by Simon Brett
‘But your mother didn’t respond to her in the same way as your father?’
‘It was different with Mummy. She’d act tougher about it, say, “Don’t worry about Fennel – she’s just having one of her prima donna moments.” She’d say that, but in many ways she was as much in thrall to Fennel as Daddy was.’
‘But she’s not been as affected by her death as Ned is. She’s even referred to it as being a relief.’
‘Yes, but you can’t always believe what Mummy says. She can be quite devious at times. With her there’s a lot going on that you don’t see on the surface.’
Jude nodded, having received confirmation of the impression that she had of Sheena Whittaker.
‘So what I’m saying is,’ Chervil went on, ‘I’ve always felt inferior to Fennel. In spite of the fact that, by any kind of public criterion, I’ve always been much more successful than she has. I did better than her at school, and in my business career. And my relationships with men were always better. I didn’t end up with the kind of no-hopers Fennel did.’
Jude was struck, not for the first time, by how deeply ingrained childhood perceptions could prove to be in adult personalities. Family designations, like ‘the pretty one’ or ‘the clever one’ could cast long shadows into the future.
But she did pick up on one thing Chervil had just said. ‘You’re not describing Giles as a “no-hoper”, are you?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I know that Fennel had a relationship with him too.’
Chervil looked annoyed. ‘Who did you hear that from?’
‘Denzil Willoughby.’
‘I might have guessed. There’s a streak of vindictive gossip in Denzil. Anyway, Giles is far from being a no-hoper. He was a rare exception in Fennel’s catalogue of masculine disaster areas. They weren’t together very long, and they were always bound to split up sooner or later –’ she smiled smugly – ‘which was of course very good news for me.’
There was a silence. Jude asked if Chervil would like a drink, but the offer was refused. ‘Maybe we could get back to the suicide note . . .?’ Jude suggested.
‘Yes. I’m trying to explain why I kept it. I don’t know, it seemed logical at the time. Fennel had just staged another of her dramas. As usual, Daddy had dropped everything and come rushing to her aid. And once again I knew he’d smooth the whole thing over, keep it quiet, see that news of what had happened didn’t spread beyond the family and close friends. And no one would believe the kind of panic and aggravation Fennel had caused us. So I kept the suicide note as kind of, I don’t know . . . evidence against her, if I ever needed it.’
‘And did you ever need it?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
Jude left that line of questioning for a moment and moved on in another direction. ‘You realize there are certain logical consequences from your admission that you kept the suicide note . . . and even more from the fact that it was found by Fennel’s dead body.’
Again Chervil said, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Jude couldn’t decide whether the girl was playing for time or whether she genuinely hadn’t followed the logic through.
‘Well, to put it bluntly, it means that your sister didn’t commit suicide.’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘Oh, come on, Chervil . . .’ There was a rare note of exasperation in Jude’s voice. ‘Your father’s told me that the note left by Fennel’s body in the yurt was definitely the one he saw in the flat in Pimlico, the one he told you to destroy. That means it wasn’t left there by Fennel herself, because even if she had wished to go down the bizarre route of leaving the note she’d written before, it wasn’t in her possession, so she couldn’t have. You had it, Chervil, and I’d need a pretty convincing argument to persuade me it wasn’t you who left it there.’
‘Well, it wasn’t.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘When did you last see the note, Chervil?’
‘A few weeks ago. There’s a file I keep in a drawer in my bedroom. It’s personal stuff, things I don’t want to lose.’
‘Are you talking about your bedroom in your London flat?’
‘No, down here at Butterwyke House.’
‘And why did you look at the note a few weeks ago?’
‘Er, I can’t remember.’ The girl’s hesitation showed she was lying.
‘That’s not good enough, Chervil. We’re talking about a murder here. The suicide note was in your possession, then it appeared beside your sister’s body. The most likely explanation remains that you put it there.’
