Guns in the Gallery

by Simon Brett

  Giles Green shrugged. ‘It’s a point of view,’ he said infuriatingly.

  ‘He’s protecting someone,’ said Carole when they were once again alone in the front room of Woodside Cottage.

  ‘I think I agree with you, but who?’

  ‘Himself? I’d still rather put him in the frame as a murderer than Chervil.’

  ‘Yes, he has a funny way of showing his affection for her, hasn’t he? Didn’t worry him at all when we suggested she might have killed her sister.’

  ‘I think that was relief that we were naming a suspect who wasn’t him.’

  ‘Or who wasn’t the person he’s trying to protect,’ suggested Jude.

  ‘And who might that person be?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘Well, I was just thinking,’ said Carole. ‘Suppose Chervil had told either her mother or father that she’d kept the suicide note . . .?’

  TWENTY-NINE

  The next morning Jude was doing a little idle shopping along the Fethering Parade and trying to decide how to spend the day. She had been reckoning her morning would be taken up by a client whom she was treating for panic attacks, but the woman had rung at eight thirty saying she couldn’t make the appointment. Whether the cancellation was actually a symptom of a panic attack Jude couldn’t be sure. The phone call had been ended so abruptly that Jude hadn’t had a chance to check out that possibility. She made a mental note to call the woman back the following week.

  Normally Jude had no problem filling her time, but that Friday morning she felt a little frustrated. She and Carole seemed to have come up against a series of brick walls in their investigation. Her neighbour had even ended up the previous evening by suggesting again that Jude should get in touch with Detective Inspector Hodgkinson in order to reactivate the official enquiry. And if that wasn’t an admission of failure, then what was?

  Jude was assessing the rival claims of a walk on Fethering Beach, including perhaps a coffee at the Seaview Café, and pottering around in the Woodside Cottage garden, when she saw Bonita Green emerging from the front door of the Cornelian Gallery. The woman was dressed in her trademark black, but smarter black, the jeans and jumper having given way to a trouser suit and the trainers to court shoes.

  Bonita carried a shoulder bag and, under the other arm, unwrapped, the Piccadilly snowscape that had hung in the Cornelian Gallery even when the space had been taken over by Denzil Willoughbys.

  Jude was intrigued, and then she remembered it was Friday. The day when the Cornelian Gallery was always closed.

  The decision to follow the gallery-owner was instantly made.

  It wasn’t too difficult for Jude to loiter at a distance, keeping Bonita in sight. There were enough people around in Fethering that morning for the surveillance to be inconspicuous. It seemed as though the woman was heading towards Fethering Station, and Jude remembered Carole reporting her conversation with Spider at the Private View. Friday, he’d said, was not only Bonita’s ‘special’ day, but also the day when she went ‘to London’.

  Jude checked her watch. She knew the times of the morning trains and realized that the first one – the one she and Carole had caught the previous Monday – was due to leave in about ten minutes. Before she bought her ticket she checked along the platform and saw Bonita Green sitting down, engrossed in a book.

  With her ticket purchased, Jude went to the adjacent convenience store and bought a Daily Mail (every now and then she enjoyed reading something that made her seriously cross). Then she lurked by the ticket office until the train was virtually in the station before rushing out to catch it. As she did so, she saw Bonita Green getting into a carriage two behind her. There was about the woman’s movements an air of ritual, of a routine that she had followed many times before.

  On the journey up to London, Jude read her Daily Mail and fumed quietly. Some of the time she just looked out of the window. It was a beautiful May day and she watched as the greens of the South Downs gradually gave way to the brick-red and grey of the sprawling suburbs.

  At some stations she checked through the window that Bonita Green hadn’t got off. Horsham, Gatwick Airport, East Croydon and Clapham Junction all offered opportunities to join other routes, but none of them tempted her quarry.

  When the train stopped at Victoria, Jude didn’t rush to get off. She waited till the oblivious Bonita Green had walked past her compartment and then eased herself out on to the platform. There were quite a lot of people getting off the train, but she had no difficulty in keeping the small black figure in her sights.

