‘“Trick”? What did you do?’
‘Like I said, she constantly thought people were trying to get one over on her and, with the decorating, she thought we might be skimping the number of coats of paint we done. There are, I’m afraid, some chancers in the trade who do do that. You know, like, say in the care home bedrooms, the deal was we’d strip down the paintwork, windows and what-have-you, prime where necessary and put on two coats of gloss.
‘Veronica, the suspicious cow, thought I was trying to get away with just doing the one and she’d try to catch me out. Overnight, when I’d left the first coat to dry, she’d sneak round with a pin and put a row of pinpricks in the paint … underside of a windowsill, somewhere like that, where nobody’s likely to look, sort of place a skiving decorator might think they could get away with it. And then bloody Veronica’d check the next day to see her pinpricks had been covered by the second coat before she’d sign off on the job.
‘Well, I don’t like being distrusted – I suppose nobody does, really – so I hatched a little plan to catch her out. After she’s checked her pinpricks was covered and signed the job off, I go back in the room with a pin of my own and put the holes back, through the second coat, exactly where they had been. Kept doing it. Drove Veronica bloody mad. Starts worrying whether she can believe the evidence of her own eyes.
‘Mind you, pretty soon she works out it’s me who’s behind it. And I’m afraid, with someone like Veronica Lasalle, these things go deep. Our relationship – if we ever had one – hasn’t been that harmonious ever since.’
‘Yes, she was bad-mouthing you just now.’
‘Was she? There’s a surprise.’
‘Which is unusual.’
‘What?’
‘Nobody in Fethering has a bad word to say about Pete the decorator.’
That prompted a reappearance of the toothy grin. ‘Nice of you to say so.’
‘When you were doing that job, Pete, you know, changing the care home into a boutique hotel, did you paint any of the bedrooms?’
‘I don’t think so. And it’s so long ago, I can’t remember what I did. So far as I recall, though, on that refurbishment most of the stuff I done was downstairs.’
‘So, you hadn’t been in that bedroom before, the one where we found the handbag?’
He shook his head. ‘First time, that day we found it.’
‘Are you Jude?’
She had just left the house, going to visit one of her regular clients who was virtually immobile but still managing to live on her own. Turning at the question, she saw it had come from Roland Lasalle. Except for his father’s jutting lower jaw and underbite, his looks came more from his mother. He had her short stature and harsh features. His copper-beech-coloured hair was firmly slicked down with a clinically straight parting. He was wearing a dark mohair overcoat, the polish on his black shoes was lustrous, and he had just stepped out of an electric BMW. He must have been coming to Woodside Cottage to see her.
‘Yes,’ Jude acknowledged her name.
‘My name’s Roland Lasalle.’ Of course, she knew that, but then again they hadn’t had a proper Fethering introduction and, based in London, he might well not have registered seeing her before.
‘Oh,’ she said, before coming up with the appropriate formula: ‘I was very sorry to hear about your father. I wish you—’
‘Don’t worry about that. I’ve just been talking to my mother.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘She’s very upset.’
‘I’m not surprised. With your father having just—’
‘Not upset about that.’ Realizing his words might have sounded inappropriate, he backtracked. ‘Well, obviously she is. But more upset about what you’ve been doing.’
‘Oh?’
‘I was in London – that’s where I’m based – and only came back down to Fethering when I heard about my father. So, I didn’t know any of the stuff that’s been going on.’
‘What “stuff” do you mean?’
‘My mother’s only just told me about why people are suddenly talking about Anita Garner again.’
‘Right.’
‘That all seemed to have been forgotten – which was a great relief to my father, let me tell you. And then you bring the whole scandal back to life by finding the bloody girl’s handbag!’
Jude was not going to stand for that. ‘You make it sound like I deliberately went looking for the handbag. I just happened to be in the room when it was found.’
‘With Pete the decorator.’
‘Yes. And, in fact, I met you that day – or rather I saw you. You bawled out Pete for skiving.’
‘Did I?’ Roland Lasalle had no interest in their previous encounter. ‘Pete’s done worse than skiving. Don’t know how he got that butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-mouth image round Fethering.’
‘I’ve heard no complaints about—’
‘Anyway, Jude’ – he managed to get a sneer into the name – ‘you’ve done enough harm. My mother reckons you’re the reason why my father topped himself. I don’t know enough detail to support that accusation, but I do know that village gossip never did anyone any good. So, in future, will you and your neighbour keep your bloody mouths shut!’
With that, he got back into his electric BMW and slammed the door.
The care home was on the southern outskirts of Fedborough. Had it been the other side of the town, it would have commanded views over the South Downs. As it was, the building looked over the flatness of the coastal plain. The space between it and the English Channel was filled with endless rows of plastic tunnels for the growing of vegetables. But in the icy February drizzle, any outlook would have been dispiriting.
Nor was the interior of the home calculated to raise one’s mood. There are, along the south of England’s ‘Costa Geriatrica’, a wide range of accommodations for the elderly no longer able to look after themselves. Some have all the facilities of five-star hotels (with prices to match). Swimming pools, spas, gourmet cuisine, hairdressers, lectures, theatre visits, tours of National Trust properties, book clubs, bridge tournaments … all of these and more are available at the top end of the market. A first-class shuttle service to the grave.
Down in the local-authority-funded care homes, like the one Brenton Wilkinson was in, the amenities are more Spartan. Stripped-down budgets and shortage of staff meant there wasn’t much spare capacity to do anything beyond the basics of getting the residents out of bed, feeding them and getting them back into bed at the (early) end of the day. The air was flavoured by the competing smells of urine and disinfectant.
In terms of mental stimulation, there was a library of dog-eared books, whose print was too small for most of the inmates to read, some incomplete boxes of board games and decks of cards.
For most, the only entertainment on offer was daytime television, played at far too high a volume in the day room. Most visitors to the residents had to conduct their conversations, however intimate the subject matter might be, against that background.
Malk Penberthy had arranged the visit to Brenton Wilkinson and he accompanied Carole. Seeing the two men together and knowing them to be contemporaries, Carole was struck by how much better the journalist had worn than the decorator. Probably something to do with what Jude had reported from her conversation with Pete, about the physical strains of a whole lifetime of manual labour. The life of the mind brought its own challenges, but not the same bodily stresses.
Brenton Wilkinson was huge, spilling out of the threadbare armchair into which he had been propped. Presumably, during his working life, much of his bulk had been muscle, but spending all day watching stupid people answering stupid quiz questions, and marginally less stupid people trying to make money from auctions, had turned it all to fat. There was no hair visible on his head; his face and hands were blotched with dark brown liver spots. His lips were sucked in. When he opened his mouth not a single tooth was visible.