‘Pretend what?’
‘That you don’t feel it too.’
‘Feel what, for Gard’s sake!’
‘Love.’
‘Love?’
‘We’re meant for each other, Marla. And I know I’m still technically married to Geraldine, but—’
‘George, you are talking total garbage!’
‘No, I’m not. Listen, don’t fight it, Marla.’
His voice was now more earnest and intimate than ever, and her next line explained why.
‘WILL YOU TAKE YOUR HAND OFF MY KNEE!’
She intended to silence the pub, and she succeeded. Only the muzak continued to trickle through the awkwardness that followed.
Since everyone else was looking at them, Jude felt justified in turning round herself.
George Ferris didn’t notice. He was in a world of his own. His hand stayed on Marla’s knee, as he went on, ‘I’ve never been so sure of anything. And, although you deny it, I know you really feel the same. After all we’ve shared. Marla—’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, you stupid little man!’ she said, lifting his hand from her knee and firmly slamming it back into his lap. ‘I’m not interested in you.’
‘Oh,’ said George Ferris, at the moment that his fantasy of sharing his retirement with a glamorous mistress was not so much faded out, but instantly switched off.
‘I am very happily single, thank you very much. And if I did ever go for a man, it wouldn’t be some sawn-off, knee-high dork like you, George Ferris.’
With that, Professor Marla Teischbaum left the Cathedral. She swung her leather bag over her shoulder, picked up the remains of her Tuna Salad on Granary in her left hand, and one of the laminated menus in the other, and stalked out. On the street she held the menu over her precious hair, and strode back towards the County Records Office.
It was quite an exit, and it made an impression on everyone in the pub.
But the impression it made on Jude was probably the greatest. Because in the course of her conversation with George Ferris, Marla Teischbaum had virtually admitted to being at Bracketts at the time Sheila Cartwright was shot.
Another murder suspect stepped into prominence.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Since she’d moved her chair round to witness the parting scene, Jude didn’t turn it all the way back and, over her book, monitored George Ferris’s reaction to the collapse of his romantic dreams.
He looked considerably less than devastated. After the initial embarrassment of the row – the English are so upset by raised voices in public – the pub’s other customers returned to their drinks, food and, slowly, conversations. At first George Ferris did very little. He just sat there, looking straight ahead, perhaps in shock. But after a few moments he visibly relaxed. Amongst the many emotions his body language could have been presenting, the dominant one was relief. Maybe the fantasy to which he had been gearing himself up, the transformation of his life through a passionate affair with Professor Marla Teischbaum, had rather frightened him. Sinking back beneath the unrippled surface of his retirement (with Geraldine) was perhaps a more attractive prospect.
There was also anger in his demeanour. He was on his own patch, after all, and that woman – whom he’d gone out of his way to help – had made him look a fool there. Jude could see him mentally justifying his feelings of ill-treatment.
She watched him down the remains of his pint, and turkey-strut across to the bar for a refill. ‘Bloody women, eh?’ he said to the barman, whom he clearly knew.
The barman produced one of those jocular, commiserating responses which go with the job, and George Ferris returned to his table. After an initial dubious look at the remains of his All-Day Breakfast, he clearly made the decision that no bloody woman was going to put him off his food, and tucked back into it.
Jude’s had also arrived and she ate hers too, keeping an eye on George Ferris’s progress, and wondering what her next move should be. She already had some new information to share with Carole and Laurence, but was hopeful that, if her luck held, she might get even more.
George Ferris finished his fry-up, and Jude tensed, prepared perhaps to follow if he left the pub. But he didn’t. Instead, with relish he drank down the last of his second pint and went up to the counter for a third. This time his badinage with the barman included the phrase ‘Perdition to all women’. He was doing running repairs on the punctures Marla Teischbaum had made in his considerable self-esteem.
He sat back at his table, sipped away at his beer, and looked quite benign. His body language seemed to say that he’d had a narrow escape with that bloody American woman, and was well out of it.
Jude decided that Laurence Hawker’s recipe for starting conversations with academics was at least worth a try. And it wasn’t as if she didn’t have the relevant prop to hand. Extracting from her basket the copy of How To Get The Best From The Facilities Of The County Records Office, she turned towards his table and said tentatively, ‘Excuse me, you aren’t by any chance George Ferris, are you?’
His first instinct was suspicious, but then he saw the book in her hand. Like sun through trees, a wide beam broke through the foliage of his beard. ‘Well, yes, I am actually.’
Jude blinked with naïve enthusiasm. (She was particularly good at naïve enthusiasm – her brown eyes became bigger and more trusting by the moment.) ‘Someone in the County Records Office pointed you out to me.’
‘Ah.’ He preened himself in the glow of her adulation. ‘Yes, well, I am quite well known there.’
‘I do think . . .’ She tapped the book in her hand ‘ . . . that this is simply wonderful. Such a help in sorting through the complexities of the archives and what-have-you . . .’
His beam grew even wider. ‘Well, yes. I saw a gap in the market. I thought, here we have this wonderful research resource here in Chichester, and yet people waste so much time making the wrong approaches, going through the wrong channels. What is needed is a simple, straightforward guide which – without in any way “dumbing down” – presents the necessary information in a way that is accessible to the general public.’
‘You’ve certainly done a wonderful job,’ Jude cooed. ‘Have you written lots of books?’
He considered the question sagely. ‘I have quite a lot of books in me. There are many projects which I’ve been working on for some time, and which probably will end up in book form . . . but this is the only one I’ve had published . . . at the moment.’
‘Oh, it must be great to be so talented.’ Jude wondered if she was overdoing it, but the complacent grin on the Hobbit-face showed that it was impossible to overdo praise of George Ferris. He lapped up everything that helped to support his own self-estimation. Jude realized why he had bounced back so quickly from his apparent humiliation by Marla Teischbaum. In his own mind he’d already turned round the balance of guilt in their encounter. Marla had been the one who’d made a fool of herself. She wasn’t worthy of a man like him.
And, of course, he was probably thinking, she’s lesbian, which explains it all. That’s what she’d meant by being ‘very happily single’. There was no other explanation. Any woman who could resist the charms of George Ferris would have to be lesbian.
Having softened him up, Jude moved on to what she really wanted to talk about. ‘Who was that rather rude woman who was with you earlier?’
‘Oh,’ he replied airily, ‘just some American Professor I’ve been helping out with her research.’
‘She didn’t seem very grateful for your help.’
‘No. Well, a rather ungracious nation, the Americans, I often find. And . . .’ He let out a discreet, self-deprecating little cough ‘ . . . in that case, there was a personal agenda too . . .’