  Bonita Green went through the barrier and headed straight for the Underground. Anticipating this, Jude had bought a day’s travel card so she wouldn’t be delayed by buying a ticket for the tube. Bonita must have done the same, because she went straight through the gate leading to the Victoria Line.

  It was at this moment that she did something unforeseen. Jude had somehow assumed the gallery-owner would be going north into Central London, but she moved on to the southbound platform. Jude followed, not bothering to look too surreptitious. If Bonita Green did spot her, it wasn’t the end of the world. Jude had as much right to be spending a day in London as anyone else.

  Not wishing to lose sight of her quarry, Jude actually got into the same compartment, but Bonita still seemed unaware of her. She wasn’t reading now, but she seemed caught up in her own thoughts. And the air of serenity about her suggested that they were pleasant ones.

  Jude was surprised that they only went one stop. Pimlico. She let Bonita get out ahead of her and followed at a distance. But she had to hurry to keep up. There was a skittishness about the movements of the woman ahead. She almost ran up the escalator.

  Jude, who carried more weight than she should have done, was a bit breathless by the time she reached ground level. When she emerged from Pimlico Station, she was worried she might have lost the trail, but after a moment of anxiety, she spotted the woman in black walking demurely in the direction of Vauxhall Bridge.

  Before she reached the river, Bonita turned right into a narrow road on one side of which was a parade of shops and on the other a terrace of pretty little cottages. Without a backward glance, the woman took a set of keys out of her shoulder bag and let herself into one which had a door of Victorian purple.

  It was by now about eleven o’clock. Jude, trailing some way behind, looked at the row of shops and was delighted to see that one sold coffee. Taking her time, she ordered a cappuccino and an almond croissant, then settled herself into a window seat. She pretended to be reading her Daily Mail, but she had already been over it so thoroughly that it no longer even made her cross.

  She was getting towards the end of her second cappuccino (and her second almond croissant) and beginning to wonder how she could eke the time out much longer, when the purple door opposite opened.

  Bonita Green came out first, and there was about her an aura of happiness which Jude had never seen in their previous encounters. The bag still hung from her shoulder, but there was no sign of the painting.

  She was followed out by a tall white-haired handsome man who looked at least as happy as she did.

  Jude recognized him from the websites Carole had shown her. It was Addison Willoughby.

  THIRTY

  Jude followed the happy couple at a distance. They walked along arm in arm, talking and giggling animatedly.

  Given the time of day, it was quite possible that they were on their way out to lunch. Jude wondered how she would maintain her surveillance if that was their intention. Go into the same restaurant and scrutinize them over the top of her menu? Sit in a convenient coffee shop opposite their venue and drink more bladder-straining cappuccinos? But as was usually the case with Jude, she decided she would make that decision when she had to.

  Anyway, it was soon clear that their destination was not a restaurant. In fact, they seemed to be heading straight back the way Bonita had come, to Pimlico Underground.

  So it proved. At the head of the stairs
down to the station the couple stopped and embraced warmly. Jude managed to be close enough, apparently removing a stone from her shoe, to hear their conversation.

  ‘It seems awful to be going so soon,’ Bonita said.

  ‘Just for today,’ said Addison Willoughby. ‘Once I’ve sorted things out with Denzil, there’s nothing to stop us being together all the time.’

  ‘I can’t wait.’ Bonita Green rose on tiptoe to give him a parting kiss on the lips. ‘Call me when you’ve done the deed.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Then he watched her as she skittered off down the stairs. When Bonita was out of sight, he turned to find himself facing a generously upholstered woman with a bird’s nest of blonde hair.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘My name’s Jude. You don’t know me.’

  ‘No, I certainly don’t.’ But he said it in puzzlement rather than anger.

  ‘I know your son Denzil.’

  ‘Ah.’ He waited to see what she’d say next.

  Jude, grateful that Carole wasn’t there to disapprove, decided to go for broke. ‘And I’m investigating the death of his former girlfriend Fennel Whittaker.’

