‘All night?’
‘All night,’ he confirmed complacently. They knew they’d never shake him on that. They also knew that the alibi was just as likely to be false as genuine.
Carole tried a different approach. ‘Did you tell anyone else that you’d seen Fennel’s suicide note?’
‘Why on earth should I have done that?’
‘The person who left it by her body must have known of its existence.’
‘They did.’
‘Are you saying you know who left it?’
‘Of course I am. Chervil left it there.’
‘What are you saying?’ asked Jude. ‘That Chervil killed her sister?’
‘No, of course I’m not saying that. Chervil found Fennel dead in the treatment yurt. After the time in Pimlico she had no problem recognizing what had happened. Her sister had killed herself. But she thought people might misinterpret the death, might even think it had been murder, if there wasn’t a suicide note there. So she collected the one that she’d kept in her bedroom at Butterwyke House and put it beside Fennel’s body.’
‘That’s nonsense,’ protested Jude. ‘Why on earth should she have done that?’
‘I don’t know why, just take my word for it, that’s what she did!’ For the first time in their encounter Giles Green was in danger of losing his cool.
‘And did she take Fennel’s phone?’ asked Carole. ‘The one on which the last message had come from your mobile?’
‘She took the phone. But the last message was not from me. It was from Chervil herself. She’d fixed to meet Fennel in the treatment yurt. That’s why she took the mobile and destroyed it. She thought it might incriminate her.’
‘You mean, if it had been found, people might have thought Chervil murdered her sister?’
Giles Green shrugged. ‘It’s a point of view,’ he said infuriatingly.
‘He’s protecting someone,’ said Carole when they were once again alone in the front room of Woodside Cottage.
‘I think I agree with you, but who?’
‘Himself? I’d still rather put him in the frame as a murderer than Chervil.’
‘Yes, he has a funny way of showing his affection for her, hasn’t he? Didn’t worry him at all when we suggested she might have killed her sister.’
‘I think that was relief that we were naming a suspect who wasn’t him.’
‘Or who wasn’t the person he’s trying to protect,’ suggested Jude.
‘And who might that person be?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Well, I was just thinking,’ said Carole. ‘Suppose Chervil had told either her mother or father that she’d kept the suicide note . . .?’
TWENTY-NINE
The next morning Jude was doing a little idle shopping along the Fethering Parade and trying to decide how to spend the day. She had been reckoning her morning would be taken up by a client whom she was treating for panic attacks, but the woman had rung at eight thirty saying she couldn’t make the appointment. Whether the cancellation was actually a symptom of a panic attack Jude couldn’t be sure. The phone call had been ended so abruptly that Jude hadn’t had a chance to check out that possibility. She made a mental note to call the woman back the following week.
Normally Jude had no problem filling her time, but that Friday morning she felt a little frustrated. She and Carole seemed to have come up against a series of brick walls in their investigation. Her neighbour had even ended up the previous evening by suggesting again that Jude should get in touch with Detective Inspector Hodgkinson in order to reactivate the official enquiry. And if that wasn’t an admission of failure, then what was?
Jude was assessing the rival claims of a walk on Fethering Beach, including perhaps a coffee at the Seaview Café, and pottering around in the Woodside Cottage garden, when she saw Bonita Green emerging from the front door of the Cornelian Gallery. The woman was dressed in her trademark black, but smarter black, the jeans and jumper having given way to a trouser suit and the trainers to court shoes.
Bonita carried a shoulder bag and, under the other arm, unwrapped, the Piccadilly snowscape that had hung in the Cornelian Gallery even when the space had been taken over by Denzil Willoughbys.
Jude was intrigued, and then she remembered it was Friday. The day when the Cornelian Gallery was always closed.
The decision to follow the gallery-owner was instantly made.
It wasn’t too difficult for Jude to loiter at a distance, keeping Bonita in sight. There were enough people around in Fethering that morning for the surveillance to be inconspicuous. It seemed as though the woman was heading towards Fethering Station, and Jude remembered Carole reporting her conversation with Spider at the Private View. Friday, he’d said, was not only Bonita’s ‘special’ day, but also the day when she went ‘to London’.
Jude checked her watch. She knew the times of the morning trains and realized that the first one – the one she and Carole had caught the previous Monday – was due to leave in about ten minutes. Before she bought her ticket she checked along the platform and saw Bonita Green sitting down, engrossed in a book.
With her ticket purchased, Jude went to the adjacent convenience store and bought a Daily Mail (every now and then she enjoyed reading something that made her seriously cross). Then she lurked by the ticket office until the train was virtually in the station before rushing out to catch it. As she did so, she saw Bonita Green getting into a carriage two behind her. There was about the woman’s movements an air of ritual, of a routine that she had followed many times before.
On the journey up to London, Jude read her Daily Mail and fumed quietly. Some of the time she just looked out of the window. It was a beautiful May day and she watched as the greens of the South Downs gradually gave way to the brick-red and grey of the sprawling suburbs.
At some stations she checked through the window that Bonita Green hadn’t got off. Horsham, Gatwick Airport, East Croydon and Clapham Junction all offered opportunities to join other routes, but none of them tempted her quarry.
When the train stopped at Victoria, Jude didn’t rush to get off. She waited till the oblivious Bonita Green had walked past her compartment and then eased herself out on to the platform. There were quite a lot of people getting off the train, but she had no difficulty in keeping the small black figure in her sights.
Bonita Green went through the barrier and headed straight for the Underground. Anticipating this, Jude had bought a day’s travel card so she wouldn’t be delayed by buying a ticket for the tube. Bonita must have done the same, because she went straight through the gate leading to the Victoria Line.
It was at this moment that she did something unforeseen. Jude had somehow assumed the gallery-owner would be going north into Central London, but she moved on to the southbound platform. Jude followed, not bothering to look too surreptitious. If Bonita Green did spot her, it wasn’t the end of the world. Jude had as much right to be spending a day in London as anyone else.
Not wishing to lose sight of her quarry, Jude actually got into the same compartment, but Bonita still seemed unaware of her. She wasn’t reading now, but she seemed caught up in her own thoughts. And the air of serenity about her suggested that they were pleasant ones.
Jude was surprised that they only went one stop. Pimlico. She let Bonita get out ahead of her and followed at a distance. But she had to hurry to keep up. There was a skittishness about the movements of the woman ahead. She almost ran up the escalator.
Jude, who carried more weight than she should have done, was a bit breathless by the time she reached ground level. When she emerged from Pimlico Station, she was worried she might have lost the trail, but after a moment of anxiety, she spotted the woman in black walking demurely in the direction of Vauxhall Bridge.