Guns in the Gallery

by Simon Brett

  ‘Yes.’ Jude judged the moment was right for a change of tack. ‘There has been some suggestion that Fennel’s death might not have been all it seemed.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘There’s a strong feeling among some people – and I’m one of them – that she might have been murdered.’

  Ingrid’s hand was instantly at her mouth. ‘Oh my God! What evidence do you have?’

  Jude retold the story of the suicide note and the missing mobile phone. ‘I’m not sure that either of those is proof that would stand up in a court of law, but it’s enough to convince me.’

  ‘Me too.’ Ingrid Staunton took a thoughtful sip of Chilean Chardonnay. ‘You say Fennel made a scene at the Denzil Willoughby Private View. What exactly did she say?’

  Jude recapped the outburst as accurately as she could and watched the other woman’s reaction.

  ‘She did actually use the words “causing someone’s death”, did she?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you say that Fennel had also had a relationship with my brother?’

  Jude managed to look more shocked by this lapse than she actually was. Ingrid Staunton immediately realized what she’d said. ‘Ah, that was silly of me. But I can’t deny it now, can I? Yes, I am in fact Bonita Green’s daughter.’

  ‘I was hoping you were,’ said Jude with a smile.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I thought you might be able to provide a missing link in this investigation.’

  ‘I’m rather afraid I may be able to. I don’t know if you know, but I haven’t seen or spoken to my mother for over twenty years.’

  ‘I had heard something of that, yes.’

  ‘You might think that’s a rather extreme reaction to a family row.’

  Jude shrugged. ‘These things happen. Particularly between mothers and daughters. The relationship can be pretty volatile during the teenage years.’

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t just me being a moody adolescent. There was more to it than that. I couldn’t stay living in the same house as her. I walked out when I was sixteen. Went to London, got any kind of job – bar work mostly – and saved up enough to put myself through St Martin’s. I didn’t bother changing my name, because I knew my mother would never come looking for me. Then in my early twenties I got married, so I got a different name, anyway.’

  ‘Are you still married?’

  Ingrid Staunton smiled a rather girlish smile. ‘Yes. To my considerable surprise, I’m still very happily married. Which is amazing, coming out the family that I did.’

  ‘Have you had any contact with your brother over the years?’

  ‘Virtually none. I wanted to cut all ties. I had nothing specifically against Giles, but the important thing was that I got away from that woman. And I certainly don’t miss either of them. I’ve got my own set-up. Work I love, husband and two children I adore. I don’t need to dig over past history.’

  ‘But I wouldn’t mind if you did dig over a bit,’ said Jude gently, ‘just to help me out.’

  ‘Mm. I know what you mean.’ Ingrid Staunton ran her fingers through her spiky blonde hair. ‘Right. You want to know why I couldn’t stand living with my mother any longer, don’t you?’

  ‘If you think that’ll help my investigation into Fennel Whittaker’s death, then yes, I do.’

  ‘I’m afraid it probably will. You said that at the Private View Fennel spoke of “causing someone’s death” and her attack seemed to be aimed at Denzil Willoughby. But of course there were other people there for whom her words might have had some relevance. My brother . . . my mother . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jude quietly, not wishing to break the confidential atmosphere.

  ‘I don’t know if you know anything about my father . . .’

  ‘As of today I know more about him than I did.’

  ‘He was a very strong, very handsome man . . . I remember him like that.’ The woman spoke wistfully. ‘Then he had a terrible motorcycle accident. I suppose I was about nine when that happened.’

  ‘I heard about it. I also heard about how he drowned on a family holiday in Corfu. He fell out of a rubber dinghy when it capsized.’

  ‘Yes. That was the official story.’

  Jude didn’t provide any prompt, she just waited breathlessly for what Ingrid Staunton would say next.

  ‘I didn’t go out in the boat with them. I stayed on the beach, reading – and watching. It was very hot, like it always was in Corfu. Mum was paddling the boat and she seemed to be going out much further than we usually did. Normally with the boat we just mucked about in the waves at the water’s edge. Not this time. Mum paddled out to where I knew she must be way out of her depth. And then . . .’

