Fethering 08 (2007) - Death under the Dryer

by Simon Brett

  “Rowley! What the hell have you been doing?”

  He quailed visibly under his wife’s onslaught and asked feebly, “What are you talking about?”

  “You know bloody well what I’m talking about! What you did to Nathan.”

  “I did it for his own good. I was trying to protect him.”

  “Rowley, that is so much crap! I can’t believe that you didn’t tell me what you’d done. I’ve spent the past three weeks worried sick about the boy, when you could have put my mind at rest at any moment by telling me where Nathan was.”

  “But I thought if you knew, you’d have told the police.”

  “Too bloody right I would.”

  “Bridget, if the police had got hold of him, God knows what would have happened. Our fine boys in blue are not—”

  “Oh, shut up, Rowley! You sound like a record whose needle’s stuck. I’ve had enough of your right-on Guardian-reading claptrap to last me a lifetime!” (Carole was rather enjoying this conversation. What a very sensible woman Bridget Locke was. She thought exactly like Carole did.) “You weren’t thinking about Nathan at all! I wonder if you’ve ever thought about anyone else apart from yourself, except to see if you can make an anagram out of their name. As ever, with Nathan in trouble, your first thought was about you. A Locke family crisis? Someone’s got to take control here. And, because the rest of the family are so bloody pusillanimous, it had to be you, didn’t it? He’s only your nephew, not your son, but it’s still got to be you who comes to the rescue. Don’t worry, Rowley can sort everything out! Here comes the hero, galloping up on his white charger.”

  “And then what did you do? What was your solution to the crisis? You made it all part of a game. Yes, the bloody Wheal Quest. And you took advantage of your vulnerable daughter Mopsa and made her play along with your stupid, sub-Tolkien fantasy. And you never for one moment thought of what you might be doing to Nathan!”

  Bridget Locke paused for breath. Her geriatric audience settled in their seats, and took another sip of tea in anticipation of Act Two.

  “How do you know all this?” Rowley managed to ask.

  “I know because the police rang the house to tell me that they were questioning Nathan. Because he’s a juvenile, they wanted a family member there.” She turned the beam of her displeasure on the shrinking Eithne. “And apparently I was the one who he wanted to be there with him.”

  “But surely you should be at work?”

  “Yes, Rowley, it’s a Friday. I should be at work. But some things are more important than work. Listen, that call I had from the police was the first I knew that the poor boy was still alive. So, since I couldn’t get hold of you anywhere, after I’d been to the police station to see Nathan, I went straight round to Eithne’s, and made her tell me what the hell had been going on.”

  Arnold’s wife appealed apologetically to the two brothers. “I’m sorry. You know what she’s like when she gets forceful.” She still looked to Carole like Mrs Bun the Baker’s Wife, but the game was no longer Happy Families.

  “Anyway,” Bridget steamed on, “the police are extremely interested in talking to you, Rowley. I’m sure they won’t have any problem finding you, but you might make things easier by turning yourself in.”

  “What do you mean, ‘turning myself in’?” he asked petulantly. “I haven’t committed any crime.”

  “No? I think the police could probably think of a few. ‘Perverting the Course of Justice’…? I don’t know the proper terms, but I’m sure there’s one called ‘Abduction of a Juvenile’. And there’s certainly ‘Unlawful Imprisonment’.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Bridget! These weren’t crimes. They were all in the family.”

  “God, Rowley, that sums you up, doesn’t it? “All in the family.” Everything’s all right so long as it’s kept within the magic circle of the Lockes. That’s always been your escape. When you fail publicly, when you lose a job…never mind, because you’re still a little god within the family. And everyone in the family does as you say. I’ve even done it myself. Pretended to have a bad back, so that you can find out if some woman’s snooping on you. But that’s always been your approach. Never mind your inadequacies in the real world—in the Wheal Quest you are still a hero. Rowley, if you only knew how bloody pathetic you are!”

