by Simon Brett
Basically the building had been gutted, the roof had collapsed, and it stood like a blackened empty box between the adjacent shops which, to the uninformed observer, did not seem to have suffered much damage.
Carole and Jude recognized quite a few of the locals. They also registered the presence of the small, thin, long-haired woman they’d seen in the Crown and Anchor last Friday. She was dressed in a faded green velvet coat over scruffy jeans, and was looking at the wreckage of Gallimaufry with something approaching satisfaction.
They might have commented on the woman’s reaction, had Gerald Hume not come bustling towards them out of the watching crowd. He opined, with all the certainty which he had brought to his career in accountancy, that the fire had been started by an electrical fault. ‘That’s what it usually is,’ he said.
‘Do you have any proof that that’s what caused it?’ asked Jude.
‘That’s what it usually is,’ he reasserted.
Nobody else seemed to have any more reliably authenticated information, but that had never stopped the residents of Fethering from expressing their opinions. There was an atmosphere almost of bonhomie about the gathering. Christmas was only days away, and the burning down of a shop served as a pleasant diversion. It would have been different had it been one of the long-established businesses on the parade. But Lola Le Bonnier was a recent incomer, she lived near Fedborough rather than actually in Fethering, and she had been a bit too flashy for the taste of most locals. The same went for her shop. There was something hubristic in the whole enterprise of Gallimaufry. Even the name was a bit fancy and clever-clever. Did Fethering really need somewhere selling overpriced knick-knacks? Nobody actually used the expression ‘Serve her right’, but that was the dominant feeling amongst many of the crowd.
Jude, who knew and cared for Lola, didn’t share this view. But Carole wouldn’t have taken much convincing to side with the sceptics. ‘The trouble is,’ she said, ‘when you’re running something like a shop, it’s all very fine to make the place look exotic and trendy, but you can’t ignore basic Health and Safety procedures.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Jude, uncharacteristically combative.
‘I mean, having all those candles and fairy lights with stuff draped all over them . . . well, it was just asking for trouble, wasn’t it?’
‘We don’t know that’s what caused the fire,’ said Jude doggedly.
‘No, but we can make a pretty well-informed guess that—’
Carole didn’t get to finish her sentence. A policeman with a loudhailer started asking the crowd to move along, telling them there was nothing to see, that there was a danger they might get in the way of the firemen’s work, and that they would be informed when it would be safe for the other shops on the parade to reopen.
Many of the spectators were unwilling to leave, but Carole and Jude separated themselves from the throng and went back home.
‘Or the shop could have been torched for insurance reasons.’
‘Oh, come on, Carole. What have you been reading?’
‘It’s quite a common crime. Particularly in recessionary times. People borrow too much, can’t pay the mortgage . . . they see a fire as a way out of their liabilities.’
‘We don’t know that Ricky Le Bonnier had any money problems.’
‘No, but he’s the kind of man who probably has.’
Jude grinned at her friend. ‘You clearly didn’t take a shine to him, did you?’
‘I thought he was a show-off.’ In Carole Seddon’s lexicon of bad behaviour there were few more damning descriptions. She had been brought up by her meek and frightened parents to believe that, if you raised your head above the parapet, then getting shot down was completely your own fault.
‘We don’t know anything about Ricky’s finances.’
‘Well, I didn’t trust him. People who draw attention to themselves like that . . . He’s all talk, so far as I’m concerned.’
‘Carole, he’s been very successful. He must’ve made a lot of money over the years.’
‘And no doubt spent it, paying for all those wives.’
‘Well, keep your opinions to yourself, won’t you? We don’t want rumours going round Fethering that Ricky Le Bonnier torched his wife’s shop for the insurance money.’
Carole’s thin face grew thinner. ‘Jude, you know I’m always the soul of discretion.’
‘Yes.’
‘Mind you, I do think it’s suspicious. And remember the way all the prices in Gallimaufry were discounted . . . it didn’t look to me like a thriving business.’
