by Simon Brett
While she was waiting for the police to arrive, Jude had a phone call from Zosia.
Worried that the girl might be about to announce her uncle’s death, she was greatly cheered to hear that the old man was making good progress. He had been toughened by his years of manual labour and stood a chance of making a full recovery, though it was unlikely he would ever be able to work again.
But what made Zosia even happier was the news that Pawel’s sister was going to come over to Fethering for a few weeks to nurse her brother. The prospect of spending time with her mother had raised the girl’s spirits enormously. And then it was thought likely that, as soon as Uncle Pawel was fit enough to travel, he would be taken back to Poland, where his sister could look after him – and curb his excesses.
Zosia even thought that, if he could conquer the booze, there might be the possibility of a reconciliation between the old man and his ex-wife.
Jude said how delighted she was to hear the news, and how much she longed to be introduced to Zosia’s mother.
The interview, like their first one, took place in the sitting room of Woodside Cottage. They took the same seats as they had on the previous occasion. The Inspector had her iPhone on her lap, and Detective Sergeant Knight was still uneasy in her presence, uncertain when an intervention from him would be appreciated.
But that afternoon, although Rollins did not at first realize it, the dynamics between the three of them had changed completely.
Jude had agreed with Oliver that she should tell the police he was prepared to make a full confession, but it became clear at the beginning of their conversation that the police thought they had been summoned to hear a confession from her.
Of this illusion, she quickly disabused them. Marshalling the information with great efficiency, she told Rollins and Knight exactly what had happened, and what had caused the death of Burton St Clair. She also told them that Eveline Ollerenshaw had agreed to confirm what she had witnessed from her bedroom window that night.
By way of a bonus, Jude also suggested that whoever was investigating the attack on Uncle Pawel might do worse than check out the activities of Milosz Gadzinski.
At the end of her narrative, a somewhat shaken Inspector said that, of course, she would have to check everything with Oliver Parsons.
‘He will tell you exactly what I have told you.’
‘Very well.’ Rollins rose from her sofa. Mirroring her movements, Detective Sergeant Knight did the same. ‘We’d better go and talk to Mr Parsons.’
‘Very good idea, Inspector. He’s expecting you.’
‘Good. And, er, Jude …’
‘Yes?’
‘I regret any inconvenience you have been put to.’
Jude grinned. She knew that was the nearest she was ever going to get to an apology from Detective Inspector Rollins.
She was surprised how much time she needed to untwitch from the stresses of the previous week. Paranoia was not a natural state for Jude, and she hadn’t enjoyed her experience of it. Some days passed before she felt sufficiently focused to reschedule the healing sessions she had postponed.
But her mind did not readily recapture its usual serenity. Some issues resolved themselves, but the one that still felt incomplete was her relationship with Megan. Though it was her former friend’s lying testimony that had put her through such anguish, Jude did not feel any resentment. Pity for someone whose mind could make them behave in such a perverse way.
She and Megan needed to talk, ideally face-to-face. But an email was too easy to ignore; the initial contact needed to be made by phone.
‘Hello?’ Megan sounded theatrical, but guarded.
‘It’s Jude.’
‘Oh? What possible reason can you have for ringing me?’
‘I was ringing because I assume you’ve heard by now how Al actually died.’
‘They’ve told me their version of what happened, yes.’
‘Are you saying you don’t believe that version?’
Megan let out a ‘Huh’, which was the audible equivalent of a shrug. ‘Al is dead. Nothing’s going to change that. How he died is almost a detail.’
‘Just a moment, Megan. Until recently, Detective Inspector Rollins was convinced that I murdered Al. Convinced in particular by the evidence you gave her.’
‘The evidence about you having had an affair with Al?’
‘Yes, of course, that evidence. Which you knew to be untrue. And I was thinking it might help, help us both, if we could meet up and talk through how you managed to convince yourself of something so demonstrably untrue.’
‘Oh, what – you’re proposing to heal me, are you?’
‘Just talk to you. Just try to recapture the closeness there once was between us.’
‘There never was any closeness between us, Jude! And certainly none once you started to steal Al away from me. If you hadn’t gone to bed with him and broken everything up, Al would still be alive, and we’d still be married! That’s the truth of the matter. So don’t you come talking to me about trying to “recapture the closeness” between us, because it was never there! Goodbye!’
After the phone had been slammed down on her, Jude did not attempt to ring back. Megan had not been inventing lies to incriminate her old friend. In her twisted mind she had genuinely come to believe that what she asserted was the truth. There were some people it was impossible to help.
But that final telephone conversation unsettled Jude for a long time.
Both she and Carole were shocked, but at a deeper level unsurprised, to hear of Oliver Parsons’ death. Arriving at his home directly from Woodside Cottage, Rollins and Knight had received no response when they rang the front doorbell. Opening the garage door to see if they could effect an entrance that way, they had been driven back by the fumes of carbon monoxide.
The paramedics who were summoned found Oliver Parsons dead in the driving seat of his Range Rover. Beside him was a fully printed-up copy of his confession.
He had achieved the classic ending to a Golden Age murder mystery.
Once the shock had subsided, Jude felt sadness but also a sense of inevitability. Oliver Parsons’ life, she now recognized, had ended with the death of Aileen. Since then he had just been going through the motions.
Nor could she feel much regret over what happened to Burton St Clair. Justice, she knew, did not always conform to the strict dictates of morality.
‘I should have seen it coming,’ said Carole, as they sat that evening over Sauvignon Blanc in the kitchen of High Tor. Gulliver snuffled serenely in front of the Aga.
‘Seen what coming?’
‘What Oliver Parsons did.’
Unusually for her, Carole had brought her laptop downstairs. ‘Look. I should have realized.’ She turned the machine round so that Jude could see the screen. ‘From the second paragraph.’
And Jude read another extract from Best Served Cold by G. H. D. Troughton.
‘There’s no point in being too kid-glove about this, Danvers,’ said Sir Gervaise Montagu. ‘You’ve been shown up as a wrong ’un fair and square.’
‘Hanged if I know how you tumbled to the gag.’
‘I wouldn’t use the word “hanged” too lightly if I were in your shoes. You’re as guilty as blazes and you’d be convicted by any court in the country.’
‘Yes, it does rather look as if I’ll soon be kitted out with a hempen necktie.’
‘No way round it, Danvers old man. Unless of course …’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m going to take a turn around the rose garden. But I happen to know that Dexter Hogg keeps his service revolver in the top drawer of his desk right here in the library.’
‘Does he, by Jove?’
‘Yes, and his ammo too.’
‘Righty-ho.’
‘I don’t need to tell you the decent thing to do in these circumstances, do I, Danvers?’
‘No, Montagu, you don’t. I may be a cad and a bounder, but at least I’m British, and I kn
ow when to do the decent thing.’
