by Simon Brett
She wouldn’t admit to herself the cause of her disquiet. In fact she wouldn’t admit there was any disquiet. Carole had been brought up to believe that introspection was mere self-indulgence, that there was only one way to treat the inconvenience of gloom, and that was to ‘snap out of it’. She had no mental problems. On the contrary, she had an obsessive belief in her own normality.
The furthest she would go would be to admit to feeling slightly ‘grumpy’. And there was nothing wrong with that — she had plenty to be grumpy about. She was in her fifties, retired from the Home Office, divorced and stuck in the Sussex backwater of Fethering with only Gulliver for company. If that lot didn’t justify feeling grumpy, then what did?
And she didn’t even have access at that time to the one person who could still bring an unfailing smile to her wan lips, her granddaughter, Lily. Carole’s son Stephen and his wife Gaby, claiming that ‘we should do these things before we get caught up in schools and term times’, had taken their daughter off for a month’s holiday in California. Orange County to be precise. Anaheim in Orange County to be even more precise (and if there was one thing Carole Seddon liked, it was precision). Apparently, according to Stephen and Gaby, the appeal of that destination was its proximity to various theme parks, most of which seemed to be prefaced by the word ‘Disney’.
Now Carole couldn’t help herself, but she thought anything to do with Disney was vulgar. The prejudice came from her parents who had assured her that comics were vulgar and only existed for children who couldn’t handle ‘proper books’. Animated films came under the same blanket condemnation. Cartoons were for common people. The idea of whole theme parks dedicated to the propagation of the Disney oeuvre Carole’s parents would have found appalling. And their daughter shared that view.
Apart from anything else, Lily was far too young to enjoy a theme park. Though her own had been relatively miserable, Carole Seddon wanted her granddaughter to have what she thought of as a ‘proper childhood’. . In other words, one without excessive entertainment. . or electronic toys. . or computer games. . or theme parks.
But Stephen and Gaby had not asked for her views on the subject. They had simply announced that they were taking Lily away for a month in Anaheim, Orange County, California, USA. That, thought Carole, was an entirely legitimate reason for her to feel a little grumpy.
She would never have admitted the real cause for her unease. The fact that she was missing her next-door neighbour, Jude, who had announced a couple of weeks before that she was going to some healers’ conference (or, as Carole would have called it, ‘some kind of mystical mumbo-jumbo’) in London and not been heard from since.
Carole was bored, though again that was something she wouldn’t admit to herself. In her lexicon the only people who got bored were those who ‘lacked resources’ and Carole Seddon wasn’t the kind of woman to lack resources. When resources ran low, people like her just went out and found some more of them.
There was such a profusion of things that could be done by a healthy retiree in her fifties. Carole knew of a great many women locally who volunteered for charity work and got a great charge out of patronizing those less privileged than themselves. Then Fethering had no lack of clubs and societies for the ‘active senior’ to join. Perhaps she should offer her services as a prompter to the FADS (the Fethering Amateur Dramatic Society)? A monthly Book Group meeting was held in the local library — might she enjoy that? Or the Fethering Flower Club met on the afternoon of the second Wednesday each month, ‘sometimes with guest speakers shedding light on hitherto hidden nooks and crannies of flower arranging’.
Or perhaps she should take on something that would ‘improve’ her by learning a new skill? Carole had heard about Fethering women of her age who’d enrolled in part-time courses at the University of Clincham, studying such diverse subjects as Fine Art, Creative Writing and Animal Management.
Then again, if she didn’t want to make such a major commitment, The Edward James Foundation at West Dean offered short courses in skills like Woodworking and Furniture Making, Metalwork. . or even Basket-making, Chair Seating and Willow Work.
Closer to home, the glass-fronted notice board outside the local supermarket, Allinstore, displayed cards offering further variety of short courses. Maybe Carole would like to learn how to dance the salsa? Or improve her fitness with Zumba classes? Then there was a lady glorying in the name of Heliotrope Smith who offered bridge lessons, quoting the line that ‘it is a brave person who enters into old age unable to play bridge’. Or might she enjoy ‘sharing Spanish conversation over tapas with Carmelita Jones’?
