‘And that’s what Fennel had?’
‘Definitely.’ Jude posed her next sentence with some delicacy. ‘It is frequently thought that endogenous depression is hereditary.’
Ned Whittaker looked at her blankly for a moment, then caught on. ‘Ah, you’re asking if I’ve ever suffered from depression . . .?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d say the answer is a definite no. I’ve felt terrible at times – God, I can’t imagine ever feeling worse than I do at the moment – but I don’t think it’s depression. Fennel used to tell me how she felt at times, and I’ve read descriptions of depression, both in medical works and novels . . . I mean, Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye is reckoned to be a good description of a depressive, but I’ve never had feelings like that. When things go wrong for me, I don’t get mad, I want to get even.’
‘Which is perhaps why you’re feeling so bad at the moment. Because there’s no one you can get even with?’
Ned Whittaker nodded thoughtfully. ‘You could be right, Jude.’
‘Anyway, that’s your side of the family. You don’t have a genetic disposition towards depression.’
Once again he seemed rather slow to pick up the implication of her words, but this time Jude suspected the slowness might be calculated. ‘Oh, you mean Sheena. You’re asking if there’s a predisposition towards depression in her family?’
‘Yes.’
He shook his head firmly. ‘No, definitely not. With Sheena what you see is what you get. She’s very upfront. No murky hidden depths there.’
His answer seemed a little too emphatic, but Jude didn’t pick up on it. There’d be time enough to find out more about Sheena Whittaker, and at the moment her main priority was to give Ned any support that she could offer to alleviate his current misery.
In the circumstances, Jude didn’t have any inhibitions about divulging what Fennel had confided to her in the course of their sessions. A lot of what she reported – the circling, ingrowing sense of inadequacy – was familiar to the girl’s father. But he hadn’t realized how much guilt Fennel had felt; guilt for taking up too much of her parents’ attention, guilt for ruining their lives.
At the end of Jude’s long narrative, Ned Whittaker still looked shrunken and feeble in his chair, but he did seem calmer. ‘So do you reckon – in spite of the fact that Fennel’s depression was endogenous – there was some big shock that prompted her into actually taking action? You know, as opposed to talking about it, as she had done for years?’
Jude repeated Detective Inspector Hodgkinson’s observation about depressives frequently committing suicide at the moment when their mood was improving and he seemed to take that on board.
‘What about the scene she threw at the Cornelian Gallery, though?’ asked Ned. ‘Do you reckon that was what triggered it?’
‘I suppose it’s possible.’ But Jude then told him how positive the outburst seemed to have made Fennel, almost as if the denunciation of Denzil Willoughby was something essential to her, a task that had to be ticked off a list.
‘But maybe,’ suggested Ned, ‘that was also part of her preparations for the suicide . . . you know, she wanted all the loose ends of her life neatly tied up?’
Jude conceded that that was a possibility. ‘What I really want to know, though, Ned, is what happened the first time . . . you know, in the flat in Pimlico . . .?’
He went even paler and trembled. He still hadn’t touched the mug of coffee, which must have long since gone cold. ‘That was terrible. I’d always known that Fennel had problems. I suppose I put a lot of it down to growing up, though . . . you know, the difficulties of adolescence, of coming to terms with leaving childhood and becoming an adult. I suppose I kidded myself that it was just a phase she was going through. But what happened in the flat in Pimlico . . . that told me how serious the illness Fennel was suffering from was. It was a horrible shock.’
‘Was there something that precipitated it that time? Some emotional trauma?’
‘I don’t know. I’m pretty certain once again there was a man involved. And not a very suitable man. I’m afraid Fennel has – used to have, I should say – a rather kamikaze track record with relationships. According to Chervil, while she was at St Martin’s her sister had been seeing some fellow art student, who messed her around a lot. I’m afraid both my girls have to be careful when it comes to men. Once it’s discovered how well off Sheena and I are, they tend to attract a lot of spongers.’
‘Is that true of Chervil too?’
‘It has happened.’
‘And what about her current beau, Giles Green?’
‘Sheena and I have only met him a couple of times. He seems pleasant enough. Quite a bit older than Chervil, which may not be a bad thing.’
‘And you don’t think he’s after her money?’
‘Why?’ Ned Whittaker was instantly alert. ‘Do you know something about him?’
‘No. Very little. I’d maybe met him once or twice in the gallery, and then at the Private View. All I know is that he’s recently lost a rather lucrative job in the City.’
‘Hm . . .’ The millionaire looked exhausted, as if he couldn’t cope with anything else. His grief over the loss of one daughter was such that he couldn’t begin worrying about the love life of the other.
‘You haven’t heard, I suppose,’ said Jude, changing direction, ‘whether the police have found Fennel’s mobile yet?’
He shook his head wearily. ‘No. If they have, they haven’t told me. Why, is it significant?’
‘It might be. It’d offer a record of the calls she’d made and received on Friday evening. I mean, I know she sent a text to Chervil, and I’m pretty sure she received one later in the evening. Knowing the contents of that one could be important.’
‘You mean it might contain something that’d pushed her over the edge?’
‘Possible.’
‘Hm.’
‘Ned, presumably you saw the note that Fennel had left in the yurt?’ He nodded. ‘You didn’t notice anything strange about it?’
He was silent for a moment, as if thrown by the question. Then he replied bitterly, ‘Well, I suppose I thought it was strange that my beautiful daughter would want to kill herself.’
‘No, I meant strange about the actual note. For instance, there’s no question that Fennel wrote it?’
‘Who else might have written it? Chervil?’ The tone in his voice was almost one of petulance now. Apparently the thought had never crossed Ned Whittaker’s mind that his daughter might have been murdered. And Jude felt glad she’d refrained from planting it there.
‘No. I meant the writing, the phrasing – did that read like Fennel’s?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was it similar to the note she left the last time . . . the time Chervil found her in the flat in Pimlico?’
Ned Whittaker looked her straight in the eyes and replied, ‘On the previous occasion Fennel didn’t leave a note.’
‘Ah. Right.’
He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes even pinker. ‘I’ve thought about her so much over the last few days. Wishing things could have been different, wishing I could have done something . . . you know. I wish there was someone I could blame apart from myself.’
‘I suppose you could blame Fennel.’
‘Yes, at times I’ve felt furious with her. Furious at her selfishness. She knew how much pain it would cause me, and yet she just went ahead and did it.’
‘Hm.’ Jude tried to keep all intonation out of the monosyllable.