  Jude couldn’t resist saying, ‘Yes?’

  ‘She deliberately capsized the boat. She grabbed hold of Giles, who had his armbands on, anyway, so he would have kept afloat.’

  Ingrid Staunton was silent for a moment, swallowing down a reflux of emotion. Then she said, ‘But my mother made no attempt to save my father.’

  THIRTY-THREE

  Carole Seddon had kept trying Jude’s mobile number from the time that the Willoughbys, father and son, had left the workshop and there was nothing else to see on the webcam. She had so much to report. Her vague suspicions of Bonita Green had now crystallized into certainties. She wanted to share them with Jude, and then she wanted the pair of them to go to the Cornelian Gallery to confront the murderer.

  But she couldn’t get through to Jude, so the day’s frustration continued to pile up. And of course the demands of a dog didn’t stop, however dramatic the human situation around him. Gulliver needed to do his business. And though he could just be taken out on to the rough ground behind High Tor, that seemed rather mean. He’d much prefer a proper walk. And if Carole took her mobile with her, she could keep trying to raise her unavailable neighbour.

  Just as she was about to leave with Gulliver, the landline rang. It was, thank God, Jude. And a Jude full of more news than Carole could have hoped for. Her words came out stumbling over each other in a rush as she recounted the discoveries of the day. Finally there was enough silence for Carole to contribute what she had witnessed – via the webcam – in Denzil Willoughby’s workshop.

  Everything pointed in the same direction, towards Bonita Green’s guilt. Jude was going to catch a train that would get her into Fethering Station soon after seven. Carole would be there in the Renault to meet her and they would drive to the Cornelian Gallery for the final confrontation.

  But there was plenty of time before that for Gulliver to get a decent walk. So dog and owner set off towards Fethering Beach. The good weather was continuing and the afternoon felt more like June than early May.

  It was inevitable that their route would take them past the parade of shops and, of course, the Cornelian Gallery. As her mind imagined scenarios for the forthcoming encounter with Bonita Green, Carole was not a little shocked to see the object of her speculation outside the gallery, loading suitcases into a car.

  The first word that came into Carole’s mind was ‘getaway’. She and Jude had solved the case, they’d fingered the murderer and now that murderer was trying to get away. The confrontation schedule would have to be moved up a few hours.

  Without hesitation, Carole stepped forward to Bonita Green and said, ‘I’d like to have a word with you if I may.’

  The gallery-owner looked a little puzzled, but closed the hatchback of her car and said, ‘Fine. Would you like to come in?’

  ‘Thank you,’ Carole replied formally. ‘Do you mind if I bring the dog?’

  Permission granted, Gulliver was led into the Cornelian Gallery. Carole would really have preferred Jude with her than the dog. Gulliver was quite capable of defusing the drama of this kind of situation by licking the murderer’s hand.

  The gallery interior looked exactly as Carole remembered it when she first came in with her photograph of Lily. She was too preoccupied to notice the absence of th
e Piccadilly snowscape.

  ‘So,’ asked Bonita Green, ‘what can I do for you, Carole?’

  ‘I want to talk to you about the death of Fennel Whittaker.’

  ‘Ah. I thought that was all over. Didn’t I hear that the funeral’s been arranged? Poor girl. Terrible someone of that age taking their own life.’

  ‘If that is what she did,’ said Carole portentously.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Jude and I are convinced that Fennel didn’t take her own life. She was murdered.’

  ‘Really? And what makes you think that?’

  Carole spelled out the details of the suicide note and the missing mobile. At the end of her narration, Bonita nodded and said, ‘I suppose it’s possible.’

  Gulliver, who had been let off his lead, went across to lick the woman’s hand. Bonita tickled the top of his head. ‘And who,’ she asked, ‘is supposed to have perpetrated this rather ingenious crime?’

  Carole wouldn’t have minded more of a dramatic build-up to her denouement but, presented with the direct question, could only say, ‘You.’

  Bonita Green took the accusation pretty coolly and asked, ‘As a matter of interest, how did I do it?’