  He rose from his chair with an attempt at dignity. “I’m not going to stay here to be insulted.”

  “Fine. Go to the police. Let them start insulting you instead.”

  “That kind of remark is not worth responding to. Come on, we’re going.”

  Arnold rose obediently to his feet and crossed to his wife, who had yet to sit down. Rowley joined them, then looked back at Bridget. “Are you coming?”

  “No. Certainly not now. And I’ll have to think about whether I ever come back.”

  He did not respond to that, but led his acolytes back across the sand towards the front. The animated language of his back-view showed that he was telling Eithne off for her betrayal of Locke confidentiality. And Arnold was joining in the castigation.

  Exhausted, Bridget dropped into a seat next to Carole. “Sorry about all that. I was just bloody furious. Letting off the steam of a good few years, I’m afraid.”

  Realizing the climax of the play had passed, Fethering’s elderly matinee-goers returned once more to their tea and cakes.

  “Yes.” Now the others had gone, Carole felt awkward. The dissection of the Lockes’ family life—and indeed marriage—had been rather public. She didn’t quite know where the conversation should move next. Jude, she knew, would instinctively have found the right direction.

  Still, there was always one safe English fallback. “Would you like me to get you a cup of tea?”

  The drained woman looked pathetically grateful for the offer and accepted.

  By the time she returned with a fresh pot for both of them, Carole had decided which tack to take. “How did Nathan seem when you saw him?”

  “Oh, fine. No physical harm, anyway. Though what effect it’s going to have on him emotionally, I hate to think.”

  “What’s he doing now?”

  “Asleep. He didn’t get much sleep last night. The detectives are being quite gentle with him.”

  “Rowley would never believe that.”

  “No.” She sighed. “I just feel so sorry for Nathan. I mean he’s still in deep shock about that poor girl’s death. He did love her, you know, with that intense adolescent passion of a first love. He must be so cut up. And I can’t think that being shut away for three weeks and ministered to by his loony cousin has made the grieving process any easier.”

  “I’m surprised to hear you use the word ‘loony’.”

  “Yes, very remiss of me, isn’t it? If I wasn’t in such an emotional state, I wouldn’t have been so politically incorrect. Mopsa is, after all, my stepdaughter. But it’s true. I’ve never managed to get through to her. I mean, she loathed me, because I replaced her beloved mother, but…there was always a problem there with Mopsa. Poor concentration, no grasp of reality. I’m sure there’s a name for it…Somebody-or-Other’s Syndrome, no doubt. But, of course, the Lockes never had her properly diagnosed. No, as ever, they reckoned they could sort everything out themselves.”

  “Do you know why Rowley’s first wife left?”

  Bridget Locke smiled grimly. “After the scene you’ve just witnessed, do you need to ask?”

  “Maybe not.” There was a silence, broken only by the gulls and the soft swooshing of the sea, before Carole asked what was, for her, a daringly personal question. “Do you think you will go back to him?”

  “I don’t know.” There was a weary shake of the head. “At the moment I’m so seething with fury that…I won’t make a quick decision. There is still something there, you know. There’s a side of Rowley that very few people ever see. He can be quite enchanting.”

  I’ll have to take your word for that, thought Carole. And again she asked herself the perennial question: why do bright, in
telligent women stay with such unsatisfactory men? But then she thought of the alternative, the divorce she and David had shared. And wondered whether that was actually a much better solution.

  “I was wondering…” Bridget went on, “you spent most of yesterday driving Nathan back from Treboddick…”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he say anything to you…you know, anything that made you think differently about who might have killed Kyra Bartos?”

  “Not really. I mean, he told me and Jude what he’d done that night…which sounded pretty convincing to us…though whether it’ll convince the police…”

  “As I say, the police are being much more sensitive than I’d ever have expected. They very definitely want to question Nathan, but I didn’t get the impression that they regard him as a major suspect.”

