Not only was the studio empty of other visitors, it was also empty of the artist, or craftswoman, or ceramicist, whose artefacts were on display. Small notices on the shelves not only indicated which area of the ceramic toadstool world each section represented, but also their prices.
Carole and Jude moved silently along, scanning the exhibits. The former was appalled by what was on offer. She felt sure that, for some people, ceramic toadstools were … a word she even winced to think of … ‘collectibles’. But, for her, the difference between a Red Polka Dot ceramic toadstool and a Magic Fairy ceramic toadstool was not of importance in the Great Scheme of Things.
She did, however, see one selection that made her nudge Jude and point. The sign read: ‘TINKLING TOADSTOOLS’. These were tall, with pointy ends like partially opened umbrellas, painted, like all the other artefacts, in garishly bright colours. And, presumably, if touched, they would tinkle.
Carole was about to put this function to the test, when Jude’s hand on her arm stopped her. A voice could be heard coming through the open door to the kitchen in the main house.
It was Fred Givens. There was a note of irritation as he asked, ‘Lauren, have you checked if there’s anyone out there?’
‘Of course I haven’t!’ There was more than a note of irritation in her reply. ‘There’s no point in looking every five minutes, when the chances are nobody’s going to come all bloody day!’
‘People will come. That is, they will if you got enough flyers out there. It was a bloody good flyer. I got one of my top designers to do it. The trouble is, Lauren, you have no understanding of the basic principles of marketing.’
‘Fred, will you get off my case! I know enough about marketing to know how many of my ceramic toadstools I can sell. I go back to the same gift shops every quarter and they order more or less exactly the same number of items. And that works for me.’
‘Yes, but a business shouldn’t be static. It needs to keep expanding. It’s like that Woody Allen line about relationships. “A relationship’s like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies.” Businesses are like that, too.’
‘Not just businesses,’ Lauren muttered.
‘What? What do you mean?’
‘I mean, Fred, it’s a while since our relationship moved forward, wouldn’t you say?’
‘No. We’ve been fine for—’
‘Not true, Fred. We haven’t been fine for years. And all this time you’ve been “working from home”, it’s got less fine by the minute.’
‘I thought you liked having me around.’ He sounded aggrieved and a little pathetic.
‘I don’t like having you constantly around. Interfering all the time.’
‘Interfering?’
‘Yes, like this bloody Pottery Open Day. I never wanted a Pottery Open Day. And it’s now pretty damn clear that nobody in Fethering wants a Pottery Open Day either. But you kept bloody insisting I should do it.’
‘Lauren … darling … I’m trying to help you. As you’ve just admitted, you have no experience of marketing. I’ve spent an entire career in the business. And I’m just sharing some of my skills with you. Most wives would be delighted to have their husband putting a gentle hand on the tiller of their business.’
‘Well then, I am clearly not “most wives”! I don’t want “a gentle hand on the tiller of my business”! I want you to mind your own bloody business!’
‘Lauren,’ said Fred, ‘that’s very hurtful.’
‘So? Maybe I want to bloody hurt you.’
‘But why would you want to do that?’
‘God, you’re so dense sometimes!’
There was a silence. Carole and Jude, who’d been breathlessly quiet during their eavesdropping, exchanged looks. Was Lauren about to come into the studio? Should they make a noise and pretend they’d only just arrived? Or should they sneak out on tiptoe?
‘Lauren …’ Fred began tentatively.
His reward was a testy, ‘What?’
‘Is it true … what Harry Lasalle said?’
‘What did Harry Lasalle say?’
‘Oh, come on, you can’t have forgotten. We discussed it at the time.’
‘I don’t remember,’ said Lauren dismissively.
‘He said that … He was just passing on gossip, but Harry’d heard rumours that you’d been secretly seeing Glen Porter and—’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Fred!’
There was a sudden screech of a chair being pushed back on a stone floor. Carole and Jude looked at each other in alarm. But Lauren didn’t come out to the studio. Instead, they heard the slamming of an internal door. She had stormed out of the kitchen into the rest of the house.
Carole and Jude exchanged looks of agreement. Then they tiptoed out into De Vere Road.
Both sharing the same thought: that neither Fred nor Lauren Givens had intended their Pottery Open Day to be quite that open.
There were other shared thoughts going through their minds as they walked back to the High Street.
‘If,’ said Carole meditatively, ‘we were to take the view that Harry Lasalle knew about the supposed affair between Lauren Givens and Glen Porter …’
‘It’s not a “supposed affair”,’ Jude objected. ‘It’s an actual affair.’
‘We have no proof of that. You surmised there was something going on …’
‘It’s more than “surmised”, Carole. I know there’s something going on. And, for heaven’s sake – given what we’ve just heard Fred Givens say …’
‘Lauren didn’t allow him the opportunity to say much. She stormed out of the room.’
‘Yes, but it was clear that they’d talked about the subject before.’
‘Maybe,’ said Carole. ‘All right, let’s say for a moment that what you’re suggesting is true.’
‘It is!’ Jude protested.
‘If it is, then, going back to what I was saying earlier about the security risk involved in having affairs …’
‘Yes,’ said Jude patiently.
‘… and if Harry Lasalle knew what was going on and threatened to spill the beans …’
‘Which I’m pretty sure he did.’ Jude told Carole about the scene she’d witnessed between Harry and Lauren at Fethering Yacht Club. ‘Suppose he’d threatened to make what he knew about the affair public and Lauren had been trying to persuade him not to …’
‘If that were true,’ said Carole, ‘then we have a whole new range of motivations for people to want him dead.’
‘Assuming he didn’t kill himself.’
‘Do you honestly think he did?’
‘I really don’t know.’ Jude grimaced. ‘What I do know, though, is that both his mother and son are convinced he did.’
‘Or possibly,’ suggested Carole, ‘they, for reasons of their own, want everyone else to be convinced he did.’
‘You could be right.’
‘So, where do we go next with our investigation? We’re still working on the assumption that the two crimes – Anita Garner’s disappearance and Harry Lasalle’s death – are connected?’
‘Yes, we are,’ said Jude doggedly.
‘So, I say again, what do we do next? What lead do we follow up?’
Jude’s face took on a look of determination. ‘I’d like to find out, one way or the other, whether there’s any justification for being suspicious of Pete.’
Coffee back at High Tor. Jude didn’t want to face the decorator again until she’d sorted a few details out in her mind.
Carole supplied the drinks and they sat in the kitchen. From in front of the Aga, Gulliver’s snores rumbled peaceably in the background.
‘I don’t want to harp on about adultery,’ said Carole, ‘but if Harry Lasalle did know about what was going on between Lauren Givens and Glen Porter …’
‘Yes,’ Jude completed, ‘that might, in some rather far-fetched scenario, give either of them a motive to kill him.’