Jude felt a surge of pity for Piers, being saddled with Jonquil, the kind of woman who would never be completely out of his life. She felt pity for Jonquil too, as she would for anyone suffering from mental illness, but not as much as she did for Piers.
‘If Jonquil sent the text message,’ she began slowly, ‘and Reggie reacted instantly, in the middle of the night, that must suggest quite regular contact between them, since the time that they . . . well, if they did have an affair.’
Piers shrugged. He looked almost pathetic, inadequately wrapped in orange silk. His deep blue eyes were tight with pain. ‘Jonquil was strange about keeping in touch with people. Suddenly someone’d be her new best friend and she’d be phoning and texting them all the time. Equally suddenly, they’d drop out of favour. Or she might, out of the blue, one day call someone she hadn’t spoken to for years. Just another example of her volatility. Trying to second-guess what Jonquil is about to do next is a very exhausting business – as I know to my cost,’ he concluded with feeling.
‘And do you know whether she had been in touch with Reggie recently?’
He nodded. ‘They never really lost touch. There was a professional relationship, apart from anything else.’
‘Reggie acting for her as a stockbroker?’
‘That’s it. As I mentioned, Jonquil’s always been pretty well heeled, and she came into a lot when her parents died. Reggie looked after her portfolio, did very well for her in fact. But, according to Jonquil, they’d recently found another interest in common.’
‘Oh?’
‘She picks up new fads and ideas with the same randomness that she does people. None of them last very long. But her latest obsession is with ghosts.’
‘Ah.’ Now, Jude felt, they were getting somewhere. ‘Which of course is a subject that Reggie was very much into.’
‘How did you know that? You only met him once.’
‘Oenone told me.’
‘Really?’ Piers didn’t ask why Jude had been in contact with Reggie’s widow, but he was clearly puzzled by the idea. Still, he moved on. ‘Well, there is a ghost story attached to Lockleigh House tennis court.’
‘Agnes Wardock,’ said Jude.
That really did shake him. ‘How the hell do you know that?’
‘I was told about it by Cecil Wardock.’
‘And who’s he?’
‘Relative of Tom Ruthven. Tom introduced me to him.’
‘And he told you the Agnes Wardock story? Goodness, Jude, you seem to know everything.’ He gave a shudder that was only half in jest. ‘Being with you is like spending time with an amateur detective. I feel as if you’re constantly investigating me.’
She added no comment to that. Instead she asked, ‘So do you think that Jonquil summoned Reggie down to the court on a ghost-hunting mission?’
‘I’m rather afraid she did. When she’s in one of her manic moods Jonquil’s sense of humour is sometimes totally inappropriate.’
‘Sense of humour?’ Suddenly something slotted into place in Jude’s mind. Something she’d seen in Jonquil Targett’s car outside the house at Goffham. ‘Oh, she didn’t . . .? It wasn’t the wedding dress, was it?’
Piers looked at her aghast. ‘You know about that too? My God, is there anything you don’t know about?’ Gloom spread over his face as he admitted, ‘Yes, that was Jonquil’s idea of a joke. She thought it would be amusing to summon Reggie Playfair down to the court, telling him that she had seen the ghost of Agnes Wardock. And of course he went. Jonquil would have loved the idea that he did that. Nothing gives her more pleasure than having power over men.’
‘So the ghost . . .?’
‘Was Jonquil wearing a wedding dress. The dress in fact that she wore at our wedding.’ He shook his head in bewilderment. ‘I asked her what on earth possessed her to do that, and as I did I realized that “possessed” was absolutely the right word. When Jonquil’s in a manic phase, she is possessed.
‘As she explained it to me, she said Reggie was so keen on seeing Agnes Wardock’s ghost that she thought she’d make his dream come true. She thought she’d “give him a surprise”.’
‘And it turned out to be a surprise that killed him?’
Piers nodded. ‘The way she told it, she arrived at the court before he could possibly have got down from London.’
‘How did she get in?’
‘She knows the keypad code, which doesn’t get changed nearly as often as it should do. Jonquil used to be a member. Well, still is a member actually, though she doesn’t play much now. So she went through to the club room, put on the wedding dress and waited. She heard the main door open, she saw Reggie’s torchlight coming down the side of the court, then she saw him go on to the court itself. That’s where she’d said she’d meet him.
‘Jonquil took that as her cue to enter the dedans area. At a distance, in the white dress, with her long blonde hair, her image slightly blurred by the netting in the dedans . . . I’m sure Reggie Playfair thought he was looking at the ghost of Agnes Wardock.’
‘And the shock killed him?’
‘Yes.’
There was a long silence. Then Jude asked, ‘When did Jonquil tell you all this, Piers? Over the weekend?’
‘No, she told me that morning.’
‘Oh?’
There was shame in his expression when he said, ‘When things go really badly for Jonquil, I’m afraid it’s still me she rings. Seeing Reggie’s corpse on the court, beginning to realize what she’d done, Jonquil rang me. I went and got her off the premises.’
‘So when you went in with me later, you already knew that we would find Reggie there?’
‘Yes,’ he replied soberly.
‘Well, why the hell didn’t you say something?’ demanded Jude in uncharacteristic anger. ‘Why haven’t you said anything since? Why haven’t you told the police?’
‘I couldn’t do that, Jude. Jonquil’s so unstable. Having enquiries into what she did is just the kind of thing that might push her over the edge.’
There was another long silence. Finally Jude said ruefully. ‘You are so far from being over her, aren’t you, Piers?’
TWENTY-FIVE
Reggie Playfair’s funeral took place at St Peter’s, Goffham, in whose parish Winnows lay. Oenone had arranged everything with exemplary efficiency, and all those attending were invited back to the house afterwards.
Sir Donald Budgen did a bible reading, but the encomium, delivered by one of Reggie’s former partners in his stockbroking business, made only a glancing reference to real tennis. The emphasis was more on the deceased’s professional life and his involvement in charities, particularly the good works he did through his livery company. The strange circumstances of his death were not mentioned and, because they were in church, no one in the congregation said, ‘Poor old bugger.’ Though there was no doubt that most of the real tennis fraternity felt it.
Oenone Playfair was dressed in an immaculate black linen suit and a black straw hat rather in the shape of a Beefeater’s. She stood, bold and brave in the front pew and, whatever emotions she may have been feeling, she betrayed no sign of any of them.
There was no coffin at the funeral. A cremation had taken place earlier in the day, attended, at her request, only by Oenone.
At the end of the service at St Peter’s she followed the vicar up the aisle and stood at the door, greeting her guests with the manners of a well-schooled hostess. Outside the church, one or two of the Lockleigh House tennis court members did say, ‘Poor old bugger.’
The array of parked cars bore testament to the wealth of the Playfairs’ circle. To add to Piers’ E-Type, there were BMWs, Jaguars, Range Rovers and even a couple of Rolls-Royces. As the church emptied, the cars filled and everyone drove the half mile to Winnows.