  “Good. Well, the one thing he did mention was that that night, while he was in the salon with Kyra…he thought he heard someone trying to get in through the back gate.”

  “The murderer?”

  “Possibly. Whoever it was couldn’t have got in then…but maybe came back later.”

  “Hmm…” Bridget Locke swept her hands slowly through her long blonde hair and looked thoughtful. “There was one thing that Nathan said to me, just now, at the police station…which I thought was interesting…”

  “What was that?”

  “He said that there were a dozen red roses in the back room at the salon the night Kyra Bartos died.”

  “Yes, I saw them. Part of Nathan’s romantic set dressing, imagine. Which, given the circumstances, is pretty sad.”

  “No.”

  “What?” Carole looked curiously at the woman.

  “Nathan said the red roses had nothing to do with him. They were there when he arrived.”

  “Didn’t he ask Kyra if they were hers?”

  “Apparently not. He assumed they were something to do with the salon’s owner…Connie, is it?”

  “Yes. Did he say whether he had told the police about seeing the red roses?”

  “I asked him and he said he hadn’t. I got the impression they’d been asking more about where he’d been for the past three weeks, and in the next session they’re going to get on to the night Kyra Bartos died. But I thought the red roses were interesting.”

  “Certainly. And one assumes that the police took them away from the salon as evidence?”

  “I would think so, Carole. What were they then—a love token for somebody?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “So,” said Bridget Locke, “the two obvious questions are: who brought them to the salon? And who for?”

  §

  So far as Carole was concerned, the answers to those questions were very straightforward. As soon as she got back to High Tor, she fed Gulliver, hardly noticing what she was doing. Her mind was racing.

  She could only think of one candidate as the bearer of red roses for Kyra. Apart from Nathan, there was another man who had fancied her. Or at least come on to her. Maybe the girl hadn’t been so immune to his attractions as she pretended.

  Carole found the card and dialled his mobile number. Martin Rutherford answered immediately. She identified herself, and reminded him that he’d asked her to get in touch if she found out anything more about the murder.

  “Well, I have found out something.” She told him about the red roses, and the fact that they hadn’t been brought to the salon by Nathan Locke.

  “Ah. Maybe we should talk…?”

  “Just what I was going to suggest.”

  She looked at her watch. Just before five. Jude would surely be back soon. Maybe they’d have to delay their debriefing meeting at the Crown and Anchor. If she made an appointment to meet Martin somewhere at seven, they could both confront him. But that wasn’t going to be possible. Martin wanted to meet earlier. “The salon closes at six, and I have, er, other commitments for the evening.”

  “So you’re there now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll be right over.”

  “Very well.” He sounded resigned to whatever the interview might bring.

  After she’d put the phone down, Carole contemplated ringing Jude’s mobile. But no, she didn’t want to interrupt her neighbour’s meeting with the elusive Joe Bartos.

  Besides, once again Carole felt that charge of doing something on her own. She’d find the truth and present it to Jude, neatly gift-wrapped. She’d show she was no slouch in this investigation business.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  “Did boy say anything?” asked Jiri Bartos. “Yesterday you drive long time with him. Did he say anything about Krystina?”

  “He said that he loved her.”

  The old man snorted dismissively. “What boys of that age know about love?”

  “I think they probably know quite a lot. They find it all very confusing, but they do know the strength of their own feelings.”

  “Love often dangerous. Many murders committed for love.”

  Wally Grenston, who had been silently topping up Jiri Bartos’s glass throughout their conversation, moved forward again with the Becherovka bottle poised. The old man waved it away. “No. Slivovitz.”

  Wally nodded, returned to the drinks cupboard and produced a bottle of the famous Jelinek Plum Brandy. He poured some into a new glass, and handed it across.

  “Not cold?”

  “I’m sorry. It very rarely gets drunk.”

  “Huh. Wife not like?”

