‘Yes, but . . .’
Detective Inspector Hodgkinson suddenly gave Jude a narrow look. ‘You’re not implying, are you, that you made a detailed examination of the yurt where the girl died?’
Jude was quick with her denial. Whatever the truth, she knew the police wouldn’t take kindly to the activities of amateur detectives.
The Inspector looked down at her printouts. ‘There’s no mention in this lot of a mobile having been found.’ She made a note. ‘I’ll check it out. And you’re sure the girl had it with her when you were drinking in the other yurt?’
‘Certain. And I do have a vague recollection of her receiving a text on it.’
‘What time would this have been?’
Jude spread her hands wide in apology. ‘Sorry. As I say, it was all a bit blurry.’
‘Hm.’ Detective Inspector Hodgkinson made another note. ‘So, apart from the absence of the mobile, back to the same question. Do you have any evidence that might suggest Fennel Whittaker’s death was anything other than what it appears to be – in other words, suicide?’
Jude was forced to admit that she didn’t. Just a gut instinct. And though what she’d seen of Carmen Hodgkinson suggested that the Inspector might be more sympathetic to gut instincts than the average member of the police force, she didn’t think that sympathy would be sufficient for the initiation of a full-scale murder enquiry.
TWELVE
Most weekends now Carole Seddon heard from the family in Fulham. A weekly call from Stephen was far greater frequency of communication than she had been used to, but then so much in their relationship had changed. His marriage to Gaby, introducing someone who hadn’t grown up in the claustrophobia of Carole’s own marriage to David, had started the thaw, and its progress had been greatly speeded up by the arrival of Lily. Whereas conversations between mother and son had always been rather stilted, with Stephen talking about his work (which Carole never fully understood) and both of them trying to avoid any mention of David, there now always seemed to be something to say. Lily was developing at such a rate that every week there was some new achievement to report, some physical action, a new word or, increasingly, new sentences.
But that Sunday evening the Fulham call came not from Carole’s son but her daughter-in-law.
‘About the week after the end of May Bank Holiday . . .’
‘What about the week after the end of May Bank Holiday, Gaby?’ asked Carole, trying to work out what date that would be. One of the effects of retirement from the Home Office, she found, was a profound vagueness about the dates of public holidays. Now they no longer represented days off work, they seemed infinitely less important than they had.
‘I’m talking about the one at the end of May, not the one at the beginning. Well, Stephen’s got to be in Frankfurt that week for work.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘Yes, his bosses never seem to be aware of public holidays.’ Carole almost heard that as a criticism of herself. ‘So he’s flying out on the Bank Holiday Monday and doesn’t get back till the Sunday after. And I was thinking: what a perfect opportunity for me to take Lily for a little jaunt to the South Coast.’
‘That’d be lovely. You’d be most welcome here, of course, Gaby. Just let me get my diary and check the dates.’
‘No, don’t worry, Carole. I wasn’t suggesting that we should impose ourselves on you at High Tor.’
‘Oh?’ Being Carole, she couldn’t take this statement at face value; she had to read something into it. Gaby and Lily had come to stay in Fethering the previous summer when Carole had rented a beach hut at Smalting for the occasion, and that seemed to have worked all right. But was Gaby now intimating that the visit hadn’t been as much of a success as Carole had considered it? Was she finding some inadequacy in their accommodation at High Tor?
Even as she had the thought, though, Carole did also feel a degree of relief. Much as she loved Gaby and Lily, she did find the presence of other people in her house a considerable strain. Any people. The long habit of living on her own meant that she always had to make an effort with other people present, she couldn’t be unaware of them and just carry on with her life. In fact, she’d always had the instinct for privacy. She hadn’t even felt relaxed with her husband in the house. Maybe that was one of the many factors that had led to their divorce.
‘The point is,’ Gaby explained, ‘that when I had this idea I was with a friend, who’s got a little boy roughly Lily’s age. And her husband’s going to be away the same time as Stephen, so we made this plan for the four of us to come down together, and I know you haven’t really got room for all of us in High Tor.’
‘Well . . .’ said Carole, relief flooding through her. ‘I could move things around and make space for you.’ She knew she didn’t sound convincing.
‘No, no, I wouldn’t hear of it,’ Gaby bubbled on. ‘But if we were staying nearby, then we could not get in each other’s way . . . you know, meet up with you some days, other days just do our own thing . . .’
‘It does sound rather a good idea,’ Carole conceded. Yes, wonderful. Gaby and Lily near enough for her to see them, but without the obligation of feeling responsible for their well-being every minute. ‘So where were you thinking of staying?’
‘Well, that’s the point,’ said Gaby. ‘We don’t know. But we thought, with you down there, you know, able to apply a little local knowledge to the problem, well, you might be able to recommend somewhere.’
Carole was hit by a brainwave. ‘Gaby,’ she said, ‘what would you think of the idea of staying in a yurt?’
Of course Walden had its own website. Any project the Whittakers got involved in was organized to a very high spec. There were beautiful professionally taken photographs of the glamping site, even a video tour of the interiors of the yurts. Chervil’s ‘Deeply Felt’ pun was much in evidence. And there was, of course, a ‘Contact Us’ page.
Carole no longer really thought about it, but using her laptop had in some ways changed her attitude to communication. Whereas she would have regarded telephoning someone at the weekend on a matter of business as a major social gaffe, emailing seemed perfectly legitimate. So she had no qualms about making contact through the Walden website.
Her emailed enquiry about prices and availability arose partly from her search for accommodation for Gaby and Lily, but she wasn’t convinced that Walden would be the right place for them. She felt sure it would be very expensive, for a start. Though, when she came to think of it, her son and daughter-in-law never seemed to lack for money. She had no idea what Stephen earned doing whatever it was he did with money and computers, but she thought his pay packet must be substantial. There certainly hadn’t been any talk of Gaby needing to return to her job as a theatrical agent in the immediate future.
But of course Carole’s email to Walden had another purpose. It was a legitimate way of making contact with the Whittakers. Jude had brought Carole up to date on her conversation with Carmen Hodgkinson and, despite the Inspector’s conclusion, they both still thought there was something strange about the death of Fennel Whittaker. Something that required further investigation.
She was surprised to get a call back only moments after she had sent her email. The voice at the other end of the phone was unmistakably that of Chervil Whittaker. ‘Hello, is that Carole Seddon?’
‘Yes.’
The girl identified herself. ‘Have we met? Your name sounds familiar.’