The Poisoning in the Pub

by Simon Brett

  His mouth opened and closed like that of a goldfish. Greville Tilbrook couldn’t come up with a single word, let alone a subordinate clause.

  Carole had played with him long enough. “So which way did you escape?” she asked urgently.

  “I thought if I went past the pub down to the beach, I could walk along to the Fether estuary and go back into the village that way.”

  “So you went past the back door of the Crown and Anchor, the one that leads into the kitchen?”

  “I suppose I must have done.”

  Now finally she had an explanation for the sound of retreating footsteps on the shingle that she and Jude had heard that night.

  “And did you see anything?” He hesitated. “Mr Tilbrook, I am prepared to keep quiet about what I know of your shabby escapade with Beryl…” (or rather what you were generous enough to tell me of your shabby escapade with Beryl) “…on the condition that you tell me everything you witnessed at the back of the pub last Sunday evening.”

  He weighed his options. The process didn’t take long. “Very well,” he capitulated, “if you swear you’ll never breathe a word about me and Beryl…?”

  “I swear it.”

  “I saw two figures outside the back door of the Crown and Anchor. I was hurrying past, I couldn’t see much detail. But first there was just one, a small man who seemed to be waiting for something…”

  Ray Witchett waiting for his autograph from Dan Poke.

  “…and then another man went round the side of the pub towards him.”

  “What did this other man look like?”

  “One of the bikers. Dressed in leather. He was tall with long hair and a dark beard.”

  Her breath was tight as Carole asked, “Did they seem to know each other?”

  “Oh yes,” Greville Tilbrook replied. “They greeted each other like friends.”

  Ray hadn’t known any of the bikers. Only someone who looked like a biker.

  Viggo.

  Twenty-Nine

  It was nearly midnight when the phone at Woodside Cottage rang. Jude was in bed, but not yet asleep. Her mind was still full of the news she had received from Carole, of Greville Tilbrook nearly witnessing Ray’s murder.

  The caller was Kelly-Marie. “It’s something bad,” she said.

  ♦

  Carole hadn’t been asleep either – in fact, she had been sitting in her nightdress, finding her way with increasing fascination around the laptop she had inherited from her daughter-in-law. When she got Jude’s call, she immediately said that they should both go to Copsedown Hall. Apart from anything else, it would be quicker in the Renault. Not all the roads in Fethering had street lights, and they didn’t want to be stumbling around in the dark.

  So they both threw some clothes back on and set off together.

  Kelly-Marie was standing just inside the door, waiting for them. She was wearing a flowered cotton dress, which made her look even more like a child. It was presumably the Sunday best she had put on in the morning to go and have lunch with her parents.

  “Viggo? Is it something to do with Viggo?” asked Jude, as the girl let them in.

  Kelly-Marie nodded. “I wasn’t sure who to call. I thought I’d call you first.”

  “Very sensible.” Quickly she introduced Carole. “Where is he?”

  “In his room.”

  She limped ahead of them up the stairs. “Are the other residents around?” asked Jude in a whisper.

  “Asleep. They have to work in the morning. I don’t think they heard it. Only me. His room’s next door to mine.”

  There was only a safety light on on the landing, but Jude could see that the door to Kelly-Marie’s room was closed, and the one to Viggo’s was ajar. The girl lingered outside, unwilling to enter, while Jude and Carole went in.

  Given what lay in the armchair, it was surprising that Carole and Jude could take in any other detail of the room, but they were both aware of shelves upon shelves of DVDs and videos, arranged in a surprisingly organized way. On the table in front of the armchair stood a laptop computer, its screen opened but blank. The floor was littered with empty Stella Artois cans.

  The entry wound on Viggo’s right temple was neat and had only dribbled a little. Blood from the exit wound, though, splattered over the armchair, sofa, walls and shelves of DVDs.

  His right arm had dropped down over the side of the armchair. Just below it on the floor lay the revolver.

