‘Oh?’
Carole another little pang. No doubt this would be another of her neighbour’s ex-lovers.
‘Some kind of therapist, I think … I gave him your number. Hope you don’t mind.’
‘No, that’s fine, Ted. Presumably he gave you a name?’
Ted grinned. ‘Jeremiah … which is a name and a half, if you ask me.’
‘Oh, I have actually had a call from him. We’re meeting up next week. Did he say why he wanted to contact me?’
‘I didn’t really get the details. There were a lot of customers in. But I gathered he wants to set up some clinic here in Fethering, bringing together lots of alternative therapists.’
‘I thought it might be something like that. I’m not sure whether that kind of thing would work here.’
There was no surprise that Carole should say, very frostily, ‘Nor am I.’
‘Well …’ Ted shrugged. ‘When you meet the amazing Jeremiah, Jude, that’s what it’ll be about. And, incidentally, I wanted to ask—’
But they didn’t find out what he wanted to ask, because at that moment the main door of the pub clattered open to admit a man wearing a yellow oilskin over a fuzzy jumper. Barney Poulton, a self-appointed Sage of Fethering, enjoyed propping up the bar of the Crown and Anchor, pontificating on everything and, generally, being one of the banes of Ted Crisp’s life.
‘Well,’ he announced as he entered, ‘I hear there’s been a murder up at Shefford’s Garage.’
And, once again, the Fethering rumour-mill was set in motion.
EIGHT
‘I’m no mechanic,’ Rhona Hampton declared, ‘but I know gearboxes don’t detach themselves from the bottom of cars for no reason.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Jude, preparing herself for more criticism of the old woman’s son-in-law.
‘What I mean is that the gearbox must have been fitted with some system of screws or whatever, and the only way of removing it would be by loosening those screws.’
‘I agree. And Bill must’ve been doing just that – loosening the screws – when the gearbox fell on him.’
‘You say Bill must’ve been loosening the screws.’
‘Yes, well, he was the one who was working on the car, wasn’t he? He told my neighbour Carole, who was actually at Shefford’s when the accident happened – he told her he was going to “remove a gearbox”. Which is what he was doing when the thing fell on him.’
‘Hm.’ Rhona Hampton wheezed. Shortness of breath was becoming an increasing problem for her. ‘Bill’s been working on cars for over forty years.’
‘So?’
‘So … he wouldn’t have to think twice about how to remove a gearbox …’
Jude knew full well the direction in which this conversation was going, but she didn’t want to say anything that would encourage the old woman’s speculations.
‘He’s not going to make a mistake like that,’ Rhona went on. ‘You say he was loosening the screws. Suppose someone else did the job for him …?’
Still, Jude didn’t say anything. Though her client was housebound, she still had a lively network of fellow geriatrics in Fethering. And if she started accusing someone of Bill Shefford’s murder, it would be round the village in no time. But surely, however much she disliked Billy, she wasn’t about to say he killed his father?
No, she wasn’t. Rhona went on, ‘And you don’t have to look far to work out who sabotaged the gearbox, undid the screws so that, the minute Bill touched the thing, it came crashing down on his head.’
‘Who?’ asked Jude weakly.
‘Well, the new wife, of course. The “Mail Order Bride”.’ Jude hadn’t got the energy to object to the usage. Besides, she had found that attempts to get some understanding of political correctness into her older clients never worked.
Rhona eagerly continued her narrative. ‘She traps Bill into marriage. She gets him to change his will in her favour. She—’
‘Do you know for a fact that he’d done that – changed his will?’
‘I don’t need to know it for a fact. I know it happened.’ The logic was suspect, but it didn’t stop Rhona. ‘And then – this is the giveaway, isn’t it? – the new Mrs Shefford starts doing evening classes in car maintenance. Now why would someone like her want to know about car maintenance?’
‘Since she had married someone who ran a garage, it seems to me quite logical that—’
‘No, no, she only needed to get enough mechanical knowledge to work out a way of killing her husband that looks like an accident. Then, while nobody’s in the workshop, she loosens the screws and – what do you know? – she inherits the lot.’
‘Rhona, I really must say that—’
‘There’s no two ways about it,’ the old woman pronounced definitively, ‘Molly or whatever her name is – she murdered Bill Shefford. I’ve told you before, you can never trust a Chink.’
‘This is becoming a habit, Carole,’ said Adrian Greenford as he approached her table in Starbucks, flat white in hand. He gestured to the chair opposite. ‘May I?’
‘Please …’
‘Thank you. No, we must be careful.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Meeting in public in a place like Fethering. People will talk.’
‘Oh. Yes.’ Carole felt herself colouring. She had never had any aptitude for banter, particularly if it came with a hint of the sexual.
‘Anyway, how’ve you been?’ he asked.
‘Fine.’ As ever, she wanted to move on quickly from discussion of herself. ‘And you? Getting settled in, are you?’
‘Slowly. Everything takes longer than you imagine. Tradesmen don’t come when they say they will. And then, of course, with Gwyneth being in the wheelchair, she can’t help as much as she’d like to.’
‘Oh, of course. I’d forgotten about that. I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t worry. She’s come to terms with it. Manages to keep pretty cheerful … most of the time. I’ve told her about you, you know, how kind you were to me when I was lost in Allinstore. Gwyneth said you sounded an interesting person. You must meet her.’
‘Yes, I’d like to,’ Carole lied. Meeting any new people always triggered anxiety in her. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to know any more about Adrian’s circumstances than the kind of stuff they talked about over coffee. She would like to keep theirs a hermetically sealed, Starbucks-only relationship.
‘Incidentally, I gather you had the dubious distinction of witnessing the death that everyone in Fethering is talking about …?’
‘I didn’t actually witness it. I was at the garage when it happened.’
‘Very sad.’
‘Yes … Oh, by the way, did you get to go to Shefford’s? When we were last here, you were asking me to recommend a local garage.’
‘I did, yes. Met Bill. And his son. Didn’t get his name.’
‘Billy.’
‘Oh, that must’ve been confusing for them when they lived in the same house. Letters and stuff getting mixed up.’
‘I always think it’s odd when fathers and sons are given the same name. It seems only to happen right at the top, in the aristocracy where they want to keep family traditions going and, er … lower down the social scale, where presumably they haven’t the imagination to come up with anything different.’ Carole was aware that she had incautiously let her snobbish prejudices show for a moment there. Bit rash, with someone she didn’t know well.
But Adrian Greenford’s chuckle suggested that he hadn’t been offended. Well, he was Northern, so perhaps his standards were more lax. ‘I also met Bill’s wife. She was there. Stunning-looking woman.’