  ‘Are you from the police?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ Which, given the situation, was a rather cheeky answer. ‘You heard what happened to her?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he said almost snappishly. ‘And what – are you suggesting there’s some thought Fennel might have been murdered?’

  ‘It seems to be a possibility.’

  ‘And Denzil is under suspicion of having done it?’

  ‘Let’s say we’d like to rule him out of our enquiries.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Addison Willoughby wearily. ‘You’d better come back to my place.’

  The interior of the terraced cottage with the purple door was immaculate and expensively appointed. But it had the feeling of a hotel suite, not a place where people lived all the time.

  Over the fireplace in the front room where they sat hung the Piccadilly snowscape from the Cornelian Gallery. ‘Did you do that?’ asked Jude. Addison Willoughby nodded. ‘It’s very good.’

  ‘Yes, there was a time when I was thought to have considerable talent. Long ago dissipated, I’m sorry to say.’

  ‘You seem to have been very successful in the world of advertising.’

  ‘Maybe, but I don’t regard that as a talent. It is at best a skill, and a learnt skill at that. Talent is what artists have.’

  ‘Like your son?’

  ‘I’d say the jury’s still out on that.’

  ‘Then like Bonita?’

  ‘She too has not fulfilled her early promise. Every year the art schools churn out another generation of aspiring artists. Most of them are at that stage described as “promising”. Very few of them actually make it.’

  ‘Is it a disappointment to you that you weren’t one of those who made it?’

  ‘A constant disappointment, yes.’ There was a dry bitterness in his tone.

  Jude was silent, wondering where next to direct her questioning. Then she asked, ‘Has your relationship with Bonita been going on a long time?’

  ‘Yes, a very long time. We met as students at the Slade, had a wild fling, then drifted apart and married other people. Both married too young, of course.’ He sighed. ‘Everyone marries too young.’

  ‘I think they may have done in our generation. I’m not sure that they still do.’

  ‘Maybe not. Certainly Denzil shows no sign of leading some poor unfortunate girl to the altar.’

  ‘He told you, I assume, that I and my friend Carole visited him at his studio on Monday.’

  ‘He mentioned it, yes.’

  ‘We were there when he got the text about his mother’s death.’

  ‘Oh.’ The intonation was so flat it was hard to tell whether this was news to him or not.

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ said Jude formally.

  ‘You don’t need to be. It’s been common knowledge for years that Philomena and I didn’t get on. We’ve lived apart since Denzil was about five.’

  ‘Did you separate because of your relationship with Bonita?’

  ‘That was one of the reasons on my side. Not Philomena’s. I worked very hard to ensure that she never knew about me and Bonita.’

  ‘I don’t see how that could have been possible.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, if you walk through the London streets arm in arm, surely there’s a very real danger of your being seen by friends of your wife or, given your high profile, being spotted by a press photographer and—’

  ‘You don’t understand. What you’ve witnessed this morning is something very new. Something I wish could have happened a very long time ago. Up till now our relationship has been conducted exclusively within these walls. We haven’t dared go out together, even to a restaurant, in case, as you say, we were seen by someone who might get the news back to Philomena. Now the situation is different.’

  ‘Because of Philomena’s death?’

  Addison Willoughby nodded. ‘For that very reason. Now there is nothing to stop Bonita and me from doing what she should have done many years ago – and getting married.’

  ‘But why did you feel you had to wait so long? It’s not too hard to get a divorce these days.’

  ‘There are two reasons why we waited. One was that, though Philomena and I didn’t get on, I didn’t hate her. I still had a lot of respect for her, and I wanted to spare her the pain that must inevitably be caused by her knowledge that Bonita and I were lovers. The public explanation of our marriage breakdown was that I was a workaholic – which is probably true, by the way. Anyway, that ensured that Philomena was not publicly humiliated.’

  ‘You said there were two reasons.’

