‘The situation is analogous to that,’ admitted Carole, finding that she was slipping into Malk’s speech mannerisms.
‘I would like, if I may, Carole, to ask you one question. You are fully at liberty to answer it or not to answer it, according to your conscience, but it is something I have longed to know for many years. It is a question which I believe you to be in a position to answer, should you wish to do so. I will, of course, leave it to your finely tuned judgement.’
‘Very well, Malk. What is your question?’
‘Is Anita Garner still alive?’
Carole thought for no more than a nanosecond. What possible harm could it cause to answer the question? Had Malk Penberthy still been a thrusting young journalist, avid to get a scoop for the Fethering Observer, the situation might have been different. But she had the same respect for his integrity as he had for hers.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘She is still alive.’
His expression of relief, the way the tension drained out of his thin body, showed how much the revelation meant to him, how long he had been bottling up anxiety about the missing woman.
‘Thank you, Carole,’ he said. ‘That is all I wanted to know.’
It was early in the summer that Carole heard the news of Malk Penberthy’s death. She was one of very few who attended his funeral at Clincham Crematorium. To her surprise, she found out from the Order of Service that he had been ninety-seven years old. She would miss their conversations in Starbucks.
Cheated of spending her declining years in prison, Veronica Lasalle spent them visiting her son in prison. She maintained the view that her husband’s death had been suicide and that her beloved Roly’s incarceration was a cruel miscarriage of justice.
Roland Lasalle’s property development company did not survive its boss’s conviction. The conversion of Footscrow House into holiday flatlets was suspended. Another property developer bought the building cheap, with the intention of opening it as an arts centre (the surest way of losing money next to owning racehorses).
It looked as though the name ‘Fiasco House’ would continue to be justified for some time to come.
And Pete? He continued to go from decorating job to decorating job, never having to resort to advertising to get work. His knowledge of – and collection of – eighteenth-century glass grew, and he longed for retirement when he could devote more time to his hobby. But every time he mentioned the ‘r’ word to his clients, they became very distressed and said there was no one else who could do their decorating for them. Certainly no one else who would be so amenable to ‘Oh, while you’re here …’, ‘Could you just …?’ and ‘Would it be possible for you to …?’ requests.
He kept up his membership of Fethering Yacht Club and won many more trophies there.
Pleased with her new-look sitting room, Jude asked Pete, the decorator about whom no one in Fethering ever had a bad word, to paint her bedroom. They spent some time discussing colours.
Carole said they could do a lot worse than magnolia.