  ‘You heard about the original suicide note from Giles. Go on, can you deny that’s true?’

  ‘No, I can’t. He showed it to me. For reasons of his own he’d purloined it from that ghastly girl, Chervil. Or maybe she’d given it to him, I don’t know. But he’d showed it to me and it was in the flat upstairs, yes.’

  ‘Well then . . .’

  ‘What do you mean, “well then”?’

  ‘Well then, you knew about it, so you saw a way of using it to set up a death for Fennel that looked like suicide.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Yes. You also knew that Ned Whittaker had some of the same wine as that supplied here by the Crown and Anchor for the Private View. You laced two bottles with liquid paracetamol, so that Fennel would pass out and not resist as you slashed her wrists with the Sabatier knife which you had taken from the kitchen at Butterwyke House.’

  ‘I’ve never been inside Butterwyke House.’

  ‘Of course you have.’ Carole couldn’t help feeling that, as confrontations went, this one wasn’t one of the all-time greats.

  ‘Oh, one thing you haven’t told me,’ said Bonita. ‘Just as a matter of interest . . . why did I kill Fennel Whittaker?’

  ‘Because of what she said at the Private View. Everyone assumed that she was attacking Denzil Willoughby when she talked about “causing someone’s death”, but the person she was really targeting was you.’

  ‘And whose death am I supposed to have caused . . . apart, of course, from Fennel Whittaker’s?’

  ‘The death of your husband Hugo.’

  That did strike a deep blow. Up until then, Bonita Green had been playfully dismissive of Carole’s accusations. But she almost physically reeled at this one.

  ‘Have you been talking to Ingrid?’ she asked through tightened lips.

  ‘Jude has.’

  ‘Ah, your fellow conspirator. Of course.’

  ‘Ingrid remembers you in Corfu, deliberately capsizing the boat and watching your husband drown.’

  Bonita Green tottered, found the edge of the counter with her hand and propped herself up against it.

  ‘I know that’s what Ingrid thinks. She’s told me enough times. That’s why she left. She said she couldn’t bear to continue living in the same house as her father’s murderer.’

  ‘Well, you could see her point.’ Carole was beginning to think that the balance of power in the conversation was finally shifting in her favour.

  ‘But I didn’t kill Hugo.’

  ‘Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I didn’t. But I couldn’t tell Ingrid what really happened.’

  ‘She saw what really happened. She saw you capsize the boat.’

  ‘No, she didn’t. That’s what she thought she saw.’

  ‘She saw you suddenly stand up in the boat to tip it over.’

  ‘No! I stood up in the boat to try and catch Giles. To stop Giles doing what he was doing.’

  ‘What was he doing?’

  ‘He was pushing Hugo off the boat.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Giles, five-year-old Giles, had heard his father going on about how useless he was, and how he’d be better off dead, and so Giles thought he was doing what Hugo wanted. But I could never tell Ingrid that, could I? She had her own interpretation of what had happened. Better she thought what she thought than knew her brother had killed her father.’

  Bonita Green was engulfed by deep emotion. A tsunami of sobs ran through her body. ‘I couldn’t kill anyone,’ she wailed.

  ‘No, but I could.’

  Carole turned at the sound of the voice, and saw Spider emerging from his workshop.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  ‘I’ll kill anyone,’ Spider went on, ‘who tries to hurt Bonita. I knew about the drowning. Ingrid talked to me about it. She thought she could get me on her side against her mother. She thought I’d believe Bonita’d kill someone. I knew she wouldn’t. And when I heard that girl at the Private View accusing Bonita . . . well, I couldn’t let that go unpunished, could I?’

  ‘Are you saying, Spider,’ asked his employer, ‘that you killed Fennel Whittaker?’

  ‘Of course I did. I did it for you, Bonita. I won’t let anyone hurt you.’

  ‘But how on earth did you set it up?’ asked Carole.