  ‘Yes. The other was that both Philomena and I are Catholics. She’s considerably more devout that I am.’ He was unaware of using the present tense, as though his wife were still alive. ‘But it got to me too. I was taught by Jesuits. And you know the old maxim: “Give me a child for his first seven years and I will give you the man.” Well, much as I resent it, that has worked its evil magic on me . . . with the result that I could not contemplate the idea of divorce. Bloody nuisance, but there you are.’

  ‘Now, though . . .?’

  ‘Yes. With Philomena dead, my problems are at an end. Well, some of them are, anyway.’

  ‘Does Denzil know what’s about to happen?’

  ‘No. I am going to see him this afternoon to tell him. It is not an encounter that I relish. But once that hurdle has been overcome, the future for Bonita and me looks set fair.’

  A new line of enquiry offered itself to Jude. ‘What happened to Bonita’s husband?’ she asked.

  ‘Hugo? He drowned on a family holiday in Greece. A merciful release.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because he was severely crippled. He had a pretty miserable quality of life.’

  ‘Was he crippled from birth?’

  ‘God, no. We were all contemporaries at the Slade. Hugo was a huge, boisterous character. Very good-looking, zapped around London on a Harley-Davidson, vacuuming up all the female students. I think initially the marriage to Bonita worked pretty well. They had the two kids, with about seven years’ gap between them. Bonita didn’t have much time to do her art, but Hugo was becoming very successful.

  ‘Then, maybe four years after Giles was born, he was in a horrendous crash. Came off his Harley on the M1. Hugo was smashed to bits. No one thought he could possibly survive. Somehow he pulled through, but he was condemned to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. A terrible fate for someone with a larger-than-life personality like Hugo. And there was no way he could continue with his painting.

  ‘It was round that time that I met up with Bonita again and I couldn’t believe it when I saw the state Hugo was in. He talked about committing suicide, so as I say, the drowning was a merciful release.’

  ‘Do you know how it happened?’
/>   ‘The drowning? They were on holiday out in Corfu and they had an inflatable dinghy with them. Not a real boat, not much more than a toy really, with plastic paddles, you know. Anyway, as Bonita told it to me, Hugo had kept saying he wanted to go out in the dinghy and she said it’d be dangerous – he had metal calipers on his legs, apart from anything else. But Hugo was strong-willed, a difficult man to argue with, so eventually he persuaded Bonita to let him have a go. The little girl stayed on the beach sunbathing, but the other three went out in the boat. Well, everything was fine at first, but, I don’t know exactly what happened . . . The boat capsized, Bonita grabbed hold of Giles, and Hugo, weighed down by the calipers, went straight to the bottom. Of course they raised the alarm, but by the time anyone got to him, Hugo was already dead.

  ‘I’ve never mentioned it to Bonita, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Hugo didn’t tip the boat over deliberately. As I say, he had no quality of life and no prospects of things ever improving. I think he wanted to die.’

  There was a silence before Jude said, ‘I hope you don’t mind my asking this, but did you restart the relationship with Bonita before Hugo’s death?’

  Addison Willoughby gave a shamefaced nod. ‘I’m afraid we did, yes. Bonita’s a very highly sexed woman and with Hugo she was locked into a kind of Lady Chatterley situation. I took the role of a rather more cultured Mellors. I’m not particularly proud of what happened, but I’m very grateful for it.’

  ‘And it’s been confined to Fridays ever since?’

  ‘Yes. We wanted to be together all the time, but I couldn’t do that to Philomena. After a few years I bought this place . . . Pimlico, popular place for MPs to set up their mistresses. Nobody takes too much notice of what goes on here. So yes, for Bonita and me it’s been Fridays ever since.’

  There was a silence. Then Addison Willoughby said, ‘Still, that’s all water under the bridge. You wanted to talk to me because you suspect my son of murdering Fennel Whittaker.’

  Jude had forgotten the lie she had told to engage Addison in conversation, and was a little flustered as she said, ‘I wouldn’t go that far. It’s just that there now seems to be little doubt that she was murdered.’ She briefly outlined the discovery that the suicide note dated from Fennel’s earlier attempt. ‘And it was your son she bawled out at the Private View. So he could be seen to have had a motive against her.’