  As the two women moved forward, pressure on an uneven floorboard was sufficient to jog the laptop screen out of hibernation. The image on the screen had been frozen, the DVD paused. Carole saw the haggard faces of men under pressure in a sweaty bamboo cage.

  “The Deer Hunter”, Jude murmured. “The Russian roulette scene.”

  Carole looked down. She knew nothing of guns, but she could see the number of bullets, the backs of which showed in the revolver’s cylinder. Every chamber appeared to be full.

  “Not very good odds for Russian roulette,” she observed.

  Thirty

  Neither of them got much sleep that night. By the time the police had been called, and by the time the police had arrived and conducted some basic questioning, it was well into the small hours. And the image of Viggo, still so vivid in their minds, was not conducive to peaceful slumber.

  They reassembled blearily next morning over very strong coffee in the sitting room of Woodside Cottage.

  “Typical, isn’t it?” said Carole. “Just when we think we’ve identified our murderer, someone blows him away.”

  “So you think Viggo was murdered too?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I’m not so sure. I mean, he could have been, but then again playing a macho game of Russian roulette…well, it would have been in character. He was so obsessed with all that hard-man stuff. Did you see the titles of all those DVDs and videos? And he did mention Russian roulette when he came here.”

  “Yes, but nobody plays Russian roulette with six bullets loaded into the gun.”

  “They might if they wanted to be sure of the outcome.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Look, let’s say Viggo did murder Ray…”

  “Which seems very likely from what Greville Tilbrook saw.”

  “I agree. Well, say he did do it. And he thought he was being brave and macho, living up to the image of all his hard-man heroes, but then slowly he realized what he’d done, that he had actually killed a man. Not just a man, but someone he knew. For a man like Viggo, who spent so much of his time in fantasy, that reality could be pretty shocking.”

  “And he might have killed himself from remorse?”

  “It’s possible.”

  Carole’s sniff made clear how much she thought of that idea. “I think it was a set-up. Somebody else shot him. The Russian roulette business was just set-dressing.”

  “Maybe. But why would someone want to kill him?”

  “Well, for the purposes of argument, let’s make two assumptions…First, that Viggo did stab Ray and, second, that he didn’t do it off his own bat. That someone set him up to do it.”

  “Gave him the order by text on his mobile phone?”

  “Quite possibly.”

  “Pity we haven’t got Viggo’s mobile phone to check his messages, isn’t it?” said Jude ruefully.

  “Yes, very selfish of the police always to keep that kind of evidence to themselves,” Carole agreed. “But, moving on…Let’s say we’re talking about one villain, who, while possibly not actually committing either of the crimes, set them up, in both cases taking advantage of particularly susceptible and pathetic men…”

  “All right. I’m with you so far.”

  “So this person takes advantage of Ray’s good nature and desire to make everyone happy, and persuades him unknowingly to introduce the dodgy scallops into the Crown and Anchor kitchen. But then our villain hears, probably from Viggo, that you’ve been snooping around Copsedown Hall, asking Ray questions. Suddenly poor Ray becomes a
security risk, there’s a danger he might tell you everything. So the same person – our villain – takes advantage of Viggo’s love of cloak-and-dagger stuff, underground operations and all that, and issues the order for him to kill Ray.”

  “I agree that all of this is possible, but I still don’t see – ”

  “I haven’t finished,” said Carole severely. “This person arranged to have Ray killed before he could spill the beans about what had been going on. And he arranged to have Viggo killed for just the same reason.”

  “So what’s the common factor?”

  “Jude, you are being particularly dense this morning. The common factor is you. Or us, if you like. Ray was murdered just after he’d nearly told you who’d set him up to swap the scallops. Viggo was murdered just after you and I revealed our suspicions of Viggo – or at least showed an unhealthy interest in him – to Derren Hart in Fratton. I think we should be very careful from now on, Jude. We’re up against someone ruthless enough to kill two men with mental-health problems. I don’t think he – or she – would be too bothered about adding a couple of middle-aged women to the list.”