The possibilities were truly infinite. Given such multiplicity of choice, how could a retired person in the Fethering area ever find time to fit in the basics of life like eating and sleeping?
Carole Seddon didn’t want to do any of them. The Times crossword provided her with all the mental stimulus she required. She’d never had a problem, she told herself, with enjoying her own company. Besides, she had Gulliver. If she were to go for a walk on Fethering Beach on her own. . well, people might think she was a lonely, embittered divorcee. Nobody would think that about someone with a dog.
In fact, Carole hoped they wouldn’t think anything about her. She courted anonymity, choosing her clothes, almost always from Marks amp; Spencer, so as not to draw attention to herself. She was thin and in her fifties. Her grey hair was cut into the shape of a helmet with very straight edges. Pale blue eyes peered beadily through rimless glasses. She didn’t try to look discouraging, but she wasn’t the kind of person with whom strangers would naturally initiate conversations. Which suited her very well.
When Carole Seddon did set out that Monday morning for her walk with Gulliver, she studiously didn’t look at the house next door, Woodside Cottage.
About the same time, in Bayswater, Jude announced, ‘I must get back to Fethering.’
They were sitting in the bay window of Piers Targett’s second-floor flat, looking through the trees of the central square to the matching terrace of tall, white-painted Victorian villas opposite. The room they sat in ran the whole width of the building, had a kitchen area at the back, separated by a free-standing work surface from an apparently artless collection of armchairs and sofas and the dining table in the window. It had undergone the careful attention of an expensive interior designer and, thanks to the daily ministrations of Piers’ Lithuanian cleaner, every surface was immaculately dust-free.
The flat had an air of anonymity about it, particularly to the eyes of someone like Jude, whose front room at Woodside Cottage was a messy assemblage of furniture, each item draped with a rug or throw, and shelves cluttered with an apparently random collection of bric-a-brac from many countries. And yet every item there held a memory for Jude.
In Piers’ flat every prompt to recollection seemed to have been hygienically removed. His kitchen looked as if it had never undergone the indignity of having food cooked in it. He ate out all the time, and his fridge played host only to bottles of champagne and white wine. A floor-to-ceiling rack next to it offered a comparable selection of reds.
And though the walls in the living room and bedroom featured some very well-chosen paintings, Jude got the impression that they reflected the taste of the interior designer rather than the flat’s tenant. If Piers Targett were to move out the next day, the incoming resident would find no clue to the fact that he had ever lived there.
It struck Jude yet again that she knew very little about her lover’s past and background, but this did not cause her any anxiety. She recognized in Piers a kindred spirit. Nobody knew much about her past or background either. That gave them both a sense of freedom. If their relationship developed in the long term, then some filling in of their backstories would inevitably be required, but that could wait. For the moment they were both enjoying the present too much to care about the past. Or indeed the future.
‘What, today?’ asked Piers. He looked up from texting on his beloved iPhone. ‘You want
to go back to Fethering today?’
‘I think I’d better.’
‘Well, that’s fine. . so long as you promise you’ll be back here pretty damned quick.’
‘I promise. . though I will have to keep going back to Fethering.’
‘To enjoy the pleasures of — ’ Piers shuddered — ‘country life.’
‘Not that so much. Just to catch up with my clients. . and friends,’ said Jude, again thinking of one friend in particular. She had kept meaning to ring Carole over the last two weeks, but the more time went on, the more difficult she knew the eventual conversation would be. So, uncharacteristically, she shirked it. And of course she had been very preoccupied by falling in love with Piers.
‘Anyway, as I say, no problem,’ said Piers. ‘In fact, I’ve got some meetings today.’
‘Work?’