  ‘I hear a lot when I’m in my workshop. People in the gallery forget I’m there. And I work my own hours . . . evenings, sometimes weekends. That’s how I heard Ingrid accusing Bonita of murdering her Dad. Way back, that was. I knew that wasn’t true, and all. Then more recently I heard Giles in here, talking to that new bit of stuff of his, the one with the silly name.’

  ‘Chervil,’ said Bonita.

  ‘Right. A Friday it must’ve been, because I know you wasn’t here. And from what they were saying, I think Giles at that stage was still going out with the other sister, Fennel. Anyway, that Chervil was saying her sister was, like, a loony and Giles’d be much better off going out with her. And, like, to prove what a loony Fennel was, she produced this suicide note and told him about how she’d found it.

  ‘Then she was, like, joking about how, if her sister ever got too much for her, she could use the note to set up, like, Fennel’d committed suicide. And she spelled out how easy it would be, to lace some booze with paracetamol and use a kitchen knife to slash her sister’s wrists. She talked like she’d really thought it through. And Giles said, like, what a devious mind she’d got, and Chervil said she was dangerous, and Giles said that was part of her attraction, and then . . .’ He stopped, embarrassed. ‘Then they, like . . . you know . . . they had sexual intercourse.’

  ‘In the gallery?’ asked Bonita.

  ‘Yeah, right here. I didn’t see anything, of course, but I could hear.’

  A silence ensued, then Carole asked, ‘How did you know where to find Fennel . . . on that Friday night?’

  ‘After the party finished . . .’

  ‘The Private View?’

  ‘Yes. That Chervil and Giles had an argument. She wanted him to go back with her to Butterwyke House, but he wanted to go and, like, drink with his mate Denzil Willoughby. So she stormed out, but she’d left her mobile here. And I picked it up and put it in my pocket. And later I heard it bleep and, like, a text had come through. And it was Fennel, saying where she was. And I know it was a message.’

  ‘A text message?’ asked Carole, confused.

  ‘No, a message to me, telling me what to do.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand. The message was to Chervil.’

  ‘The text was from Fennel to Chervil. But the message was to me. Quite often I get messages like that, messages that tell me what to do.’

  ‘Who from?’ said Carole in a very small voice.’

  Spider beamed. ‘Wel
l, Elvis Presley, of course. The King is my guide in everything I do.’

  Bonita Green and Carole exchanged looks, the truth dawning on both how completely deranged Spider was.

  ‘So what did the King tell you to do?’ asked Carole.

  ‘He told me to reply to the text and tell Fennel to meet in the big hut in an hour’s time.’

  ‘So she thought she was going to meet her sister?’

  ‘Yes.’ Spider smiled at his own cleverness. ‘The text came from, like, her sister’s phone. The King was looking after me.’

  ‘So what did you do with Chervil’s mobile after that?’

  ‘I took it with me to the place with the huts that night. I left it there with Fennel’s body.’

  ‘And was her own mobile phone there too?’

  ‘Yes. I left them both. I thought that was, like, clever. Anyone who, like, found the body would think it was Fennel’s sister who’d fixed to meet her there.’

  So, thought Carole, Chervil must have removed two mobile phones from the scene of the crime. And probably thrown both into the sea. That way the note might still make people think Fennel really had committed suicide.

  Carole thought of another detail. ‘The knife,’ she said, ‘the knife you used, Spider – did you take that from the Butterwyke House kitchen?’

  He looked puzzled by the question. ‘No, it was just one I had in the workshop.’

  ‘You used it for your framing work?’

  ‘No, I kept it here in case anyone threatened Bonita. I won’t let anyone hurt Bonita.’ He turned towards Carole, moving forward, looming over her. ‘That includes you, lady. I don’t know that I can make yours look like suicide, but through in the workshop I’ve got my underpinning machine, and I’ve got the guillotine and . . .’

  He reached out suddenly and grabbed Carole’s wrist. His grip was like a steel manacle. She tried to resist, but felt herself being pulled ineluctably towards the workshop door.

  ‘Gulliver!’ she shouted. ‘For God’s sake, Gulliver, do something!’

  Gulliver moved towards Spider and licked his free hand.