  Jude was silent. She took a long sip of coffee. It didn’t dispel the woolliness in her head as much as she had hoped. The she asked, “How much do you think Ted is involved?”

  “I don’t think he’s involved in the murders.”

  “Not in actually committing them, no. But he’s holding out on us. He’s definitely got more information than he’s letting on about. He complicated things at the start by trying to protect Ray – and look how that ended up. I think he could tell us a lot more.”

  “I’m sure he could, but since he currently won’t talk to us at all, I don’t see how we’re going to get it out of him.”

  “Maybe not, but I think it’s worth another call.” Jude dialled the number of Ted’s flat, then the Crown and Anchor main line. Answering machines on both. Maybe the landlord wasn’t there. She thought it was more likely that he just wasn’t taking calls. For a moment she contemplated leaving a message informing him of Viggo’s death, but she decided against it. If Ted Crisp was as involved, as he was in her worst imaginings, he’d already know what had happened.

  Jude, uncharacteristically gloomy – she needed her sleep – looked at Carole and shook her head. “I just don’t know where we go next.”

  “Well, I do,” said her friend. “We follow up the only other lead we have.”

  “I didn’t know we’d got another lead.”

  “Something we got from Derren Hart.” Jude still looked bemused, but the confidence in Carole’s pale blue eyes was growing. “Do you fancy a pub lunch, Jude?”

  “I don’t think Ted’s any more likely to talk to us face to face than he is on the phone.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of the Crown and Anchor. I was thinking of another pub.”

  “Oh?”

  “The other one where Derren Hart said Viggo used to go drinking with the bikers.”

  “Ah, yes.” There was now a matching sparkle in Jude’s brown eyes. “Of course, I’d forgotten about that.”

  “So I think lunch at the Cat and Fiddle, don’t you?”

  “Excellent idea.”

  “It’s not as if we don’t know where it is.”

  ♦

  Carole and Jude had been to the Cat and Fiddle before, because Zosia’s brother Tadeusz Jankowski had worked there before his premature death. They remembered how little they’d liked the place. Though it had a perfect position, right on the banks of the Fether, and did very good business, particularly in the summer, they had recoiled from its phoney, country-and-western-influenced style. They winced inwardly as they remembered the bar staff, dressed-in red-gingham shirts and dungarees.

  Carole and Jude also remembered the pub’s over-the-top landlady, Shona Nuttall. She’d had no inhibitions about talking to them before, even though the thing she had most wanted to talk about was herself. But maybe she’d have some useful recollections of Viggo’s and Derren Hart’s biker crowd.

  The interview they were anticipating was, however, not to be. As Carole slowed the Renault down to enter the Cat and Fiddle car park, she found her way barred by a high gate of solid wood. The frontage of the pub itself was also fenced off and its windows boarded up.

  But the site looked very neat and under control. What was happening was a makeover rather than a close-down. This was confirmed by a printed board on the fencing, which read:

  THE CAT AND FIDDLE WILL BE RE-OPENING ON 1 OCTOBER AS ANOTHER WELCOMING AND LUXURIOUS HOME HOSTELRIES TAVERN.

  Thirty-One

  So they did end up having lunch in the Crown and Anchor, exactly two weeks after the food-poisoning incident that had started them on their current investigation. There were a few more customers – mostly holidaymakers – than there had been on their previous visit, but the pub wasn’t doing anything like the volume of business it should have been in the middle of a hot July.

  Ted Crisp was there, but without being overtly rude, he made it clear that he didn’t want to engage in conversation with them. After a friendly enough wave on their arrival, he suddenly had urgent things to do in the kitchen.

  Zosia served them. She looked tired, her customary brightness dimmed. The stress surrounding the Crown and Anchor was getting to everyone. They got their large Chilean Chardonnays, and both went for salads, chicken for Carole, salmon for Jude.

  “I see we’re not Ted’s favourite people today,” Jude observed to Zosia.

  “Not just you. No people are his favourite people. He is in a bad state.”

