Carole looked across at the bar, then turned back, eyebrows raised in annoyance. ‘He does go on, doesn’t he? I’m glad to say he hardly knows me, so I think I’m safe from having to hear his opinions.’
‘Don’t you believe it. Barney talks so loudly no one can avoid his opinions.’ Jude swallowed down the last of her Sauvignon Blanc and moved to rise from the alcove. ‘I think we need to get another drink.’
‘But if you go up to get them,’ Carole hissed fiercely, ‘he’s bound to buttonhole you.’
‘Exactly. But haven’t you noticed who he’s with?’
Carole gaze strayed back to the bar. ‘Ah. I see what you mean.’
She too downed the remains of her glass and followed Jude across the room.
By now, Barney Poulton was naming names. ‘If there were to be any official investigation, I think there’s no question that Malee Shefford would be the first person the police would want to interview.’
‘With you there,’ said Frankie, whose presence it was that had hurried Jude to the bar with a second order of Sauvignon Blanc. Frankie was drinking something that looked like Coca-Cola but smelt strongly of rum. On the counter in front of Barney Poulton was the half-empty pint glass which was such an essential prop for his self-appointed role.
Jude saw the relief in Ted Crisp’s eyes at their approach. ‘Two more of the usual, is it?’ he asked her, glad to have something else to do, apart from listening to the Sage of Fethering.
Jude greeted Barney and Frankie warmly. Though she didn’t know either of them well, she didn’t suffer from her neighbour’s hang-ups about the difference between ‘people who you know who they are’ and ‘people who you’ve been introduced to’. Carole had had many dealings with Frankie at Shefford’s, so she reckoned that was the equivalent to being introduced. She had, however, previously managed to avoid one-to-one conversation with Barney, so her greeting to him was appropriately awkward and aloof.
‘We were talking,’ he explained, as though his voice hadn’t been loud enough to fill the entire bar, ‘about the recent death of the much-lamented Bill Shefford.’ He made it sound as though he’d been cruelly deprived of the company of an old friend. Whereas, if they had once or twice had a discussion about repairs to his car, that was the extent of their acquaintanceship. But to his mind, Barney Poulton’s fiefdom covered all of Fethering.
‘And I was expressing the opinion that his wife – now widow – Malee could not be excluded from any discussion on the subject. Of course, I don’t say that because she’s of foreign extraction.’
How often in Fethering, Jude wondered, had she heard people say the exact opposite of what they felt?
‘I say it because, when there is an incident of a suspicious death, one’s first question has to be: “Cui bono?”’ Barney seemed to decide that using Latin tags did not chime appropriately with his image as a salt-of-the-earth Fethering local, so went on to explain, ‘Who benefits from the crime? And when a married man is murdered, the most likely beneficiary is his wife.’
‘That may be the case,’ said Jude, not liking the assumptions that were being so quickly made. ‘But that doesn’t mean that the wife is guilty of any crime. We don’t even know that we’re talking about a murder, do we?’ This was in spite of what she had just said to Carole. Jude didn’t want to encourage further gyrations of the Fethering rumour-mill.
‘I think we are,’ said Frankie firmly.
‘Talking about a murder?’ asked Carole.
‘Yes. I’ve worked with Bill Shefford for more than twenty years. One thing he could never be accused of is carelessness, particularly when it came to Health and Safety. All right, he was old-fashioned in some ways. He preferred working in the inspection pit to using the hydraulic lift, which caused a few arguments with Billy. Billy wanted to fill in the pit and buy a second hydraulic lift, one with a higher spec that they could use to do MOTs. God knows how many times I’ve heard him say, “There’s money in Ministry of Transport testing, Dad.” Billy always had new ideas for updating the facilities, but Bill always found ways of avoiding further investment. He wasn’t mean, mind you, just cautious.’
‘Probably more cautious after he’d married Malee,’ Barney contributed.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Jude.
‘She would have discouraged him from spending, so that there was more for her to inherit.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘Oh, I do, Jude, I do. You see, the thing is with “Mail Order Brides” …’ He launched into another subject on which he apparently had encyclopedic knowledge. ‘When UK men marry them, they don’t realize that they’re not just taking on the upkeep of the bride herself, it’s her whole family. Just you watch – as soon as probate’s sorted, Malee’ll be back in wherever-she-came-from, introducing hordes of relations to a much better lifestyle than they have any right to expect.’
Jude pursed her lips. She wasn’t enjoying this xenophobic diatribe. She looked across for support from Carole, but her neighbour’s expression was ambivalent. Carole could be distressingly blinkered about certain subjects. Jude decided not to protest further, just see if any useful information emerged from the conversation.
‘Yes, I’ve heard that,’ said Frankie. ‘Moment I saw Malee for the first time, the expression came into my head. “Gold-digger”. She was only ever after Bill’s money. He was a sitting duck, really, once she’d got her claws into him. Bill was so lonely after Valerie died. Cancer it was. Her last couple of years weren’t much fun. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Bill had married soon after that, you know, kind of on the rebound after Valerie’s death. There were plenty of women in Fethering who would have been glad to have him. Didn’t talk a lot, but he was a really kind man, not many like him around.’
Jude wondered for a moment whether Frankie herself might have been one of the women who ‘would have been glad to have him’. She spoke with definite fondness. Maybe that might explain her violent antipathy to Malee. Or maybe Jude was reading too much into the situation.
‘Which means, of course,’ Frankie continued, ‘that he was a pushover for someone like Malee. It’s very sad, really. I thought she would at least have waited till he died naturally to get his money. But no, she was too greedy.’
Jude couldn’t keep quiet any longer. ‘Do you know for a fact,’ she asked, ‘that Malee was going to inherit everything?’
‘Well, of course she was,’ said Frankie. ‘Otherwise what would have been the point of killing him?’
The argument was totally illogical, but Jude didn’t take issue with it. She just said, ‘Quite often, when older men remarry, they draw up wills which make provisions for their existing family as well as their new wife. And from what you say about Bill’s kindness, that sounds just the kind of thing he might have done.’
‘He might have wanted to do that,’ said Frankie stubbornly. ‘He might have intended to do that. But Malee would’ve persuaded him against the idea. She’d have made sure he named her as his sole beneficiary.’
‘Do you actually know that?’ asked Jude again. ‘Did he tell you what was in his will?’
‘He didn’t have to tell me.’ Logic was clearly not a strong point with Frankie. ‘But I know what I know. And I know Malee killed Bill.’
‘You may remember,’ said Carole, after a brief silence, ‘that I was actually in the garage when he died …’
‘Course I remember,’ said Frankie. ‘Billy was sorting out your wipers, right?’
‘Yes. And I was just wondering … how Malee could have had anything to do with Bill Shefford’s death. I mean, she wasn’t there, was she? She arrived some time after he died.’