‘Very few shops do at the moment. People are battening down their hatches, so far as spending’s concerned. Everyone in the retail trade is suffering.’
‘Though not everyone is solving the problem by burning down their premises.’
Jude shook her head in wry weariness. Once her neighbour got an idea into her head, it took a great deal of effort to shift it. ‘Well, Carole, I’m sure in time we’ll find out more details of what happened.’
They did. On the local news that evening there was an item about the fire. It had taken a while for the building to be made safe, before police and firemen could enter.
And when they got inside, they had found the charred body of a woman.
Chapter Ten
Jude’s first instinct was to ring the Le Bonniers’ house. If there was bad news, she wanted to hear about it straight away. She never saw any point in prevarication.
Her primary anxiety was allayed as soon as the phone was answered. By Lola. Her voice sounded tight with stress, but at least she was alive.
‘I was desperately sorry to hear about what happened at Gallimaufry.’
‘Oh well, it was only stuff,’ said Lola.
‘But you yourself are OK?’
‘I’m fine. We were all here when it happened – me, Flora, the kids.’
‘And Ricky?’
‘Yes, of course, Ricky.’ The answer was rather brusque, almost as if she were dismissing the relevance of her husband. ‘The first thing we knew about the fire was when the police rang this morning.’
‘It must be terrible for you, Lola, after all the work you put into that place.’
‘Oh, well . . . Easy come, easy go.’ She was trying to sound nonchalant, but couldn’t quite carry it off. There was a silence, then Lola went on, ‘Presumably you’ve heard the latest about the fire, have you?’
‘You mean that there was a body found there?’
‘Yes. A woman’s body.’
‘Have the police told you who . . . ?’
‘No. They’re still involved in forensic examination and what have you. They’ve said they’ll let us know as soon as they’ve got a definite identification.’
‘Who lives in the flat over the shop?’ Jude just managed to avoid saying ‘lived’.
‘No one. When we took the place on, because the flat was furnished, I thought we should let it out, so that at least we’d get some income if things got hard – at that time having no idea of quite how hard times would get – but Ricky said no. He never likes thinking about the details of finances, calls all that “penny-pinching”. He likes to think in terms of “the bigger economic picture”.’ There was irony in the way Lola quoted her husband, possibly even veiled criticism.
‘So the flat was empty?’
‘Empty of people, yes. I used it for storage. There was a lot of stuff up there, piled on top of the furniture and beds.’ Her tone was kept determinedly light, but Jude could feel Lola trying to come to terms with the scale of her losses.
‘So you haven’t any idea who the dead woman is?’
‘No. I’ve checked the obvious people, and there doesn’t seem to be anyone missing. My mother-in-law Flora’s here with us. Ricky took Polly to Fedborough Station yesterday afternoon to get a train up to London. He’s checked she’s at home with Piers. I’ve called Anna and Bex . . . you know, they’re two of the assistants.’
‘Did they know ab
out the discovery of the body?’
‘I don’t know. Neither of them mentioned it. And I didn’t raise the matter. I don’t want to add to the dripfeed of local gossip. Anyway, Anna and Bex’re both fine. And I’ve rung around all the other casual staff. Also fine.’
‘So it sounds like whoever died in Gallimaufry, it wasn’t anyone you knew.’
‘That’s the way it seems,’ said Lola Le Bonnier.
Sadly, she was wrong. On the national news the following morning, it was announced that the body found in the burnt-out shop was that of the owner’s stepdaughter, Polly Le Bonnier.
Chapter Eleven
Carole had been ambivalent about getting a Christmas tree. She hadn’t done so any other year since she’d been alone in Fethering. But then again she hadn’t had Stephen and family coming down any other year since she’d been alone in Fethering. And Lily was getting to the age when she might start to take an interest in pretty lights and shiny baubles. It’d really only be for the hours when they were with her, which was a bit of an unnecessary indulgence . . . but then again . . . She ended up buying a Christmas tree about three feet high, and a set of fairy lights. And a box of assorted glass baubles. And some lametta. And a little silver fairy to perch on the topmost branch.
