With a slight shock, Carole realized that she was only a day away from the arrival of Gaby and Lily. The mysteries of Mark Dennis and Robin Cutter had been preoccupying her. One of them was solved. She wondered what the chances were of the second being elucidated before she had to go into full-on grandmother mode. The odds weren't promising. She tried to close her mind to the case and concentrate on her imminent visitors. She wasn't successful.
On their way back to Fowey, Carole and Gulliver's route took them along the line of the other beach huts, of which more had been opened up during their walk. Outside Cape of Good Hope sat Dora Pinchbeck with a piled-high cornet of pistachio ice cream and a Daily Mail. In her personal domain, in front of her beach hut, she looked very much more in control of life than on the previous occasions Carole had met her. It seemed that, when she wasn't being diminished and patronized by Reginald Flowers, the woman did actually have an identity of her own.
She greeted Carole warmly and glowed when congratulated on the success of the quiz night. 'Yes, it all seemed to go very well,' she agreed. 'In spite of the snafu over the booking of the venue.'
Carole was surprised at Dora's use of the military slang expression 'snafu'. Easier to imagine it coming from Reginald Flowers's lips. And she wondered whether Dora was actually quoting her 'boss'.
'Oh well, everyone makes mistakes,' she said soothingly.
'I agree. Some of us just don't admit to them, though.' Carole's look asked for an explanation, so Dora nodded towards The Bridge. 'Lord High and Mighty over there never admits to having made a mistake.'
'Oh?'
'Did he tell you that I'd screwed up the booking at St Mary's Church Hall?'
'Yes, he did.'
'Typical. That's how control freaks always come unstuck. Incapable of delegating, on the rare occasions when they do make mistakes, they always have to find someone else to blame. And in Reg's case it's nearly always Little Me.'
She spoke with remarkable lack of rancour, given the way her 'boss' treated her. Carole began to wonder if the efficient master/incompetent secretary routine was some kind of game they played, and whether their relationship was in fact rather closer than it appeared on the outside.
'Anyway,' she said, 'good to see you, Dora. Come along, Gulliver.'
She was stopped by a question from Dora that was spoken so softly that she hardly heard it. But it sounded like, 'Any developments on the case?'
She turned back. 'I beg your pardon?'
'The investigation into Robin Cutter's death.'
Oh dear, thought Carole, are Jude and I that transparent? There we are, imagining we're conducting our enquiry secretly and it seems that the whole of Smalting — and quite possibly Fethering too — knows all about our endeavours. She tried to think of some appropriately enigmatic response, but before she could say it, Dora Pinchbeck went on, in a confidential tone, 'I'm a friend of Helga Czesky . . .'
'Oh?'
'. . . and she told me . . . you know, who you really are.'
'Ah.' It took Carole a moment to realize the significance of this. It was only a few days since she and Jude had had the confrontation with Gray and Helga Czesky at Woodside Cottage, but so much had happened since that it felt a lifetime away. Of course, as she recalled with some pleasure, the Czeskys had left that meeting convinced that Carole and Jude were both plain-clothes policewomen. If that was the information that Helga had imparted to Dora Pinchbeck, then Carole was in a situation of which she could take advantage.
She tested it out by saying, 'I'm afraid I'm not allowed to give out any information about the case until there's an official press conference.'
'No, no, of course I can see that.' Dora sounded disappointed but realistic. It had just been a punt. She hadn't really been expecting to be given the inside track on the investigation.
'And in fact,' Carole went on, gaining confidence in her new spurious role, 'I would rather you kept the information that Helga Czesky gave you under wraps. The work we do is kind of undercover, so we don't want everyone in Smalting to know about it.'
'I understand completely.'
Carole fixed Dora Pinchbeck with a beady eye. 'May I ask whether you have told anyone else what Jude and I really do.'
The embarrassed expression on the woman's face told Carole that she had struck gold. 'Well, I'm sorry,' Dora Pinchbeck floundered. 'I shouldn't have, I suppose, but, you know, if you're in conversation with someone, well, it is quite easy to let things slip.'
'Who have you told?' came the implacable question.
There was a long silence, during which Carole suddenly became aware of a moral dilemma. Given her background in the Home Office, she knew full well how serious was the crime of impersonating a member of the police force. That was black and white. But considerably greyer was the ethical position of someone being assumed to be a policewoman and not putting right the person who had made the assumption. Jude, she knew, would have had no worries at all about the situation, regarding it as an instance of serendipity, of some cosmic force displaying generosity, a gift from the gods, which it would be bad manners to turn down, or some other New Age mumbo-jumbo. But Carole Seddon was wary of such casuistry.
Fortunately, her moral meanderings were cut short when Dora Pinchbeck gave her the name of the person she had told about her supposed status as a plain-clothes policewoman. And the minute she heard the name, all qualms vanished.
'Kelvin Southwest.'
'When did you tell him?'
'Thursday night. Just after he arrived at the Crown and Anchor. I was chatting to him and then when you and your friend came in, he said something about the two of you, and I told him what I'd heard from Helga. I'm terribly sorry.'
'Don't worry about it,' said Carole with magisterial generosity.
She couldn't believe her luck. Now she knew why Kelvin Southwest had avoided her at the beginning of the previous evening. And now she had a hold over him. If Kelvin Southwest thought she was a member of the police force, then he wasn't going to refuse to answer her questions about what he got up to in an empty beach hut with binoculars, was he?
Chapter Thirty-Four
There was no 'lovely lady' flirtatiousness from the Fether District Council official when Carole rang his mobile number. The tension in his voice suggested that he had been expecting her call, and he proved to be very biddable. Yes, of course he would meet her whenever she liked. He'd rather not make it at his house, because he didn't want his mother to get upset. On Smalting Beach would be fine. Yes, at Fowey. He'd be with her in as long as it took.
Carole Seddon felt a glow of satisfaction as she sat outside the beach hut waiting for him. The odds on her getting a solution to the case seemed suddenly to have shortened considerably. And she relished the prospect of telling her neighbour how she solved it single-handedly while Jude was in Brighton. Past Life Regression Workshop — huh.
She looked along the row of beach huts and felt as if she belonged there. She was almost a hutter, and would be more than competent to welcome Gaby and Lily to Fowey the next day. Or would she be able finally to return to her original beach hut?
Carole had noticed earlier that all traces of the police presence around Quiet Harbour had now been removed. Maybe she could reclaim it? Architecturally the two beach huts were absolutely identical, but, in spite of everything that had happened there, Carole did have a sneaking preference for Quiet Harbour over Fowey. It felt more hers.
Smalting Beach was getting back to normal, though. The doors to Shrimphaven were open. Inside no doubt Katie Brunswick was continuing the Sisyphean task of rewriting her novel.