Simon Brett
Blood at the Bookies
The Fethering Mysteries #9
One
“Come on, everyone likes a bet,” said Jude.
“Well, I don’t,” sniffed Carole.
The response was so characteristic and instinctive that her friend couldn’t help smiling. In a world where everyone was encouraged to be ‘hands-on’ and ‘touchy-feely’, Carole Seddon’s approach to life was always going to be ‘hands-off’ and ‘keep-your-distance’. But those idiosyncrasies didn’t diminish Jude’s affection for her. And that February morning the affection was increased by the diminished state her neighbour was in. The response to the idea of betting would always have been sniffy, but on this occasion it had been accompanied by a genuine sniff. Carole was drowned by a virulent winter flu bug, and Jude felt the last emotion her neighbour would ever wish to inspire in anyone – pity.
“Anyway, I’ve promised Harold I’ll go to the betting shop and put his bets on, so I can’t not do it.”
“Huh,” was Carole’s predictable response. Her pinched face looked even thinner behind her rimless glasses. The pale blue eyes were bleary and the short grey hair hung lank.
“Come on, it’s one of the few pleasures Harold Peskett has at his age. And he’s got this wretched flu just like you. It’s the least I can do for him. I can’t see that there’s anything wrong with it.”
“It’s encouraging bad habits,” came the prissy reply.
“Carole, Harold is ninety-two, for God’s sake! I don’t think I’m going to make his habits any worse at this stage of his life. And it’s no hardship – I’ve got to go to the shops anyway, to get my stuff…and yours.”
“What do you mean – mine?”
“You’re in no state to go out shopping.”
“Oh, I’m sure I will be later. I’ve got a touch of flu, that’s all.”
“You look ghastly. You should go straight back to bed. I don’t know why you bothered to get dressed this morning.”
Carole looked shocked. “What, are you suggesting I should be lolling round the house in my dressing-gown?”
“No. As I say, I’m suggesting you should go back to bed and give yourself a chance of getting rid of this bug. Have you got an electric blanket?”
“Of course not!” Carole was appalled by the idea of such self-indulgence.
“Hot water-bottle?”
With some shame, Carole admitted that she did possess one of those luxury items. Jude picked the kettle up off the Aga and moved to fill it at the sink. “Tell me where the hot water-bottle is and I’ll – ”
“Jude!” The name was spoken with considerable asperity. “This is my house, and I’ll, thank you to let me manage it in my own way.”
“I’m not stopping you from doing that. But you’re ill, and there are some things you can’t do at the minute.”
“I am not ill!” Carole Seddon rose assertively from her chair. But she was taken aback by the wave of giddiness that assailed her. She tottered, reached for the support of the kitchen table and slowly subsided back down.
A grin spread across Jude’s plump face. Her brown eyes sparkled and the stacked-up blonde hair swayed as she shook her head in the most benign of I-told-you-so gestures. “See. You can’t even stand up. There’s no way you could make it down Fethering High Street even as far as Allinstore. I will do your shopping for you, and you will go to bed.”
“There’s nothing I want,” Carole mumbled with bad grace. “I’m well stocked up with everything.”
“Not the kind of things you need. You need nice warming soups and things like that. Lucozade, whisky…When you’re ill, you need to feel pampered.”
“What nonsense you do talk, Jude.” But the resistance was already diminishing. Carole felt so rotten that even her opposition to the idea of pampering, built up over more than fifty years, was beginning to erode.
What defeated her residual contrariness was the issue of her dog. Gulliver, slumped by the Aga in his usual state of Labrador passivity, was going to need walking very soon or there might be a nasty accident on the kitchen floor. What was more, the house was completely out of dog food. And Carole was just not strong enough to complete either of these tasks. Much as it went against her every instinct, she was going to need help. And getting that help from Jude, who had already witnessed her parlous state, was preferable to involving anyone else, letting a stranger into her life. Grudgingly, Carole Seddon bit the bullet and agreed that her neighbour should add to her own errands the task of walking Gulliver out to buy some of his favourite Pedigree Chum.
She still showed token resistance to the idea of pampering. She certainly wouldn’t contemplate the idea of Jude helping her undress and get back to bed. But she did let slip where the hot water-bottle was to be found.
Jude was discreet enough to tap on the bedroom door before she entered with the filled bottle and a steaming drink. She looked at the drained face peering miserably over the edge of the duvet. “There. At least you look a bit more comfortable.”
“I’ll be all right,” said Carole, who hated the notion of being ill.
“Don’t worry. We’ll soon get you better.”
“What do you mean – ‘we’?” A spark of disgust came into the pale blue eyes. “You’re not going to try and heal me, are you?”
Again Jude had difficulty suppressing a grin. Nothing would ever shift her neighbour’s antipathy to the idea of healing…or indeed any other alternative therapy.
“I promise I am not going to try and heal you. It wouldn’t work, anyway. Bugs like this just sort themselves out in their own time.”
“Then who’s this ‘we’?” Carole persisted suspiciously.
“For heaven’s sake, it’s just a figure of speech. “We’ll get you better” – it doesn’t mean anything more than the fact that I’ll keep an eye on you, see you’ve got everything you need.”
“Oh, but I don’t want you to…” The words trickled away as Carole realized just how ghastly she did actually feel. She had no more resistance left.
“Anyway,” said Jude cheerily, “we – or ‘I’ if you prefer – have got to see you’re all right by Sunday.”
“Why?”
“I thought you said that’s when Stephen and Gaby are bringing Lily down to see you.”
But this reminder of her status as a grandmother didn’t bring any warmth of Carole’s manner. “No,” she said, “I’ve put them off.”
“What?”
“I don’t want to breathe germs over the baby, do I?” replied Carole piously.
It was in a way the correct answer, but it stimulated an anxiety within Jude about how Carole was adjusting to her new role as a grandmother. Still, this was not the appropriate moment to follow up on that. She handed the hot drink across to her patient.
Garole sniffed. “It’s got whisky in it,” she said accusingly.
“Of course it has,” said Jude.
Jude was unused to walking a dog, but Gulliver’s equable temper did not make the task difficult. His benevolence was more or less universal. When he barked it was from excitement, and his encounters with other dogs were playful rather than combative. Most important, he was never aware that Carole, not a natural dog person, had only bought one so that she wouldn’t be thought to be lonely as she was seen walking with him around Fethering.
After her divorce and what she still thought of as her premature retirement from the Home Office, Carole Seddon had planned her life in Fethering so that she would be completely self-sufficient. She didn’t want other people in her life, and Gulliver had been just one of the defence mechanisms she had carefully constructed to prevent such intrusions.
But then Jude had moved into Woodside Cottage next door, and even Carole found her resistance weakened by the charm of her new neighbour’s personality. Jude rarely spoke about her past, but the details she did let slip led Carole to deduce that it had been a varied – not to say chequered – one. There was something of the former hippy about Jude. She was a healer and had introduced into the bourgeois fastness of Woodside Cottage such exotic items as crystals and wind-chimes. It would have been hard to imagine a more unlikely friend for Carole Seddon, but, though Carole would never have admitted it out loud, she valued the friendship more than almost anything else in her life.