‘So, what I’m thinking is, Pete … that when you painted the rooms, you didn’t paint the one with the boarded-off alcove, because that was then a separate unit.’ She couldn’t keep a note of triumph out of her voice as she said this.
‘So?’ Pete looked puzzled. ‘Yes, it probably was, but why’s that important?’
‘It’s important because you said that …’ Jude’s words trickled away. She realized she couldn’t go further without admitting the extent of the suspicions that she had been entertaining about Pete. And she didn’t want to do that. It would seem like a betrayal. Nor could she admit how ecstatic she felt to have proved that he wasn’t a liar.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, inadequately. ‘What is important is that, back when Footscrow House was a care home, that room with the alcove wasn’t for the residents’ use.’
‘Oh?’ said Pete, still searching for relevance in what she was saying. He took a long swallow of coffee.
‘It was used by the staff if they had to stay overnight.’
‘So?’ That hadn’t made it relevant either.
‘Well, I was thinking that Anita Garner might well have stayed in that room.’
‘She was on the staff, so yes, I guess she might well have done.’
‘In fact, it might well have been that room she was in immediately before she disappeared!’
‘How’d’you work that out?’
Jude was forced to admit that she had no logical answer to his question. But she knew from long experience that, for her, at times instinct was more powerful than logic.
‘Anyway, thank you so much, Pete.’ She enveloped him in a huge, warm hug.
The toothy grin reappeared. ‘What did I do to deserve that?’
She couldn’t give the true answer. She couldn’t tell him the magnitude of the relief she felt at having her suspicions of him allayed. So, she said, ‘Just the lovely job you’ve done decorating my sitting room.’
‘We aim to please, madam,’ said Pete, in a mock-subservient voice and with a finger-tap to an invisible cloth cap.
‘Now, could I get you another cup of coffee (white with one sugar)?’
‘Never been known to say no, Jude,’ replied the decorator.
THIRTEEN
‘Is that Carole? I’m afraid I don’t know your surname.’
‘Seddon. Carole Seddon. Mrs Carole Seddon. Who is this?’
‘My name’s Fred Givens.’
‘Ah.’ This was promising. The fact that he was ringing her was surely promising from the point of view of their investigation.
‘Yesterday my wife Lauren held a Pottery Open Day at our house.’
‘Yes, I saw a flyer for it.’ Carole didn’t want to volunteer any more. Wait and see where he would take the conversation.
Fred Givens took it in the direction she had been afraid he would. ‘Did you come to our house yesterday, Mrs Seddon?’
She couldn’t tell an outright lie, but maybe it was time to ration the amount of truth. ‘Yes, I did come with a friend. But there didn’t seem to be anyone there, so we went away again.’
‘You didn’t come into the house?’
‘Er … Well …’
‘Mrs Seddon, I went into the studio and I saw you and your friend going out through the curtain.’
‘Yes. When we saw there was no one in the studio, we turned round and—’
‘Mrs Seddon, while you were in the studio, my wife and I were having a conversation in the kitchen.’
‘Were you?’ asked Carole innocently.
‘And I’d like to know how much you and your nosy friend heard.’
It was hardly surprising that he didn’t want to meet in a public place like the Crown and Anchor or Fethering Yacht Club. His own house was ruled out because Lauren was there. Pete was still finishing up in Woodside Cottage and the place smelled of paint. But, anyway, Carole would have insisted that their meeting took place at High Tor. Hypersensitive to the smallest imagined slight, she wanted to assert her role in their investigation. Fred Givens had contacted her, after all.
He got the full sitting-room treatment, with coffee things and biscuits on a tray. His manner still reflected a lifetime of urbanity, but small details suggested something had shaken him out of his customary serenity. The conversation Carole and Jude had so serendipitously overheard can’t have been the first time he’d heard of his wife’s infidelity, but they got the impression the shock had been relatively recent. The effects showed in the sheen of sweat on his forehead and the tremor in his hand as he picked up his coffee cup.
He and Carole had established on the phone how much information she and Jude had, but he wanted to run through the details to make sure he’d got it right.
‘Obviously,’ he said, ‘this is not the kind of news that I want all round Fethering. So can I rely on your discretion?’ There was a note of pleading in the question.
‘Of course,’ said Carole and Jude together. But their eyes met, exchanging the thought that, though they wouldn’t deliberately spread the scandal, if it was useful in the furtherance of their investigation, that situation might change.
‘You haven’t discussed what you heard with anyone else?’
Both could honestly answer no to that.
‘Well, please don’t.’
They both again affirmed that they wouldn’t.
‘But it is amazing,’ Carole observed, ‘that your wife and Glen Porter could be having an affair without anyone knowing – in a place like Fethering.’
‘It seems they were very discreet.’ Fred Givens brushed the back of his hand against his sweating brow. ‘I’m sorry, I get no pleasure from having to go through these sordid details. Glen, it seems, spends more of his time abroad than he does in the village, so their relationship didn’t have the kind of continuity that might have drawn attention to it. They never went out anywhere, so the local snoopers wouldn’t have seen them together in a restaurant or pub. She used to go to meet him in the beach hut, after dark. And only during the week, of course. Because I’d be here at the weekends, duped into imagining that I was happily married.’ The bitterness in his words was painful.
‘I used to enjoy my weekends. I thought I still was enjoying them, though, when I come to think about it, there were signs that Lauren was drifting away from me. We used to sail together, both members of the yacht club. She would crew for me, but recently she’d lost interest, only went to the club on sufferance. I suppose I should have recognized that as a symptom, a sign that she had developed another interest … like Glen Bloody Porter!
‘It was my starting to work from home more that put a damper on their cosy little relationship. Difficult for Lauren to explain to me why she suddenly had to slip out in the middle of a cosy domestic evening.’ Emotion suddenly seized him. ‘God, I can’t imagine why I ever trusted her!’
‘I understand it must be very difficult for you,’ said Jude gently, ‘but can I ask whether Lauren had ever had other affairs?’ Her knowledge of human behaviour told her that infidelity could all too easily become a habit.
‘I would have said no,’ Fred replied sourly. ‘I would have said no a hundred times! In fact, I never even asked myself the question. But Lauren and I have talked a lot over the last few days. And all kinds of unpleasant things have crawled out of the woodwork.’
‘So, Glen wasn’t the first?’ asked Carole.
‘No.’
Jude asked suddenly, ‘Did she once have a thing going on with Harry Lasalle?’
Her neighbour’s expression mixed surprise with envy. ‘Extrasensory powers’ were part of the mumbo-jumbo that Carole didn’t believe in, but she had to admit sometimes to being astonished by Jude’s intuition.