He nodded, but didn’t volunteer anything else. Piers Targett hadn’t actually been evasive about what he did for a living. He had talked — ‘airily’ again — about being ‘semi-retired’ and having ‘fingers in lots of pies’, but he hadn’t specified what fillings those pies might have. Wherever his money came from, he didn’t seem to lack for it. Decades had passed since Jude had been to as many expensive restaurants as she had in the previous fortnight.
‘Well, look, Piers, I think I should certainly stay down in Fethering tonight. .’
‘OK. But give me a call this evening. Let me know your plans.’ He abandoned his iPhone as his reassuringly large hand encompassed her chubby one. ‘I don’t think I’ll react well to being apart from you.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll call.’
‘I hope you haven’t regarded your time as being wasted. .’
Jude leant across impulsively and kissed Piers’ deliciously fleshy lips. ‘Far from it,’ she murmured.
‘Apart from anything else, you have been introduced to the arcane mysteries of real tennis. .’
‘True.’
‘. . of which you now have a complete and total understanding.’
‘Rather less true, I’m afraid.’
‘Only a matter of time.’
‘Look, I’m an overweight woman in my fifties. .’
‘Nonsense! You are a perfectly rounded, wonderfully sensual woman whose age is entirely irrelevant. You, as the French would put it, “fit your skin”.’
‘You silver-tongued devil.’
‘I only speak as I find. Anyway, you do have to try real tennis. Anyone who is in a relationship with me has to try real tennis.’ An idea came to him. He grinned. ‘I know what. I’ll get on to the professionals and book a court for later this week. No point in hanging about, you can have your introduction then.’
‘Well, I-’
‘Don’t argue with me, Jude. There is no escape. You are going to have the experience of playing on a real tennis court.’
She grinned. ‘Well, I’ll give it a go.’
‘You won’t regret it. Soon you’ll be laying chases with the best of them.’
‘Sorry. Haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.’
‘But I thought I explained the rules to you last night.’
Jude grimaced wryly. ‘I think it’s that word “chase”. The minute I hear it, I feel as if I’ve just been given an overdose of Mogadon.’
‘Ah.’ Piers grinned boyishly. ‘My mistake for trying to explain the rules when you’re sleepy. But now of course you’re wide awake! Well, the thing about laying a chase is that those parallel lines on the court-’
‘No!’ Jude put her hands over her ears in mock-protest. ‘No! No! No!’
At which they both collapsed in giggles. When those had died down, Jude said, ‘On the subject of real tennis. .’
‘Hm?’
‘One thing struck me. .’
‘What?’
‘Why do you play at Lockleigh House?’
‘Because I love the game. Surely you must’ve noticed that by now?’
‘Yes, I had noticed it — and I think your love for the game hovers very near the edge of obsession.’
Piers conceded her point with a spread of his hands. ‘Guilty as charged.’
‘But that wasn’t my question. I was asking, given the fact that you live in Bayswater, why do you go all the way down to the south coast to play tennis? You’ve told me there are courts in London. . at Queen’s Club. . at Lord’s. Hampton Court’s not that far away.’
‘Oh, it takes ages to get membership at Lord’s.’
There was a note in his voice that Jude hadn’t heard before in their two-week’s acquaintanceship. A note of evasiveness. She pounced on it immediately. ‘What do you really mean?’
Piers didn’t attempt to deny or bluster his way out. He just grinned and said ruefully, ‘Not much gets past you, does it, Jude?’
‘I like to think not.’
‘I used to live near Clincham,’ he said. ‘Little village called Goffham. That’s when I joined the Lockleigh House Club. Only a quarter of an hour away then. I used to play a lot. Three, four times a week, matches against other clubs, even trips to foreign courts. Don’t do it so much now. I’m not down there so often.’
Again Jude was acute to the nuance. ‘Not “so often”? You mean you do still go down there sometimes?’
‘Yes. Occasionally.’ He could tell from her quizzical brown eyes that she wanted more information. ‘I’ve still got a house down there. Where I used to live when I was married.’
