Glen Porter suddenly had an urgent meeting he had to be at rather soon. Jude was quickly and unceremoniously hustled out of the beach hut.
As she passed through the doorway, she breathed in the intensity of Lauren Givens’s perfume.
Jude walked slowly back across Fethering Beach. She remembered when she had surprised Lauren on the sand the previous Thursday. She thought back to the Saturday morning in Fethering Yacht Club. She had thought Glen Porter had hurried out so soon after arriving because he’d seen Harry Lasalle. Wasn’t it just as possible that he’d seen Lauren Givens, sitting with her husband? And then there was the way Lauren and Glen had behaved at his beach hut that morning …
Jude had been a keen observer of human behaviour for quite a while. And she recognized instinctively the signs of a couple pretending that they weren’t having an affair.
NINE
Carole’s sour mood was somewhat sweetened by a call from Malk Penberthy, suggesting another meeting over coffee in Starbucks.
He must have news to impart. News which he probably could have imparted over the phone. But Carole preferred the idea of face-to-face contact. She thought it might be a symptom of loneliness in the old man but found that endearing rather than worrying. She also once again relished the idea of something covert, having her own private source of information.
And she was, in part, relieved. There had been some asperity in their meeting on the Monday, with her pushing Malk for revelations he was unwilling to share, and she was comforted that that hadn’t led to a permanent rift.
Their encounter that morning followed the previously established format of not getting to the meat of their subject until they were both supplied with coffees and had exchanged pleasantries about the inclemency of the weather.
‘I have been making it my business,’ Malk began in his customary formal manner, ‘to elicit information about the late Harry Lasalle’s involvement in the various incarnations of Footscrow House … or, as you probably know, what is known to the Fethering cognoscenti as “Fiasco House”.’
‘I have heard it called that, yes.’
‘Well, Carole, you may also know that the building is currently being converted into holiday flatlets.’ She nodded. ‘Maybe a project which will finally turn the fortunes of the place into something profitable.’
‘Maybe.’ She was keen for him to get through the preamble and tell her his latest discovery. But she was too well brought up to push him. Let him tell his story at a pace of his own choosing.
‘Now, in the past, Harry Lasalle kind of dabbled as a property developer. He started out as a builder, just that, and was very successful at it. Made a lot of money out of Lasalle Build and Design and started to think, “Why should I just be employed by other people to build houses which they’re going to sell at high profit? Why shouldn’t I be working on my own projects, so that I get a bit of that money too?”
‘He had variable success. Made money on some developments, lost on others. Only one thing remained constant – whenever he got involved with Fiasco House, it was the Midas touch in reverse. Sheer disaster. Maybe nobody could ever have made that place profitable. Certainly, Harry Lasalle couldn’t.
‘Meanwhile, he – or even more his wife Veronica – was grooming their son Roland to be an entirely different kind of operator, rather in the way thuggish homicidal Mafia bosses are supposed to get their sons trained up as lawyers. Roland Lasalle’s dainty hands would never be allowed to get engrained with cement dust like his father’s. He was a professional man, an architect, not a builder. Public school education, university, architect’s training, membership of London clubs – a precision-cut diamond, while his father was a rough one.
‘So, Roland was trained to have the social skills and articulacy which would make him a much more effective property developer than his father. For many of his projects, the younger Lasalle relied on investment from Harry, but in no way was it an equal partnership. The father was back in his box, working for someone else, though now the one who was raking in the big profits was his own son.
‘On the latest development, though, the conversion of Footscrow House into holiday flatlets, Roland has totally cut his father out. Raised the money elsewhere, wouldn’t allow Harry to invest. Employed other builders, cut out Lasalle Build and Design completely. Which, from all accounts, the old man took very badly.
‘So, Carole, I was thinking that might be of interest to you … another factor for you and your friend to consider in your investigation.’
She had never actually spelled out what she and Jude were investigating, or even that they were investigating anything, but clearly Malk Penberthy had deduced it for himself. Or maybe, given the way gossip travelled in Fethering, someone else had told him what they were up to.
‘Malk,’ Carole began slowly, ‘I’m really grateful to you for telling me that. It does open out a lot of new possibilities.’
‘I agree. Certainly, if one were going down the route of believing that Harry Lasalle’s death was suicide, that might give him an additional motive. It’s entirely possible he would have regarded his son’s behaviour as a betrayal. And if the old man had health problems, if his body was starting to let him down, that might be a stark reminder that he could no longer sustain the lifestyle that he was used to. Roland might have delivered to him a rather brutal form of memento mori. People, I am aware, have committed suicide with less reason.’
‘Yes,’ said Carole thoughtfully. She was trying to piece together how this rift between father and son might fit into a scenario in which Harry’s death was murder. But maybe she needed a bit more background first …?
‘Malk,’ she began tentatively, ‘going back a bit …’
‘Hm?’
‘Back to the time of Anita Garner’s disappearance …’
‘Yes.’ A slight smile played around his thin lips, as if he were acknowledging the predictability of her redirection.
‘Do you know the detail of Harry Lasalle’s involvement with Footscrow House back then?’
‘Well, he owned it. And he ran it as a care home, with his wife Veronica. Not very successfully. That’s why, soon after, he cut his losses and converted the place into a boutique hotel. Which – surprise, surprise – wasn’t very successful either.’
‘So, Malk, going back to Anita Garner’s handbag, why was the bedroom where it was found being decorated at the time? To improve the conditions of the care home?’
‘By no means. Harry was already running the care home business down, looking to Fiasco House’s next incarnation as a hotel. He wasn’t replacing residents who died off and he was working with the local authorities to get the remaining ones transferred to other local homes.’
‘So, the bedroom was being redecorated for its new life as a hotel room?’
‘Precisely that, Carole.’
‘And Harry and his firm wouldn’t have been doing the decoration themselves?’
‘No. He was basically a builder. He always subcontracted decorating jobs.’
‘And do you know who he subcontracted that one to?’
Malk Penberthy let out a little smile which seemed to say that Carole wasn’t going to catch him out in ignorance that easily. ‘Yes, he gave the job to Brenton Wilkinson.’
‘The decorator who Pete used to work for before he set up on his own?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Is he still around?’
‘Brenton? Just about.’
‘He must be very old.’
‘He’s exactly the same age as I am,’ said Malk Penberthy rather tartly.
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t worry. I long ago gave up all attempts to pass myself off as a spring chicken.’ His tone was joking but he still looked hurt.