‘Oh yes?’ Jude knew exactly who was being referred to. Suzy, a former model, had been a friend for a long time.
‘Well, Suzy told me that you were very helpful to her when she had an awkward situation of a young man being found hanged in her hotel.’ Jude remembered the circumstances vividly. What had looked like a suicide had been proved to be murder.
‘She said you and your friend – Carole, is it? – found out the truth of what had really happened.’
‘Well, yes, I suppose we did.’
‘And I wondered if I could enlist your help . . . ideally yours and Carole’s?’
‘Of course. But can I ask what for?’
‘To find out what actually happened to Reggie.’
Jude was very relieved that Carole had been included in Oenone Playfair’s request for a meeting. She was aware of her neighbour’s continuing unspoken resentment of the new relationship with Piers Targett. The fact that he had stayed over at Woodside Cottage on the Wednesday night would not have lessened that resentment.
Anyway, Piers had set off after breakfast in the E-Type on his way to Ebbsfleet where he would take the Eurostar to Paris.
So Jude had the perfect opportunity to do a little fence-mending. No peace offering to Carole Seddon could have been more seductive than an invitation to join in another murder investigation.
‘I think you should be careful about the words you use,’ said Carole when the situation had been explained to her.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, Oenone Playfair didn’t use the word “murder”, did she?’
‘No, she just said she wanted to find out what had happened to Reggie, but surely that must mean . . .?’
‘Not necessarily. I don’t think we should mention the possibility that he was murdered until she does.’
It was a wise caution, because as soon as Carole and Jude started talking to Oenone Playfair, it was clear that the recent widow had no suspicions of foul play.
They had agreed to go to her house, Winnows. Though reacting with apparent stoicism to her husband’s death, Oenone confessed that she didn’t really feel up to going out yet. On the way over in Carole’s immaculate Renault, Jude brought her neighbour up to date with the events of the previous day at Lockleigh House tennis court.
Winnows was a large detached dwelling about midway between Lockleigh and Fedborough. Flint-faced like many West Sussex buildings, its size suggested that it had probably once been a farmhouse, which over the years had been expensively refurbished. The whole place breathed money. The garden was immaculately maintained. On the gravel in front of a flint-faced outhouse converted into a double garage stood two BMWs, including the one Jude had last seen outside the Lockleigh House tennis court.
The interior of the house was equally perfect, not flashy in any way but with the kind of antique furniture, upholstery and curtains that didn’t come cheap. Like the garden, everything was irreproachably tidy, suggesting perhaps that the Playfairs had live-in staff.
While Oenone went through to the kitchen to make coffee, the two visitors were seated on the large cushions of a sofa whose box-like back and sides were tied at the top with silken ropes. They looked round at the effortless elegance of the recessed fireplace and the grand piano. Jude noted that the only photographs on display, except for some black and white ones of presumably deceased relatives, were of Oenone and Reggie. It confirmed the impression she had somehow received on the Sunday, that the Playfairs didn’t have children.
Over the fireplace hung a portrait of a young woman in a green ball dress. The fashion of the gown and a residual likeness declared it to be of Oenone in her twenties.
Entering with the coffee, she saw that they were looking at the painting and grimaced. ‘A lot to be said for putting that in the attic,’ she commented. ‘A bit masochistic to have such a constant reminder of the ravages of age.’
‘Did Reggie commission it for you?’ asked Jude.
‘No, my parents had it done. Before Reggie and I had met. Part of being a debutante.’ She shuddered at the memory. ‘It was a vital ingredient in my parents’ sales pitch to entrap a suitable husband for me.’
‘And was Reggie that suitable husband?’
‘Good heavens, no. Not in their eyes. My father was an earl, I’m afraid. When I started going round with Reggie, they very definitely thought I was slumming.’
‘Was he of very humble origins?’ asked Carole.
‘By their standards, not by anybody else’s. No title, you see. And only from a minor public school. Then he was very successful in the City, which they thought was a bit infra dig.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Stockbroker.’
‘Was he still . . .?’ asked Jude. ‘I mean, had he retired?’
‘Oh yes, in theory he retired about seven years ago. The company was sold off back then. But Reggie still spent a lot of the time studying the markets and dealing. It was his hobby, really. Though he was doing it with our money rather than other people’s.’ As if anticipating a question they were too tactful to ask, she continued. ‘Very successfully. I have no reason to complain.’ She looked around at her beautiful surroundings with some satisfaction.
Carole and Jude were both struck by how composed she seemed for a woman whose husband had died the previous day. But then British aristocrats were not renowned for wearing their hearts on their sleeves.
‘Anyway . . .’ Oenone’s tone changed to a more businesslike one, ‘I told Jude on the phone about the recommendation Suzy Longthorne gave for your investigative skills. I gather up at the Hopwicke you solved a murder for her. Obviously this case is nothing like that –’ Carole and Jude exchanged almost imperceptible looks – ‘but Reggie’s death has left me with some unanswered questions.’
‘Including, no doubt,’ said Jude, ‘the one that’s been puzzling me. What was he doing at the tennis court at that time of day?’
‘Precisely.’
‘I mean, that seems to me to be the most obvious thing anyone would have asked. And yet all the time I was there yesterday morning nobody asked it. And I had lunch with some of the members yesterday . . .’
‘Really? Who?’
‘Wally, who you introduced me to on Sunday, and three others.’
‘Oh, the Old Boys. Of course, yes, they do their doubles on a Wednesday morning. So you were at the Lockleigh Arms?’
‘Mm. And I kept trying to get on to the subject of what Reggie was doing there, but they kind of avoided answering it, almost as if I was asking something distasteful. Even Piers wasn’t very helpful when I asked him last night.’
Carole pounced on the little detail. ‘Did Piers stay with you last night?’
‘Yes,’ Jude replied wearily.
‘Oh,’ said Carole, as only Carole could say ‘Oh’.
‘That in a way,’ said Oenone Playfair, ‘is what worries me about the situation.’
‘Sorry? What do you mean?’ asked Jude.
‘The way the men are all clamming up. It suggests to me that they probably do know what Reggie was up to, and it’s something he shouldn’t have been up to.’
‘Isn’t it also possible,’ suggested Carole, ‘that they don’t know what he was up to, but they’re clamming up because they think he might have been up to something he shouldn’t have been up to?’
Oenone conceded the possibility. ‘Yes, men do that, don’t they?’
‘Let’s work back from when you last saw him,’ said Jude. ‘Did you see him before he left the house yesterday morning?’
‘No.’
‘Oh?’ Carole was instantly alert.
‘No, but I wasn’t expecting to. We’d said our goodbyes, such as they were, the previous day.’ Catching sight of the expression on Carole’s face, she explained, ‘There’s nothing sinister about it. We have a flat in town. On Tuesday evening Reggie was going to a dinner at his livery company. When he does that he leaves the car at Pulborough and takes the train up to London. So he went off after lunch on Tuesday.’ For a brief moment there was a slight tremor in her voice as she said, ‘That was the last time I saw him.’