‘I didn’t!’ came the passionate response. ‘It was already there when I . . .’
The words trickled away as she realized what she had said. Jude let the silence stretch long enough for Chervil Whittaker to take in the full impact of her giveaway, then observed, ‘I think you’ve come rather close to an admission there.’
‘Admission of what?’ Chervil demanded defiantly.
‘Admission that you did go to the treatment yurt at Walden the night Fennel died.’
‘And what if I did? I didn’t murder her. She was already dead when I got there.’
‘With the suicide note lying beside her?’
‘Yes.’
‘So what did you do? On the previous occasion when you found Fennel like that you immediately contacted your father. Is that what you did this time?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I didn’t want him involved. I didn’t want anyone involved. I didn’t want anyone to know what’d happened.’
‘Or rather you didn’t want anyone to know that you’d been in the yurt.’
‘All right, that was part of it. Look, I was in shock. At first I thought Fennel must’ve killed herself. She’d threatened to enough times. I thought she’d finally succeeded.’
‘But then you saw the note.’
‘Yes.’
‘And its presence told you that she must have been murdered.’
‘Well, it told me that was a possibility. As I say, I wasn’t thinking straight.’
‘Mm. I think the presence of the note brought another thought into your mind, the thought of who might have put it there.’ The girl didn’t respond, she remained stubbornly silent, so Jude changed tack. ‘Who else knew you had the suicide note, Chervil?’
‘No one.’
‘I don’t think that’s true. And if it is true, then you are the only person who could have planted it by the body. So either you admit someone else knew you had it, or you are effectively identifying yourself as your sister’s murderer. I do still have the number of Detective Inspector Hodgkinson, the police officer who questioned me after Fennel died . . .’
It was not the kind of threat that Jude liked using, but it did have the required effect. Chervil said, ‘Yes, all right, I did show it to someone else.’
‘Who? I can’t think there are that many candidates.’
‘Well, I . . .’
Jude was distracted by another thought. ‘When you found Fennel’s body, did you also find her mobile phone?’
Chervil Whittaker looked as guilty as a schoolgirl caught smoking by the headmistress. ‘How did you know that?’
‘Logic,’ replied Jude, though in fact guesswork would have been a more truthful answer. ‘Did you take it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’ Silence. ‘I don’t think I really need to ask that question. I know why you took it. Because you knew that the last message or text on the phone would have been the one from Fennel’s murderer, the one that arranged their meeting in the treatment yurt. You took the phone because you wanted to protect the person who you thought had killed your sister.’ Still no response. ‘And where’s the phone now?’
‘Somewhere no one will ever find it.’
‘I wonder where that might be . . .? Rather blessed round here, aren’t we, being so close to the sea. Not to mention to the River Fether. And of course that’s tidal, so anyth
ing thrown in there can get swept out a long way. Be hard to find a mobile phone in the English Channel, wouldn’t it, Chervil?’
Jude was busking, improvising wildly. But she had sometimes known occasions where her instinctive conjectures had proved to be right, and she felt as if she was on just such a roll at that moment.
Anyway, the actual location of the missing mobile didn’t matter that much. There were more important issues to be discussed.
‘So who was the last message on Fennel’s mobile from?’ she asked implacably.
‘I didn’t look.’
‘You’re lying. Of course you did.’ The girl’s mouth was set in a line of defiance. ‘It’s not too difficult to work out, you know, Chervil. And it’s even easier to work out who you showed the suicide note to. There aren’t that many people who you’d invite into your bedroom, are there?’ Jude waited for a response, but once more in vain. ‘Why did you show the suicide note to Giles, Chervil?’
The younger woman’s shoulders sagged suddenly. All the fight had gone out of her. ‘It was when we first started going out together – or at least I wanted us to go out together, but Giles wasn’t so sure. Anyway, I’d met him for a drink at the Crown and Anchor in Fethering and then we’d gone back to the Cornelian Gallery. He was still seeing Fennel, and I wanted to show him that she wouldn’t be good for him, that if he kept seeing her he’d get into the same kind of emotional blackmail trap as Daddy had.’