  Wally didn’t argue. He had long since reconciled himself to his henpecked image. With a nervous look around the room, he was no doubt anticipating trouble ahead, from his wife. It was surprising how much of a fug one man’s chain-smoking could produce. And Mim’s obsessively produced tea lay untouched. Wally Grenston might be in for a difficult evening.

  And yet there was something about him that was relaxed, as if sitting drinking in a haze of smoke felt natural to him. It probably echoed previous evenings that Wally had sat with Joseph and other compatriots. Jude had the feeling that, if she wasn’t there, the two men would be speaking Czech.

  Jiri Bartos once again focused his bright blue eyes on her. “Tell me more about boy. What he say he do night Krystina died?”

  Jude replied accurately, but not completely. She recounted the timing of Nathan’s arrival at and departure from the salon, but she didn’t detail his unsuccessful love-making with Kyra.

  “Huh. And boy not see anyone else around salon?”

  “No. He thought he heard someone coming through the back gate at one point, but he didn’t see anyone.”

  “Who could that be?”

  “Well, putting on one side the explanation that it could just have been a burglar who was trying to break in…there might be an argument for thinking that the visitor was someone who could get into the salon by the back door…in other words someone who had keys.” Jiri Bartos did not challenge her logic. “So that would mean Connie Rutherford herself or the other stylist Theo or—”

  “Not Connie. She not go out that evening.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I tell you, my garden back on to hers. When hot in evening, I sit on balcony with drink, can see her house. Summer no curtains drawn. That evening I see her all evening.”

  “What was she doing?”

  He shrugged. “She move round house from room to room. Like she nervous. I don’t know. But she not go out.”

  “Are you sure she didn’t? Even later? Midnight? One o’clock? Hadn’t you gone to bed by then?”

  “No. I go to bed much later. Sometimes not at all. No point in going to bed if you do not sleep. I did not see Connie leave all night.”

  “Well, that’s good, thank you. I’m glad she’s off the hook. I’d hate to think of her being in any way involved in what happened to your daughter. But the one other person who we now know did have keys to the back door of the salon is her ex-husband, Martin Rutherford. Do you know who I mean?”

  “I know him, I tell you. I live in house long t
ime. I saw him back when they two still married.”

  “Well, Martin’s got an alibi for the night Kyra died. He was at a conference in Brighton and—”

  “He not at conference in Brighton.”

  “What?” asked Jude, thunderstruck. “How do you know?”

  “I see him.”

  “You saw him that night? At the salon?”

  “No, not at salon. I in my house all night. Eleven o’clock maybe I see him in Connie’s house.”

  “Really?”

  “He come through back garden. Way into house people not see. Only I see. He go to back door. Connie let him in.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “I not know. They close curtains.”

  Jude took a triumphant sip of her sticky Becherovka, and felt the cough medicine taste burn in her throat. This was a result. The night Kyra Bartos died, Martin Rutherford had actually been in Fethering.

  THIRTY-SIX

  The Worthing branch of Martin & Martina was still busy when Carole arrived. All the stylists seemed to be occupied, and it looked unlikely that they could all be finished by the six o’clock closing time. There was no sign of either of the proprietors, but the girl at the desk said she was expected and directed her to the staircase that led up to Martin’s office.

  The two-room suite had been designed by the same person who had done the salon downstairs. The Martin & Martina logo was very much in evidence, and all the furniture featured black glass and brushed aluminium.

  Martin, who must have been alerted to Carole’s arrival by the receptionist, was standing in the outer office, waiting for her. He shook her hand, the model of urbanity, but she could feel the tension in his body. “Please come through.”

  She did as she was told, leaving the door between the two offices open. Although the presence of all the stylists and customers downstairs gave her some security, she still wanted to have an escape route.

  Martin Rutherford gestured her to a chair and sat down behind the black glass top of his desk. As ever, he looked what he was, the successful entrepreneur, hair subtly darkened, teeth expensively straightened.