Carole thought she’d been rather foolish to buy all the stuff, but she did enjoy setting it up. And while she dressed her Christmas tree, she thought about Polly Le Bonnier. She did an action replay in her mind of the conversation they had shared at Jude’s open house, and tried to identify anything the girl had said that might be odd. But nothing came. Except that line ‘I know where things went wrong for me.’ That was intriguing, but now there was no chance of finding out from Polly what she had meant.
A more obvious question was: why, though, when her father had taken the girl to Fedborough Station to catch a train up to London, had she ended up back in Fethering? Carole concluded with some frustration that she didn’t have enough information to provide an answer. But the mystery still niggled away at her.
Jude phoned her round five that afternoon. ‘I’ve just had a call from Lola.’
‘Oh, any more news about how it happened?’
‘No. Well, if she had any, she didn’t volunteer it to me. But listen, Lola’s got Piers Duncton with her . . .’
‘Polly’s boyfriend?’
‘Exactly. Apparently he’s in a terrible state – which is hardly surprising. He feels confused and guilty. I get the impression Lola’s finding it difficult to deal with him . . . you know, she’s got the children and Ricky and his mother and . . . I think she’d be quite glad to get Piers out of the house for a while.’
‘So?’
‘So she was suggesting he might come and talk to me.’
‘What, you as a healer?’
‘No, no. Me as someone who gave a party which Polly attended. Piers is desperate to work out what happened to his girlfriend in the hours before she died. He wonders whether she might have said anything to someone she’d seen at the party, something that might give a clue to what she was feeling, or what she was planning to do.’
‘It’s funny, I was just thinking the same myself.’
‘Well, anyway, I said fine, he was welcome to come here and ask me anything he wanted. Lola sounded so relieved. I gather things are pretty tense up at their place – one of the kids, Mabel, the little girl, is laid up with an ear infection, one of the Dalmatians has just had puppies – and Piers may be just one extra complication she could do without right now. So he’s on his way.’
Carole, hypersensitive to any imagined slight, immediately thought that she was being excluded. ‘Very well,’ she said shortly. ‘Let me know if he tells you anything interesting, won’t you?’
‘Carole . . .’ Jude lengthened the name in mild exasperation. ‘What I was going to say was why don’t you come round and talk to Piers as well? You spent at least at much time at my party with Polly as I did, probably more.’
‘Yes,’ said Carole. ‘That’s true.’
He was tall, gangly, with big ears and a big mouth. What would be called ‘a mobile face’. There was no surprise that he worked in comedy. But he wasn’t smiling that afternoon. He looked tense and was sucking on a cigarette as though his life depended on it.
Piers Duncton refused Jude’s offer of an alcoholic drink, opting for a black coffee instead. But she had some Chilean Chardonnay left from her party (the booze never did run out), and she poured glasses for herself and Carole.
‘We were desperately sorry,’ Jude said, ‘to hear about what happened to Polly.’
‘Thank you.’ Nicely spoken, clearly went to the right schools before Cambridge. ‘I still can’t really believe it. I feel so guilty about the whole thing. I mean, I had a text from Polly yesterday afternoon, saying she was going to catch the seven thirty-two train to Victoria . . . and now . . . this.’
He sat uneasily on one of Jude’s over-draped armchairs, tense as a cat testing out an unfamiliar surface. She found a glass dish for him to use as an ashtray and said, ‘Please, do ask us anything you want. If there’s something we can do to help, then just say what it is.’
‘Thank you . . . Jude. was it?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And I gather Polly came to a party here on Sunday . . . ?’
‘Yes.’
‘With her dad?’
‘And her famous grandmother.’
The boy nodded. Clearly he’d already encountered the formidable Flora. ‘Had you met Polly before?’
‘No.’
In response to his quizzical look, Carole said, ‘Nor had I.’