‘So you actually used the suicide note to persuade Giles to stop going out with Fennel and to start going out with you?’
‘Yes,’ Chervil Whittaker replied. And the note of triumph in her voice revealed the depths of the jealousy she had always felt for her dead sister.
TWENTY-EIGHT
‘So Chervil didn’t see Giles the night of Fennel’s death?’ asked Carole.
‘No. She left him at the Private View. He was supposed to be joining her at Butterwyke House, but then he texted her to say that he was out drinking with Denzil Willoughby and would be a bit late. He didn’t turn up till the following morning.’
‘Did Chervil say why she went to the treatment yurt in the middle of the night?’
‘She gave me some guff about waking up with a sense of foreboding and being drawn towards the place, which sounded like a pack of lies to me.’
‘I’m surprised.’
Carole’s words had Jude fazed for a moment, but then she got it. The implication was that ‘a sense of foreboding’ and ‘being drawn towards the place’ were exactly the kind of New Age mumbo-jumbo that appealed to Jude. She didn’t bother to rise to the insinuation, instead saying, ‘At least we now know for sure that it was murder.’
‘And we know that Giles Green was the perpetrator.’
‘I’m not so convinced about that. He was certainly involved, but I’m wondering whether they planned the thing together.’
‘Hm. And the last message on Fennel’s mobile was presumably from Giles?’
‘From his number, yes. Chervil admitted that.’
They were back in the High Tor kitchen. By the cold Aga, Gulliver looked balefully at the bandage on his infected paw. In the Renault on the way back from the vet’s he’d tried to chew it off, but now recognized that was a battle he was not going to win.
Carole tapped her teeth thoughtfully. ‘Of course, Giles Green has in theory got an alibi for the relevant night.’
‘Oh, come on, Carole. “Drinking with Denzil Willoughby at the Dauncey Hotel”? What kind of an alibi’s that? Denzil’s virtually told us that those two’d tell any lie to get the other one out of a spot.’
‘Yes.’ Carole looked at her watch. ‘Well, one thing I think we can be pretty sure of is that by now Giles Green has had a full action replay of the conversation you’ve just had with Chervil.’
‘I would think so, yes.’
‘Which might of course mean that you are now at risk. That old cliché beloved of crime writers about a person who’s killed once not being afraid to do so again.’
‘I don’t know why you’re looking so smug, Carole. He knows that you were involved in the investigation too. If I’m at risk, I’m certainly not the only one.’
‘So the question is: what do we do? Just wait till Giles Green contacts us?’
Jude spread her hands helplessly wide. ‘What else can we do?’
‘Well, now we definitely know it was murder, maybe you should get back in touch with your friend Detective Inspector Hodgkinson and suggest she reopens the official enquiry . . .?’
‘Ooh.’ A dubious look. ‘I’m not sure that we’ve got enough evidence to do that yet, have we?’
Carole grinned broadly. ‘I’m so glad you said that, Jude.’ Handing over to the cops during one of their investigations always did seem to be a bit of a cop-out.
Jude was unsurprised to have a phone call that Thursday afternoon from Giles Green. He wanted to come and see her. She agreed, but told him that Carole would be there too. Partly she wanted a witness for anything the young man might say, but she had a safety motive too. If Giles really had murdered Fennel Whittaker . . .
He arrived much less flustered than either Ned or Chervil had been. As ever, he was wearing a pinstriped suit (Carole and Jude were beginning to wonder whether he possessed any casual clothes). He accepted the offer of a cup of coffee, and his demeanour was one of urbane reasonableness. There’s been some minor misunderstanding, his manner seemed to say, which I’m sure we can sort out very quickly.