Though she knew he must have been married, his words still gave her a little shock, perhaps in anticipation of all the other information they’d have to process through at some point. ‘Are you divorced?’ she asked.
‘No. We just don’t see each other.’
‘Right.’
Jude might have come in with a follow-up question, but Piers didn’t give her time. ‘Since we’ve got to this confessional moment, I suppose I should check out your marital status too. Are you married?’
‘Not currently.’
‘Suggesting that you have been. .?’
‘Twice. Two marriages and two neat, matching divorces.’
‘Ah.’ Piers Targett nodded. ‘Good. Well, that’s cleared the air a bit.’
But as she travelled on the train from Victoria to Fethering, Jude wondered whether it had. She didn’t love Piers any the less, she didn’t regret a second of the past fortnight’s love and love-making. It was just that their relationship had moved up to a different level. A level that was no less serious, but perhaps more grown-up. After two weeks of intense one-on-one, they now had to find out whether their relationship could survive in the wider world, a world of other people and other responsibilities.
And baggage. Nobody could get to the age that she and Piers Targett had reached without accumulating quite a lot of baggage.
When Carole Seddon returned from her walk on Fethering Beach that morning, it was with a new sense of purpose. Though still hurt by what she could only think of as Jude’s defection, she’d decided that the only way out of her present doldrums was by being more proactive. She must get something going for herself to fill the days.
And it wasn’t going to be salsa classes or Spanish conversation. There was no point in trying to get herself enthused about something in which she had no interest.
But a subject that did intrigue her was the solving of crimes. It was an undertaking on which she had in the past collaborated with Jude. But since that was no longer an option, she would have to proceed on her own. And indeed solving a crime on her own would give her quite a charge, a secret snub to her uncaring neighbour.
Carole Seddon’s training in the Home Office had encouraged in her a natural tendency for the efficient organization of information. Her filing systems had always been immaculate, and when she became converted to the wonders of computers that offered even more opportunities for the management of directories and subdirectories.
On the shelves of the spare room where she kept the laptop (still perversely unwilling to acknowledge the mach
ine’s portability), Carole also had box-files of neatly catalogued newspaper clippings. Anything to do with murder in the West Sussex area. Occasional extracts from her daily Times, more frequent cuttings from the Fethering Observer and West Sussex Gazette.
Carole knew exactly which file to take down from the shelf and which folder to take out and open on the spare bedroom’s table.
It was the dossier she had compiled on the unsolved crime known locally as ‘The Fedborough Lady in the Lake Murder’.
FOUR
The body had been found seven years previously. That summer was an exceptionally dry one, prompting dark mutterings from Fethering locals about global warming. The arid conditions had nearly dried up some of West Sussex’s smaller streams. Even the strong tidal flow of the River Fether had been considerably diminished. There were panics about receding reservoirs and many village ponds shrank, exposing their muddy margins.
This had also been the fate of Fedborough Lake. On the outskirts of the town, a large expanse of water only separated from the river by a road, it was popular with tourists and dog walkers. A complete circuit of the lake made a pleasant twenty-minute stroll. Rowing boats and pedalos could be hired from the lakeside cafe which normally throughout the summer did a roaring trade in ice creams, crisps and Sussex cream teas.
But that year trade had been slack. As Fedborough Lake dried up, weedy mud banks were exposed and, quite frankly, stank.
The human remains that had been found were too degraded to add to the general stink, but they too were revealed by the receding water.
For once it wasn’t a dog-walker who found them. That was the local cliche. Whenever a body was found, the report in the West Sussex Gazette would always begin: ‘A woman out walking her dog made an unpleasant discovery. .’
But no, on this occasion it had been one of the men who looked after the Fedborough Lake boats. Business was slack because no one wanted to venture out on to the noisome water, so he used his enforced idleness to clear some of the debris exposed on the muddy banks. He loaded his wheelbarrow with a predictable selection of bottles, polystyrene burger boxes, punctured footballs, slimy plastic toys. . and then he found what was unmistakably a human femur.
