‘How did you know that?’ Fred Givens looked horror-struck. ‘Does everyone in Fethering know?’
‘No, of course not. It’s just that, in the conversation we overheard, you mentioned Harry Lasalle had talked about your wife’s relationship with Glen Porter. I thought his motivation might have been jealousy, you know, the ageing former lover being supplanted by the younger model.’
‘Maybe.’ He didn’t sound convinced. ‘And you’re sure you’ve never heard people in Fethering talking about Lauren and Harry Lasalle?’
‘Sure.’
‘It might have been a while ago.’
‘I’ve never heard their names mentioned in the same sentence,’ said Jude.
‘Nor have I,’ Carole confirmed.
Fred Givens looked momentarily relieved by their responses. But his suspicion and self-laceration would not leave him alone. ‘It’s just the thought that everyone might have known, that all of Fethering might have been laughing at me behind their hands. They always say the husband is the last to know. Is there anyone more pathetic than the man who doesn’t know his wife has been constantly cheating on him?’
‘Nobody knew,’ Jude soothed.
‘Harry Lasalle found out about Lauren and Glen Porter. If he could find out about the affair, then so could anyone else.’
‘He probably only found out because he was jealous,’ suggested Jude. ‘Maybe he stalked her. Followed her around to see what she was up to. Nobody else in Fethering would have bothered to do that.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ said Fred uneasily.
Carole came in, with a harder tone. ‘Of course, the situation has changed now rather, hasn’t it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘With Harry Lasalle’s death.’
‘What difference has that made?’ The enquiry sounded innocent. Fred Givens hadn’t caught on to the direction in which Carole’s questions were leading.
She spelled it out. ‘With Harry knowing about their affair, and the constant threat of him sharing the information with someone else, there could be a view that Glen Porter – or indeed your wife – might have wanted to keep him quiet.’
Still, Fred didn’t cotton on. ‘“Keep him quiet”? How?’
‘By killing him,’ said Carole coolly.
‘“Killing him”?’ He was locked in echo mode. ‘You mean – murder him?’
‘There would be a logic to it,’ said Carole.
‘“Murder”? The general view in Fethering seems to be that he committed suicide.’
‘Fethering’s “general view” doesn’t have a great track record for accuracy.’
‘No, but …’
‘Of course, if Harry was murdered,’ Jude joined in, ‘some people might reckon you would have had a motive too.’
‘Really? What?’ Fred appeared still to be lost in their speculations.
‘Revenge on Harry? Once you discovered that he’d had an affair with your wife?’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! And how, in your scenario, would Harry have been murdered?’
‘The perpetrator,’ said Carole, ‘would have been someone who knew about boats.’
‘And the fact that I’m a member of Fethering Yacht Club puts me in the frame, does it?’ Fred asked sarcastically.
‘You asked how Harry could have been murdered,’ Carole reprimanded him primly, ‘and I am spelling out how it could have happened.’
‘All right. Go on.’
‘The perpetrator,’ she continued, ‘would have known Harry’s habits, where he usually anchored Harry’s Dream when he went out fishing. They would have gone out there in their own boat, boarded his and sabotaged the heater to start the carbon monoxide leak …’
‘Anyone who did that would be a pretty stupid murderer,’ said Fred Givens with some force.
‘Why?’ asked Carole, a little miffed at having her reconstruction interrupted.
‘Because, if killing Harry by carbon monoxide poisoning was their plan, that would have been a very elaborate way of doing it.’
‘Oh? So, how else could they have done it?’
‘The simplest way,’ said Fred, talking patiently as if to a child, ‘would have been to organize the sabotage before the boat got on to the water.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Like the majority of yacht club boats, Harry’s Dream spends most of its time on the hardstanding at the front. It sits there on its trailer with its cover on. When the owner fancies a sail, they wheel the boat down to the slipway until it floats off the trailer. Any murderer worth his salt would have sabotaged the heater while the boat was still on land.’
Carole looked crestfallen. ‘Ah yes. I suppose they would.’
But she caught a sparkle in Jude’s eye and realized the implication of what Fred had just told them. If the boobytrap on Harry’s Dream had been set up on land, it didn’t have to have been done by a boat-owner. Their range of suspects had opened out considerably. It could have been anyone with a basic knowledge of the workings of Fethering Yacht Club.
Jude couldn’t dispel from her mind the recollection that Lauren Givens used to crew for her husband.
She also realized – and she could see from Carole’s expression that her neighbour was realizing it too – that any suspicion they might have entertained about Fred Givens being involved in Harry Lasalle’s death was trickling away fast. To use his expression, no ‘murderer worth his salt’ would have volunteered so readily how he might have committed the crime.
Unless, of course, his openness was part of an elaborate double bluff. But neither woman thought the stolid and unimaginative Fred Givens was capable of a double bluff.
This talk of murder had briefly diverted him from his main preoccupation, the state of his marriage, but he was soon brought back to it. ‘I just can’t see any future for me and Lauren,’ he said despairingly. ‘Knowing what I now know, we can never get back to the kind of life we had before.’
‘Adultery needn’t always spell the end of a marriage,’ said Jude reassuringly. Well, you’d know about such things, thought Carole. ‘Sometimes, it can get a couple talking about aspects of their relationship they never have before. It can even strengthen the marriage.’
‘Huh,’ said Fred contemptuously. ‘I don’t see that happening with Lauren and me. Now, when I try to start a conversation with her, all she wants to talk about is bloody Glen Porter.’
‘Ah,’ said Jude. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s like she’s been wanting to talk about him to me since the relationship began …’
‘Do you know how long ago that was?’ asked Carole.
‘Four years! Four bloody years I’ve been walking around in blissful ignorance, thinking I’d got a happy marriage, and all the time …’ The pain and anger were too strong for him to finish the sentence.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Jude again, feeling that the word was as useless as it had been the time before.
Fred Givens took a sip of now-cold coffee, which seemed to calm him down a little. ‘Anyway, now I know about the … affair, now there’s no need for her to keep secret about it, the floodgates have really opened. Lauren’s bombarding me with unwanted information about Glen Porter. As if I was interested in the details of their pillow talk …
‘Why should I want to know what a generous person he is, how he’s set up all these charitable institutions abroad and that’s where most of his money goes? I don’t give a damn about any of that. The only thing that concerns me about Glen Bloody Porter – and I use the word “concerns” rather than “interests” advisedly – is that he’s been having an affair with my wife for the last four years. That’s the piece of information about him that I wish I didn’t know.’
‘You’d rather you’d never found out about the affair?’ asked Jude.