When they were all supplied with drinks, Jude said, ‘I assume that Chervil has told you about the conversation we had earlier.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Well, it would seem to me,’ said Carole rather beadily, ‘that you have some explanations to provide.’
‘I can understand why you would think that.’
‘You don’t deny that you knew about the note that Fennel had written at the time of her first suicide attempt?’
‘No, I don’t. Chervil had shown it to me.’
‘And you knew where she kept it? In the file in her bedroom at Butterwyke House?’
‘Yes, I knew that.’
‘And presumably you have recently spent some time in that bedroom?’
‘I certainly have,’ he replied roguishly. To Carole and Jude he seemed far too relaxed, unaffected by the seriousness of the allegations against him.
‘So you had the opportunity to take the suicide note?’
‘I had. On many occasions. But the fact remains that I didn’t.’
‘Chervil seems to think that you did.’
‘Chervil is trying to cover her back.’
‘Oh?’
‘Look, all this is very difficult for her, poor love.’
‘I’m sure it is,’ said Carole.
‘She’s had a lot to cope with over the last few months. Our relationship has been good, but it hasn’t always been easy.’ Carole and Jude exchanged looks. Was this a reference to his reputation for violence to his girlfriends? ‘The thing is, for some reason I can’t fathom, my mother doesn’t approve of Chervil.’
‘I thought the reason was that she preferred your wife,’ said Carole tartly. ‘She thinks you should get back with Nikki.’
‘Oh yes, that’s certainly true.’
‘We have actually seen Nikki . . . you know, since the Private View.’
If Carole had thought she’d get a response from this small bombshell, she was disappointed. ‘Yes, I know,’ said Giles coolly. ‘Up at Denzil’s workshop.’
Of course the two men were in each other’s pockets. Anything Denzil Willoughby knew was pretty soon known by Giles Green.
‘While we were there,’ said Jude softly, ‘he got the news of his mother’s death.’
‘Yes, he was very cut up about that. They were very close.’
‘Whereas his relationship with his father . . .?’
‘Was not so close, no.’
‘Their chief argument being that Addison Willoughby kept his s
on short of funds?’
‘That was part of it. There were a lot of reasons why they didn’t get on. Denzil didn’t like the way Addison had treated his mother.’
‘And of course,’ Carole interposed, ‘it’s Denzil Willoughby who’s supplied your alibi for the night of Fennel Whittaker’s death.’
‘Yes.’ The smug smile had returned. ‘We were drinking together in the Dauncey Hotel.’
‘All night?’
‘All night,’ he confirmed complacently. They knew they’d never shake him on that. They also knew that the alibi was just as likely to be false as genuine.
Carole tried a different approach. ‘Did you tell anyone else that you’d seen Fennel’s suicide note?’
‘Why on earth should I have done that?’
‘The person who left it by her body must have known of its existence.’
‘They did.’
‘Are you saying you know who left it?’
‘Of course I am. Chervil left it there.’
‘What are you saying?’ asked Jude. ‘That Chervil killed her sister?’
‘No, of course I’m not saying that. Chervil found Fennel dead in the treatment yurt. After the time in Pimlico she had no problem recognizing what had happened. Her sister had killed herself. But she thought people might misinterpret the death, might even think it had been murder, if there wasn’t a suicide note there. So she collected the one that she’d kept in her bedroom at Butterwyke House and put it beside Fennel’s body.’
‘That’s nonsense,’ protested Jude. ‘Why on earth should she have done that?’
‘I don’t know why, just take my word for it, that’s what she did!’ For the first time in their encounter Giles Green was in danger of losing his cool.
‘And did she take Fennel’s phone?’ asked Carole. ‘The one on which the last message had come from your mobile?’
‘She took the phone. But the last message was not from me. It was from Chervil herself. She’d fixed to meet Fennel in the treatment yurt. That’s why she took the mobile and destroyed it. She thought it might incriminate her.’
‘You mean, if it had been found, people might have thought Chervil murdered her sister?’
