by Simon Brett
But, as she quickly dressed in her customary layers of floaty garments up in her bedroom, she could not deny that she felt uneasy. She didn’t need convincing of her own innocence, but she feared that bringing Detective Inspector Rollins round to the same view might be an uphill struggle.
So it proved. Having once again refused the offer of a drink, Rollins sat strictly upright, iPhone on lap, resisting the cushioned comfort of one of Jude’s quilt-shrouded sofas, and said, ‘Further evidence that has emerged means we are now seriously considering the possibility that Burton St Clair was murdered.’
Jude contemplated some remark about the people of Fethering being way ahead of the Detective Inspector in that conclusion, but decided it wasn’t the moment. Instead, she stayed silent and listened as Rollins went on, ‘The cause of his death seems to have been anaphylactic shock. Do I need to explain to you what that is?’
‘No, I know. It’s a violent allergic reaction.’
‘And do you know what Burton St Clair was allergic to?’
‘Walnuts.’ There was no point in lying.
Rollins and Knight exchanged looks, as though something they had discussed earlier had been confirmed. ‘So you knew about his walnut allergy?’
‘Well, I’ve known since lunchtime yesterday.’
‘When you met Megan Sinclair?’ the Detective Sergeant contributed.
‘Yes.
‘You are saying,’ asked Rollins, ‘that until yesterday you did not know about Burton St Clair’s walnut allergy?’
‘That is exactly what I am saying.’
The Detective Inspector touched her iPhone to wake up the screen and looked down at it. ‘That is not what Megan Sinclair says.’
‘So, what does Megan Sinclair say?’
‘She says that you’ve known about it for a long time. Twenty years? She says Burton told you about it very soon after you first met.’
‘I have no recollection of that.’
‘Don’t you?’ Rollins’s tone made Jude realize how unconvincing her assertion sounded.
‘Megan Sinclair recalled very distinctly the occasion when he told you about it.’
‘It’s not something I remember.’
‘Are you saying you’ve forgotten being told that piece of information?’
‘No, I am saying that, so far as I can recall, I was never given that piece of information.’
‘“As far as I can recall”,’ came the sceptical echo. ‘So, you’re saying you might have been given that information and you might have forgotten about it?’
Jude’s cool was being severely tested, but she was determined not to lose it. ‘I am saying that when Megan mentioned the allergy yesterday, it was news to me. I hadn’t heard about it before.’
‘I see.’ It was amazing how much reproach Rollins could get into two words.
Detective Sergeant Knight took up the baton of interrogation. ‘Knowing that he had a walnut allergy, what precautions would Burton St Clair have taken to safeguard his health in the event of his inadvertently eating something contaminated with walnut?’
‘I assume he would have had an EpiPen.’
‘A what?’ asked Detective Sergeant Knight
Jude wasn’t sure whether he was feigning ignorance to prompt some indiscretion on her part, so she replied in a level voice, ‘An EpiPen is an adrenaline auto-injector which is used by allergy sufferers to counteract the effects of anaphylactic shock.’
‘You seem to know a lot about them. Did you know Burton St Clair always carried one?’ asked Knight eagerly.
But Jude wasn’t going to be caught in such a simple trap. ‘No, I didn’t know that. But for someone with an allergy like his, carrying an EpiPen would have been a normal precautionary procedure. And the reason that I “seem to know a lot about them” is that in my work as a healer I come across a lot of clients with allergies. And most of them carry an EpiPen.’
‘Hm. Thank you, Jude.’ The Inspector’s use of her first name was accompanied by a manufactured smile. ‘Could we move on, please, to talk about your relationship with Burton St Clair …?’
‘Of course. But nothing has changed since we last spoke.’
‘I would still like to ask you a few more questions.’
‘Very well, Inspector.’ Meekness did not come naturally to Jude, but she knew that was what her current circumstances required.
‘When we last spoke, I had not then spoken to Megan Sinclair.’
