‘Sorry?’
‘Members of his family,’ she explained, ‘might also want to keep it quiet. They wouldn’t want all that adverse publicity. And the police tend to lose interest in cases where their chief suspect is dead.’
‘Ah.’ Enlightenment dawned on Barney Poulton. ‘You mean his wife might have got him out of the way?’
‘I was thinking more of the son,’ Carole lied. ‘Roland Lasalle has a reputation to maintain, as an internationally known architect. He wouldn’t want his image sullied by sordid revelations about his father.’
She watched the idea take root in Barney Poulton’s mind. ‘No, you’re right, he wouldn’t,’ he said slowly.
Just at that moment, their food arrived, delivered by Zosia, the bar manager. During the chat with her, Barney saw some acquaintances arrive and, with thanks to Carole for the drink, went across to take his customary pontificating chair by the bar.
While she addressed her fish and chips, and Malk Penberthy addressed his ‘Soup of the Day (Tomato and Coriander) with Crusty Bread’, Carole kept an eye on Barney Poulton, as ever chatting away to anyone who would listen (and a good few who’d rather not). She felt confident that her little plan would work.
It was some years since Jude had been on a long train journey. As she watched the flat landscape slide past the window, she felt a familiar restlessness. She didn’t get out of Fethering enough. Maybe it was time for a new challenge in her life. Time to move on yet again.
And her restlessness was compounded by the thought of the challenge that lay ahead of her that day.
Carole’s little plan was based on her knowledge of the way Fethering worked. Particularly on the way the village grapevine worked. It was still a constant source of wonder to her, the speed with which a rumour could travel round the entire population.
And she reckoned, when it came to the dissemination of rumours, Barney Poulton definitely qualified as the Fethering champion.
Back at High Tor from the Crown and Anchor, she had misgivings, though. Her confidence, always fragile, began to wobble. She wondered whether her little plan had been so clever, after all. It had been purely speculative, there was no guarantee that it would work.
But, just before three thirty, it happened. There was a furious thumping on the front door.
Carole opened it. On her doorstep, as anticipated, stood a very angry Veronica Lasalle.
SIXTEEN
The address in Liverpool was up near the Anglican cathedral. After her early start from Fethering Station, Jude arrived at around two in the afternoon. She thought about stopping for something to eat but rejected the idea. What she had to do was her first priority. There’d be time for food afterwards.
Glen Porter had given her a phone number as well as the address, but Jude felt disinclined to use it. From what he had told her, she got the impression that her quarry was of a nervous disposition, likely to take fright and hide away if she had warning of a stranger’s arrival.
The area looked almost middle class, well-maintained houses with neat, small front gardens. Little was growing there in February, but the care with which the plants were tended suggested that spring would bring a profusion of flowers. Nothing looked opulent, everything looked respectable.
But the shabbier streets Jude walked through as she climbed St James’s Mount, the empty bottles and other detritus she saw on the pavements and in the gutters, suggested a darker side to the area. She got the feeling it might be less welcoming after dark.
The house whose address she had been given was divided into two flats, one on each floor. ‘74A’ was at ground level. With trepidation, Jude pressed the plastic bell push.
It wasn’t an encounter for which she could have done much useful preparation. As so often in her life, she would have to react instinctively to whatever she was presented with.
The door was opened by a woman about her own age. She was dressed in dark blue, shirt, skirt, tights. A grey cardigan against the cold. Shoes so sensible they could have started a Neighbourhood Watch.
Her hair, that fine white which had once been blonde, was swept back into a kind of Alice band. The impression she gave was of being in a kind of uniform, an acolyte of some religious order perhaps.
‘Hello?’ she said. Her voice had the slightest Scouse nasal twang.
‘Mary White?’
‘Yes. And you must be Jude.’
It was a huge relief. Glen Porter had been in touch, warning the woman of her prospective visitor.
‘Come in. I’m sure you could use a cuppa.’
The sitting room was at the front, bare, austere. And chilly. If there was any central heating on, it was turned down low. The furniture was functional, a rather bony three-piece suite. A few dark-bound books on a shelf, no fiction. Nothing on the walls except an anaemic print of St Francis of Assisi.
Mary White brought the tea things through on a tray from the kitchen. Jude was relieved to see there was a plate of digestive biscuits.
Her hostess’s unease showed in the trembling of her hands as she poured the tea into two mugs. They still shook as Mary raised hers to her lips.
‘I’m only seeing you,’ she said, ‘because Glen asked me to. I wouldn’t do it otherwise. He said there was a reason you needed to talk to me …’
A relieved ‘Ah’ from Jude.
‘… but he didn’t tell me what it was.’
‘Right.’ Jude wasn’t sure where to start. The handbag? The gossip? The accusations? She decided to come in at a very basic level. ‘As he probably told you, I live in Fethering …’
‘Yes.’
‘And there’s been a suspicious death down there recently.’
‘Oh?’
‘A man called Harry Lasalle.’
Mary White gave no reaction to the name. Either she had never heard it or was skilled in controlling her emotions. Another possibility was that Glen Porter had mentioned the builder’s death and she had been prepared for the news.
Jude pressed, ‘Does the name mean anything to you?’
The woman gave a brief shake of her head.
‘Let me try another tack. A couple of weeks ago, in a building in Fethering called Footscrow House, I found a handbag.’
‘So?’
‘It contained a passport belonging to a woman called Anita Garner.’
‘What’s all this got to do with me?’
Jude had had enough of this fencing. ‘What it has to do with you, Mary White, is that you are not Mary White.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘You do. So, it’s time to stop pretending. Glen told me your true identity.’
‘No!’
‘Yes. You are Anita Garner.’
The woman burst into tears.
‘I’ve been here in Liverpool,’ she said after Jude had soothed her back to coherence, ‘ever since I left Fethering.’
‘Thirty years ago?’
‘Round that, yes.’
‘Why Liverpool?’
‘It was a long way from Fethering.’
‘Were you aware of all the press interest in your disappearance?’
‘Not really. I knew there must be some, but I was a long way away. I tried to avoid reading the papers and watching the television news. I was not in a very good place back then.’
‘Presumably you knew the state your parents must have been in?’
‘I kind of knew but shut my mind to it. I wasn’t very coherent.’
‘But what did you live on? Where did you live, come to that?’
‘I had a bit of cash with me, though most of that went on the train fare. The first few nights up here, I slept rough. Then I got bar work. I was used to that. It was a job I could do without thinking. Which was just as well, because at the time I didn’t want to think.’