  “Is he still on the whisky?” asked Carole.

  The Polish girl nodded glumly. “I think so. He is very unhappy, but he will not talk about what is making him unhappy. He…what is that idiom you have? He puts it in a bottle?”

  “He bottles it up,” said Jude.

  “Yes, that is what he does. Which does not help. This ‘bottling-up’, I think, makes things worse for people.”

  Carole, for whom life had been one long process of bottling-up, nodded.

  “We’ll get it out of him eventually,” said Jude.

  Zosia grinned, without much optimism.

  “Has Ted heard about the latest death?” asked Carole. “Up at Copsedown Hall.”

  “Oh yes. News of tragedy travels fast in a place like Fethering, that I have learned since I have been here. There is more gossip, I think, even than in a Polish country village.”

  “Did Ted say anything when he heard the news?”

  “I don’t know. I was not here when he was told. But he certainly does know.”

  Just as they were about to find a table, Jude noticed a book propped up behind the bar. A Poke in the Eye, by Dan Poke. When she pointed it out, Zosia said, “This was left the evening he did his act here. It was for sale, I think, but nobody wanted to buy it because the cover was torn or something.”

  “Could I have a look at it?”

  Jude took the book over to the empty alcove Carole had found for them. When she opened it, she realized that not only the torn dust jacket made it unsaleable. The spine had broken in more than one place, leaving the contents like an unevenly sliced loaf of yellowing pages.

  “Must’ve been published quite a time ago,” Jude observed. She checked on the copyright page. Yes, the book was nearly ten years old. “So that was when Dan Poke was presumably at his peak of popularity.” Carole looked at her quizzically. “Publishers tend only to go for showbiz autobiographies from the really hot names. People who’re currently big on telly. I suppose you don’t know how well his television career’s going at the moment, do you?”

  Jude had supposed correctly. Carole left her in no doubt that the sort of programmes people like Dan Poke might be involved in were not her favoured viewing.

  “No, but you can’t miss them, when someone’s really hot. You see them on trailers between other programmes. Television celebrities are all over the newspapers.”

  “Yes, even The Times,” said C
arole with an aggrieved sniff, “quite often has colour photographs of showbiz nonentities on the front page. It’s sometimes terrifying how downmarket that paper’s gone, you know.”

  Jude wasn’t really listening; she was following a train of thought of her own. “No, I don’t think I have seen much about Dan Poke recently…”

  “So in what way is that relevant?”

  “Just thinking. I mean, OK, he’s been on telly, so he’s still a big name in a little place like Fethering, but I think it’s a while since he was really in the big time…”

  “I repeat my question: in what way is that relevant?”

  “I don’t know. He just seems to indulge in all the behaviour of a big star, when probably he isn’t that big a star.”

  “Isn’t that how show business works?” asked Carole acidly.

  “Yes, maybe…” Jude’s eyes strayed back to the book’s copyright page. “Huh, and he didn’t even write it himself, anyway.”

  “What?”

  Jude pointed out to her friend the words: ‘Copyright © 2001 Richard Farrelly’.

  “So? Lots of show-business autobiographies have ghost writers.”

  “Not so often for comedians. Particularly the stand-ups. They pride themselves on producing their own material.”

  Carole couldn’t see that that was particularly relevant either, and their conversation moved on to other topics. But later, when Ted Crisp himself delivered their salads, Jude asked him, “Who’s Richard Farrelly?”

  His face was still set in an expression which said he wasn’t going to engage in conversation with them, but he couldn’t see the harm in responding to that.

  “Why do you ask?”

  Jude indicated A Poke in the Eye on the table.

  “Because Dan Poke got him to ghost his autobiography.”

  Something that was almost a grin appeared through the thatch of Ited Crisp’s beard. “Richard Farrelly didn’t ghost it.”

  “What?”

  “Richard Farrelly is Dan Poke. Oh, come on, what are the chances of a comedian’s parents christening him with a gift of a name like ‘Dan Poke’?”