‘Be easier if we could meet up . . . if that’s all right with you?’
‘Fine. When?’
‘Sooner the better. I don’t mind coming down to Fethering. Or we could meet somewhere for a drink or . . .?’
‘There’s a nice pub near the seafront here. Called the Crown and Anchor. Meet there about six-thirty?’
She got a frisson from making the arrangements. The Carole Seddon of a few years before would never have fixed to meet someone in a pub, and certainly not in a pub with whose landlord she had a history.
‘Yes, I heard about that business up at Bracketts. Couldn’t avoid it. Regulars at lunchtime weren’t talking about anything else.’
Carole had deliberately arrived at the Crown and Anchor early for her appointment with Gina Locke. Deliberately so that she could have a word with Ted Crisp.
Though their brief relationship – Carole still had difficulty allowing herself to use the word ‘affair’ – hadn’t worked out, she was glad still to be in contact with Ted. Now the embarrassment of splitting-up was over, she could once again find reassurance in his shaggy presence. He was once again all that he should ever have been – a good friend (and Carole never admitted to herself how influential Jude had been in restoring that state of affairs).
But looking at him that Saturday evening, Carole did find slightly incongruous the idea that he’d ever been more to her than a good friend. Having sweated through a busy Saturday lunchtime at the end of the tourist season, Ted’s hair and beard looked like flake tobacco, while there were white tide-marks round the armpits of his T-shirt. Thank God at least he wasn’t wearing the shorts . . .
No, Ted Crisp would never really have fitted into the clinical neatness of High Tor. Or the matching neatness of Carole Seddon’s life.
‘What,’ she asked, as she sipped her white wine, ‘are your lunchtime regulars saying about the murder at Bracketts?’
‘How’d you mean?’ He’d taken advantage of the lull to pull himself a half of lager and was actually sitting at the table with her.
‘Well, I’m sure the Fethering gossips have already worked out whodunnit.’
‘Plenty of theories, yes. But Bracketts is a bit far away. No one knows any of the people involved.’
‘You know one,’ said Carole, with the nearest her thin face could get to a mischievous expression.
‘Do I?’
‘I’m a Trustee of Bracketts.’
‘Are you?’ The look on his face did no favours to her self-esteem. ‘Why you, of all people?’
‘Because of my successful career in the Home Office,’ she replied frostily (though, even as she used it, she had a little niggle of doubt about the word ‘successful’).
‘Oh. Right.’ Ted Crisp nodded the nod of a man who didn’t know about that kind of thing. ‘So, if you’re a Trustee, you can give me all the dirt.’
‘Sadly, I can’t. For two reasons. One – we’ve all been sworn to absolute secrecy . . .’
‘Ah.’
‘And, two,’ she confessed sheepishly – though not entirely accurately, ‘I don’t really know any dirt.’ He nodded in sympathy with the unfairness of her situation. ‘So what your lunchtime regulars were saying, Ted, is probably at least as useful as anything I know. What were their speculations?’
‘Oh, the usual suspects. A serial killer. They like serial killers, the old geezers who come in here. The Sanatogen and Stairlift Brigade. I keep trying to tell them that you can’t have a serial killer responsible for a single murder. By definition, there has to be at least one more stiff before you can start using the expression. But will they listen?’
Carole grinned. Her previous life hadn’t encompassed anyone like Ted Crisp.
‘Then some of the old farts reckon the murder’s down to local politics inside Bracketts. If they knew you was a Trustee up there, then they’d definitely finger you for the job, Carole. Or again, there’s the Escaped Convict Theory.’
‘Hm?’
‘Always very popular for any crime done round this locality. ’Cause we’re so near to Austen, you see. Crime in a nice middle-class area like West Sussex – must’ve been done by a criminal, that’s how the logic goes. And where are there any criminals round here? HMP Austen’s bloody full of them. So there’s your culprit. And, as it happens, a lifer did go over the wall few days back, so . . . there you are – bingo, hit the jackpot – he must’ve done it.’
Carole nodded slowly, as the image came to her mind of Sheila Cartwright turning on Mervyn Hunter just after he’d discovered the skull in the kitchen garden.
There was a clatter from the door, and the sounds of a tired family entering after a chilly day on the beach. The wife had wanted to go straight home. The husband was insisting on having a quick pint before they faced the drive back. The children had had enough.
Ted rose to his feet. ‘Better go and do my job, I suppose.’ He grinned down at Carole. ‘My regulars’ll be dead impressed when I tell them you’re a Trustee up at Bracketts.’
‘What, because they haven’t heard before about my distinguished career in the Home Office?’
‘Nah.’ Ted Crisp shook his head in bewilderment. ‘Because there’s been a murder up there.’
The bickering family’s arrival was quickly followed by that of Gina Locke. She also asked for a white wine, and the two women were soon ensconced in a corner booth, well away from the Crown and Anchor’s other customers.
The impression Carole had received the previous evening – and indeed on the telephone – that the Director had been empowered by Sheila Cartwright’s death, was accentuated by seeing her again in the flesh. The charisma which had struck Carole on first meeting seemed to have paled during their subsequent acquaintance, but was now back in full force. She had never particularly noticed Gina’s clothes before, but that evening was aware of the finesse with which the generously cut grey trousers and skimpy chocolate-coloured woollen top had been chosen. The brown eyes had an added lustre, and the short dark hair looked newly sculpted. The murder of Sheila Cartwright had effected a make-over in Gina Locke.
‘Reason for this meeting is a bit of a hymn-sheet one,’ she began.
‘Sorry?’
‘Hymn-sheet. See that we’re all singing from the same one.’
‘Ah. Yes.’ Carole felt exposed and unfashionable. She had heard Sheila using the expression before; she should have caught on quicker.
‘I think there could be an announcement from the police sooner rather than later, so I want all the Trustees to be prepared.’
‘An announcement? Are you talking about an announcement of an arrest?’
‘Yes. It’s a pretty open-and-shut case. Even the notoriously thick British Police Force can’t take long over this one.’
It wasn’t Carole’s style to say ‘Whoa, whoa, hold your horses!’, but she raised a hand which had the same effect. ‘You’re saying you have no doubt who killed Sheila?’
‘Of course not. It was Graham.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, he’s the obvious suspect. You were there, you saw her humiliate him in front of the other Trustees. You saw her take away from him his life’s work – the biography of Esmond Chadleigh. If that’s not sufficient motive for murder, I’d like to know what is.’
‘But—’
Gina was not about to stop. ‘What’s more, he’d got the gun. Supposedly taken it for cleaning, but if you believe that, you’d believe anything.’
Gina clearly shared Jude’s conviction that the murder weapon was the gun from the display-case, but Carole wanted more proof. ‘Have the police actually told you that Graham Chadleigh’s service revolver was the one that was used?’
Gina smiled. ‘You say Graham Chadleigh’s, but in fact there’s some doubt about that.’