‘Well, I’m sorry to put a damper on your theory,’ Carole apologized, ‘but I’m afraid it won’t hold up.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because, to travel to Spain, Anita Garner would have needed her passport.’
‘And, if you were listening, Carole, I did just say that she had recently been issued with one.’
‘But she didn’t use it to go to Spain.’
‘How do you know that?’
And she explained to Malk about the discovery of the handbag. And its contents.
He looked really crestfallen. Not because his theory had been ruled out, but because he had been excluded from the sources of information. If Malk Penberthy had still been a working journalist, he would have found out from Fethering Police about the find at Footscrow House. Now he was just another curious member of the public, with no special access to anything.
They had both finished their coffees and it seemed Malk had given as much relevant information as he could. He suddenly looked very tired, and Carole found herself wondering how old he actually was.
‘I do hope you wouldn’t mind if I were to contact you to pick your brains further …?’ she asked, again surprised at how easily she slipped into his formal style of speaking.
‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure,’ he said. And then, going positively Jane Austen, ‘I should like it of all things.’
‘Well, let’s exchange phone numbers.’
‘An excellent idea, Carole. I’m afraid mine is a landline … though why I should apologize for that, I’m not quite sure. However, in these days of smartphones and online this and online that, I feel obliged to do so. I do possess some primitive form of mobile phone, but I’m afraid I never got on with it. We didn’t bond. The outdated notion that the sole purpose of a telephone is to make telephone calls was so much a part of my professional life that it is still engrained in my soul. Mea culpa. It is fortunate perhaps that I had to retire from journalism when I did. I enjoyed the daily to-and-fro of searching people out and talking to them. Today’s generation of journalists do most of their work without taking their eyes off the screen on their office desks.’
Carole found herself warming increasingly to him. Though she could not now live without her laptop, and was using her smartphone more, his attitude to technology struck a chord deep within her.
Malk Penberthy was her sort of man.
Jude picked up the phone. It was Pete.
‘Just wanted to check – still all right for me to start work at your place on Monday?’
‘No problem at all. Be good to see you.’
That was true. It was always good to see Pete. But a little bit of Jude’s satisfaction came from the thought that he might be able to tell her more about the history of Footscrow House. Which could of course be helpful in solving the mystery of Anita Garner’s disappearance, now becoming something of an obsession.
‘So, you’ll be there, will you? I won’t need a key?’
‘No, I’ll be here.’ A moment of caution. ‘What time do you start?’
‘Eight.’
‘Eight?’ She hadn’t got any clients booked in for the Monday morning. The thought of not being able to sleep in held little appeal. ‘I’ll give you a key. Shall I drop it in at Footscrow House?’
‘No, I’m on another job now, up at Fedborough. Back at Fiasco House after I finish with you. Tell you what … if you drop in to the Fethering Yacht Club round twelve on Saturday …’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow as ever is. And at the yacht club you can give me a key … and I can buy you a drink.’
‘What a nice idea,’ said Jude.
FIVE
That evening the two women met at High Tor. Usually, if it was coffee, they sat in the kitchen. But Jude had brought a nice cold bottle of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and, for some complex reason related to her middle-class upbringing, Carole insisted they should drink it in the sitting room.
Jude was easy with this. Unlike her neighbour, she was easy with everything that didn’t matter. She didn’t, in the words of a self-help book she really deeply disliked, ‘sweat the small stuff’. (Like almost all self-help books, in her view, almost every sentence in it was just another way of saying the message in the title.)
So, they sat in the sitting room, which at High Tor was exclusively a room for sitting in. Not a room for lounging or flopping in, like the one at Woodside Cottage.
Both women had major news to impart, but Carole insisted they shouldn’t start talking about ‘the case’ until they were both seated in the sitting room’s rather hard armchairs with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc in their hands.
Then, she managed to get in her bombshell first. ‘I’ve met this wonderful man!’ she said.
‘Well, congratulations!’ Jude responded. ‘I kept telling you that, if you waited long enough, the right one would come along.’
Carole’s pale cheeks coloured and, behind their rimless glasses, her eyelashes fluttered with annoyance. ‘No, not that kind of “wonderful man”! Really, Jude, you do, on occasion, have something of a one-track mind. The man I am referring to is wonderful because he is a potential source of information.’
‘Oh,’ said Jude, appropriately subdued but with the slightest bubble of laughter in her voice.
Carole described her encounter with Malk Penberthy, concluding, ‘And he really does know everything that’s happened in Fethering for the past fifty years. He could be terribly useful to us if we have another murder investigation after this one.’
Jude looked at her neighbour quizzically. ‘Are you saying the Anita Garner case is a murder investigation, Carole?’
‘Well, of course it is! Why else would we be getting so interested in it?’
Jude reflected for a moment before saying, ‘You could be right.’
‘Of course I’m right! What else do you think happened to the poor girl?’
‘That’s a question to which nobody has found the answer for the past thirty years.’
‘Well, maybe. But we weren’t on the case then. We’ve only just started investigating.’
Jude grinned. Though Carole could sometimes be almost crippled by self-doubt, it was wonderful to see her in an up mood, with the bit between her teeth.
‘Anyway, the main question,’ Carole galloped on, ‘is who knew about her relationship with Pablo? And whose nose did it put out of joint?’
‘Sorry, just a minute. Pablo? Who’s Pablo?’
‘Oh, didn’t I tell you?’
‘No.’
Carole recounted what Malk had said about what was possibly Anita Garner’s most serious relationship.
‘And what was his source for that information?’
‘Someone we’ve met, Jude.’
‘Who?’
‘Shona Nuttall.’
‘Oh yes, I remember her. Used to be landlady of that ghastly pub on the Fether. The Cat and Fiddle. We met her when we were investigating the poisoning at the Crown and Anchor.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Is she still around?’
‘Don’t know. Malk talked to her around the time of the disappearance, so we’re talking thirty years ago. It was at the Cat and Fiddle, though, that Anita and Pablo met.’
‘Ah. And did Anita say to anyone that she was planning to join this Pablo in Spain?’
‘Not in so many words, no.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means she didn’t say anything to anyone,’ said Carole, a little shamefacedly.
‘Incidentally …’ Jude suddenly produced a scrap of paper from her pocket. ‘I know when she applied for the passport.’