‘Did you talk to her much?’
Jude shook her head. ‘Only really to say hello. I was busy looking after my other guests.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I had quite a chat with her,’ Carole volunteered.
‘What did you talk about?’
‘Her family, a little bit. She mentioned you too, and the fact that you’d be spending Christmas with your parents in Gloucestershire.’
His face registered a new pang of suffering as he said, ‘God, I haven’t told them what’s happened yet. It’s like I’m pretending it’s all a mistake, like the body in Gallimaufry has been indentified wrongly, and Polly’s about to come through that door any minute.’
Emotion seemed momentarily to rob him of words, so Carole thought she might as well continue. ‘She also told me that she was an actor – which is, I suppose, what I would call an actress – and that she was finding work hard to come by.’ Piers nodded acknowledgement of this. ‘She said that you were a comedy writer, and that she was writing something too.’
‘Ah. So she mentioned the book?’
‘She sounded quite optimistic about it, almost as though its publication might start a turnaround in her life.’
‘Polly said that?’ He shook his head wryly. ‘She always was something of a dreamer.’
‘Have you read the book?’ asked Jude.
‘No. She was very private about her writing.’
Carole was quick to pounce on the inconsistency. ‘Polly said you had read it. Said you thought it was wonderful.’
He looked confused for a moment, as if he had been caught in a lie. Though a more innocent explanation might be that he was thrown by these reminders of his dead girlfriend. The confusion in his expressive face gave way to sudden anger, but he managed to curb it. He reached into his pocket for cigarettes, then belatedly appealing to Jude for permission to smoke, lit one up.
‘Yes, I did read a few chapters of Polly’s book,’ he conceded.
‘And did you think it was wonderful?’
The question made him look even more uncomfortable. ‘It’s very difficult to pass comment on the work of someone with whom you’re emotionally involved.’
Jude nodded heartfelt agreement. At various times she had shared her life with an actor and a stand-up comedian, so she knew at first hand the level of paranoia in many creative people.
‘What kind of book was it?’ asked Carole. ‘Polly told me it was part fact, part fiction.’
‘I’d say it was pure fiction,’ said Piers firmly.
‘And what was it about?’
‘Hard to say. A girl growing up, I suppose, and the difficult time she had doing so.’
‘A “Misery Memoir”?’ Jude suggested.
‘Well, if it were true, you might have called it that. But it was fiction. And Polly kept telling me what a happy childhood she’d had, so I don’t think there could have been any autobiographical element in it.’
‘From what you say,’ said Carole, ‘or rather, from what you don’t say, I don’t get the impression you thought much of Polly’s book.’
‘Well . . .’ He was silent, then a bit tearful as he went on, ‘It can’t hurt her now for me to say what I really thought.’ He took a deep breath before announcing, ‘The writing was clumsy and, from what I read of it, the plot just didn’t hang together.’
‘So you don’t think she’d have had any chance of getting it published?’
‘God, no.’
‘But she said an agent friend had also liked it a lot.’
‘Wishful thinking. I know the agent friend in question, Serena. I was up at Cambridge the same time she was. And Serena didn’t want to hurt Polly’s feelings, so she said what she wanted to hear. It’s significant she didn’t offer to represent her as an agent once the book was finished. I’m afraid the situation was that . . . well, Polly always wanted to be as good as other people, particularly as good as me. When we first met, we were both in the National Youth Theatre. And she was always a better actor than me, I’d never argue about that. I mean, I can do revue and stuff, funny faces, funny accents, but I’m not really an actor, not like Polly. So when we first met, she was kind of the dominant partner. Then I went up to Cambridge and I got involved with the Footlights, so I was writing and appearing in revues and what-have-you . . . and Polly, on the weekends she came up, was consigned to the role of a hanger-on. You know, she’d be down in London during the week, trying to get acting work, and I’d be in Cambridge having a whale of a time, surrounded by lots of extremely bright and privileged people . . .’
