’s parents what had happened to their daughter. Fennel could have dropped the phone anywhere.’
‘Yes, but . . .’
Detective Inspector Hodgkinson suddenly gave Jude a narrow look. ‘You’re not implying, are you, that you made a detailed examination of the yurt where the girl died?’
Jude was quick with her denial. Whatever the truth, she knew the police wouldn’t take kindly to the activities of amateur detectives.
The Inspector looked down at her printouts. ‘There’s no mention in this lot of a mobile having been found.’ She made a note. ‘I’ll check it out. And you’re sure the girl had it with her when you were drinking in the other yurt?’
‘Certain. And I do have a vague recollection of her receiving a text on it.’
‘What time would this have been?’
Jude spread her hands wide in apology. ‘Sorry. As I say, it was all a bit blurry.’
‘Hm.’ Detective Inspector Hodgkinson made another note. ‘So, apart from the absence of the mobile, back to the same question. Do you have any evidence that might suggest Fennel Whittaker’s death was anything other than what it appears to be – in other words, suicide?’
Jude was forced to admit that she didn’t. Just a gut instinct. And though what she’d seen of Carmen Hodgkinson suggested that the Inspector might be more sympathetic to gut instincts than the average member of the police force, she didn’t think that sympathy would be sufficient for the initiation of a full-scale murder enquiry.
TWELVE
Most weekends now Carole Seddon heard from the family in Fulham. A weekly call from Stephen was far greater frequency of communication than she had been used to, b
ut then so much in their relationship had changed. His marriage to Gaby, introducing someone who hadn’t grown up in the claustrophobia of Carole’s own marriage to David, had started the thaw, and its progress had been greatly speeded up by the arrival of Lily. Whereas conversations between mother and son had always been rather stilted, with Stephen talking about his work (which Carole never fully understood) and both of them trying to avoid any mention of David, there now always seemed to be something to say. Lily was developing at such a rate that every week there was some new achievement to report, some physical action, a new word or, increasingly, new sentences.
But that Sunday evening the Fulham call came not from Carole’s son but her daughter-in-law.
‘About the week after the end of May Bank Holiday . . .’
‘What about the week after the end of May Bank Holiday, Gaby?’ asked Carole, trying to work out what date that would be. One of the effects of retirement from the Home Office, she found, was a profound vagueness about the dates of public holidays. Now they no longer represented days off work, they seemed infinitely less important than they had.
‘I’m talking about the one at the end of May, not the one at the beginning. Well, Stephen’s got to be in Frankfurt that week for work.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘Yes, his bosses never seem to be aware of public holidays.’ Carole almost heard that as a criticism of herself. ‘So he’s flying out on the Bank Holiday Monday and doesn’t get back till the Sunday after. And I was thinking: what a perfect opportunity for me to take Lily for a little jaunt to the South Coast.’
‘That’d be lovely. You’d be most welcome here, of course, Gaby. Just let me get my diary and check the dates.’
‘No, don’t worry, Carole. I wasn’t suggesting that we should impose ourselves on you at High Tor.’
‘Oh?’ Being Carole, she couldn’t take this statement at face value; she had to read something into it. Gaby and Lily had come to stay in Fethering the previous summer when Carole had rented a beach hut at Smalting for the occasion, and that seemed to have worked all right. But was Gaby now intimating that the visit hadn’t been as much of a success as Carole had considered it? Was she finding some inadequacy in their accommodation at High Tor?