‘I remember. The call from her came while you were here.’
‘Exactly. So I am now in a better position to check what you tell me with the evidence that she provided.’
‘Yes, but I would point out that Megan’s recollection of things could be inaccurate.’
‘I will, of course, take that into account.’
‘I mean, she was wrong about my knowledge of Al’s walnut allergy, so she might—’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘If you could allow the Inspector to ask her questions without interruption, that would be very helpful, Jude.’ Knight looked across to his superior for approval of his intervention. He didn’t get any.
‘Jude,’ said Rollins, ‘when we last spoke, you told us that you and Burton St Clair had never had a romantic or sexual relationship.’
‘That’s as true now as it was when I said it before.’
‘But you don’t deny that he “came on” to you in his car on Tuesday night?’
‘No, I don’t deny that. That is what happened.’
‘But why, having not seen you for “fifteen … twenty years”? I believe that was the time-scale you suggested?’
‘Yes. Nearer fifteen. He and Megan got married twenty years ago. It was round the time of their divorce that I stopped seeing them.’
‘Thank you for clarifying that. Why would Burton St Clair suddenly “come on” to you, if there had never been any previous relationship between you?’
‘Because that was the kind of man he was. He regarded himself as fatally attractive to women. Every woman he met was a challenge to him. Surely you’ve met men like that, Inspector?’
‘I don’t think my experiences are really relevant in this situation.’
‘Very well. All I’m saying is that, whatever woman had got into his car, Burton would have made a pass at her.’
‘And you know this … why?’ asked the Detective Sergeant. ‘Because he had made passes at you on previous occasions?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you had never responded to them? Never agreed to take things further?’
‘Never, Sergeant.’
‘Well, here again,’ said Rollins, once again looking down at the screen, ‘we have a discrepancy between your recollection of events and Megan Sinclair’s.’
‘Do we?’ asked Jude wearily.
‘When we spoke to her on Wednesday afternoon, she told us that you and her husband had started an affair very soon after you first met him.’
‘Did she?’ In the Kafkaesque situation where Jude found herself, there seemed very little point in making further protest.
‘Megan Sinclair said it was your relationship with her husband that broke up their marriage.’
Jude knew her friend had always been mentally unstable, but hadn’t realized it had gone that far. Was it really possible that Megan believed the fabrications which she had elaborated during her years of loneliness?
Or worse – a new thought invaded Jude’s mind – was it a case of deliberate lying? Had Megan made these accusations against her former friend in revenge for some imagined slight?
‘It is a pity, Inspector,’ she said bleakly, ‘that Burton St Clair is no longer alive. He could at least have corroborated my story that the two of us never had an affair, however much he may have wished for such an outcome.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that, Jude.’
‘Oh?’
The Detective Inspector’s expression was implacable. ‘According to Megan Sinclair, it was her husband who told her
about the affair you’d been having.’
Jude’s reserve finally broke. ‘Then he was lying!’ she burst out. ‘Either Burton lied or Megan lied.’
‘Yes.’ Rollins smiled grimly. ‘There is, of course, a third possibility, Jude. And that is that you lied.’
ELEVEN
Carole was unused to seeing her neighbour in the state she was that morning. As soon as the police left, Jude had rushed round to High Tor, and was now being comforted with coffee in its hospital-clean kitchen. Carole’s Labrador, Gulliver, snuffled comatose sympathy from his cosy station in front of the Aga.
And Jude, a woman whose healing brought ease to her many clients, was the one in need of healing.
‘I mean, it’s ridiculous, Carole. All I did was resist Al’s advances, leave him in his car and walk home in the rain. Now suddenly it seems that I’m the police’s Number One Suspect for having murdered him.’
‘Resisted whose advances?’
‘Sorry, there’s a lot you don’t know about this.’
‘That is certainly true.’ There was an edge of resentment in Carole’s words. Jude felt a momentary sting of guilt. Surely her neighbour couldn’t know about her mini-betrayal of conducting investigations with Oliver Parsons?
She dismissed that for the stupid thought it was. But it was a reflection of her emotional instability that she had given it a moment’s brain-room.
‘Well, Carole, the first thing to mention is that the police say they are investigating a murder.’
‘So …’ Her neighbour smiled with satisfaction. ‘For once the Fethering consensus has proved accurate.’
Jude then went on to relive every moment of the two police interrogations. This inevitably provoked a little frostiness in Carole. The first interview with the police had, after all, taken place on the Wednesday morning, but Jude had then divulged nothing about the encounter over their cottage cheese lunch at High Tor. Carole, always quick to detect a slight, was beginning to feel marginalized.
The other information Jude had to pass on did nothing to improve the atmosphere between them. She could not avoid filling in the history of her friendship with Megan and its broadening into a threesome when Al Sinclair appeared on the scene. Nor could Jude not mention Megan’s conviction that she and Al had had an affair.
Predictably, this was the detail Carole picked up on. Over the years, Jude had had a varied sex-life, but it had never been as lurid as it was in her neighbour’s imagination. ‘So, you’re saying positively that you didn’t have an affair with him?’
‘Absolutely positively, definitely not! I do know who I’ve had affairs with.’
A beady look came into Carole’s pale blue eyes, as though she doubted this assertion. ‘Then why would Burton St Clair have told his wife that he had had an affair with you?’
‘Because that was the kind of man he was. He thought he was irresistible to women. He must have claimed me as yet another of his conquests.’
‘I still don’t see why he’d do that. When would he have told her?’
‘I don’t know every detail, do I? It was probably in the course of some marital row. He saw a way of needling her. Maybe she’d expressed some jealousy of me.’
‘Why would she do that … if there was nothing to be jealous of?’
‘Just take my word for it! Al may have fancied me, but – absolutely! definitively! – nothing ever happened!’
‘So you admit that he fancied you?’
Jude was finding this hard work. Carole seemed at least as sceptical as Rollins and Knight had been. She pursued the point. ‘But if nothing ever happened, why was Megan so convinced that something had happened?’
‘Because she was paranoid. Because the fantasy of Al and me having an affair had somehow in her mind been converted into truth.’
‘And the police believed Megan about the affair?’
‘Yes, she’s convinced them.’
‘But why would she do that – and why would they believe her – if it wasn’t true?’
‘Carole, will you please stop going round the same bloody questions!’ Jude never swore. Her use of the word was another indicator of the stress she was under.
‘Of course,’ said her neighbour, ‘there could be another reason for Megan to insist on her account of things …’
‘Yes,’ said Jude wearily.
‘She might have pushed the suspicion towards you to cover her own tracks.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Megan Sinclair would need the police to have another prime suspect … if she herself had committed the murder!’
Carole sat back triumphantly, and Jude recognized that this line of thought was preferable to herself being cast in the role of prime suspect.
‘From what you say,’ her friend went on, ‘Megan Sinclair had plenty of reasons to hate her ex-husband. She would certainly have known about his walnut allergy. And she—’
Jude had to stop her. ‘I like the way you’re thinking, Carole. Sadly, though, there is no way Megan could be linked to the scene of the crime at Fethering Library on Tuesday evening. She was visiting a friend, another former actress, in Scarborough. The police have checked that out.’
‘Well, maybe she put some walnut into a sandwich which she knew Burton was likely to eat when he got in the car after his talk and she …’ Carole’s speculations trickled away in the face of Jude’s shaking head. ‘Just a thought,’ she concluded lamely.
‘Anyway, when I was with Megan, she told me—’
‘You didn’t say you’d seen her.’
‘Didn’t I?’
‘No. I assumed everything you said about her came from what the police told you.’
‘Sorry you got that impression. I had lunch with Megan on Thursday.’
‘Did you? So, you were investigating the murder on your own?’
This wasn’t going well, from Jude’s point of view. ‘No,’ she replied patiently. ‘At that stage the police hadn’t used the word “murder”. And I wasn’t investigating with Megan. I was just trying to find out whether she knew anything more than I did about her ex-husband’s death.’
‘So far as I’m concerned, that comes under the definition of “investigating”.’
Jude hadn’t got much fight left in her. ‘Very well. If you like.’
‘And may I ask where your investigations are leading you next?’
‘Steve Chasen seems to be the next obvious port of call.’
‘Steve who?’
‘Steve Chasen. He was at the library on the Tuesday night, generally making a nuisance of himself, and Oliver Parsons has managed to get a contact for—’
‘Sorry? Who is Oliver Parsons?’
‘He’s someone else who was at Burton St Clair’s talk.’
‘Someone you knew before?’
‘No. Just someone I met that evening, and he and I were talking about Burton’s death …’
‘Were you?’ The expression on Carole’s face told Jude that she was just digging herself deeper and deeper in.
‘And, as I say, Oliver’s got this contact for Steve Chasen, and I was thinking …’ She tried to get herself out of the situation. ‘It would be very good to have you on board in this investigation, because now it’s not just curiosity. I’m genuinely worried the police are going to try to pin this on me. And, if they do, I guess I could be arrested, and then I’d need you to find out what really happened and …’
‘Oh, I don’t think you’d need me,’ said Carole. ‘I’m sure your new friend Oliver Parsons could solve the case for you.’
‘What I’m saying is that, when we go and talk to Steve Chasen, you should come along too, to catch up on the details of the case.’ There was a note of pleading in Jude’s last few words.
‘Oh, no,’ said her neighbour frostily. ‘I wouldn’t want to intrude.’
Sometimes Carole Seddon was just so Carole Seddon.
TWELVE
Steve Chasen, it turned out, worked as a night shelf-stacker at a big Sainsbury
’s in the retail park outside Clincham, ‘which brings in a bit of loot and gives me time to write.’ He did the weekends, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights – ‘better hourly rate.’ He clearly wasn’t keen for them to come to his home, and when Oliver Parsons had suggested that they meet in the Crown & Anchor early that evening, he didn’t like that idea either. ‘Not a good idea to drink when I got a night shift coming up. And I’m one of those people who can’t go into a pub and not have a bevvy.’
So instead, that Friday evening at six, Jude and Oliver met him at the relatively new Starbucks, in what used to be Polly’s Cake Shop, on Fethering Parade.
Compared to how he had been on the Tuesday night, Steve Chasen was very definitely on his best behaviour. Though still dressed in his uniform of various camouflage patterns and Doc Martens, he showed none of the aggression he had demonstrated at the library.
‘I saw you at the talk,’ he said with something approaching charm, ‘but we didn’t get a chance to say much.’
‘No.’
‘So, until Oliver mentioned it on the phone this morning, I didn’t realize that you were an agent.’
Oh dear, Jude had completely forgotten the cover stories which had made Steve agree to a meeting. Though she had done a little acting in her time, she really didn’t relish playing a part for the whole evening. Also, if Steve Chasen lived locally, he would very soon find out her real identity. Besides, Jude’s inherent honesty would not allow her to raise his hopes about the possibility of his science-fiction novel ever being published.
She had to get out of the situation with the minimum amount of lying. ‘I’m sorry,’ she improvised wildly, ‘Oliver must’ve misunderstood me. I’m not a literary agent, I’m a healing agent.’
She was worried this made her sound like some kind of antiseptic cream, but Steve didn’t seem to read it that way. Nor, on the other hand, did he seem very pleased by what she’d said. Looking accusingly at Oliver, he demanded, ‘Then why the hell did you set up this meeting?’
Smooth as ever, the former television director tried telling the truth. ‘We’re just interested in what happened at Fethering Library on Tuesday night.’
