It was from the relative security of this room, with its door closed, that Jude rang Piers.
‘Hello, light of my life,’ he answered cheerily. ‘I’m missing you like mad. When are we going to meet?’
‘Piers,’ said Jude evenly. ‘I’ve found out more about what happened at the court the night Reggie Playfair died.’
‘Oh.’
‘Including the fact that you were having an ongoing affair with Felicity Budgen.’
To give him his due, he didn’t come back with blustering denials. He just said, in a dull voice, ‘I was going to tell you about that, in time. About Felicity. And you have to believe me – that’s over.’
How many men over the years, thought Jude, have used that line to a new lover about a previous one. But at that moment she did actually believe Piers.
She heard the main entrance to the court click open, then the sound of footsteps walking softly down past the court towards the club room. Presumably one of the doubles players for the seven o’clock court.
‘Listen, that’s what caused it all,’ Piers protested.
‘Caused what?’
‘This whole mess. It was me saying to Felicity that things were over between us that set the whole thing in motion.’
‘And when did you tell her?’
‘Obviously –’ he sounded exasperated now – ‘I told her when I met you.’
‘So it had been going on up until three weeks ago.’
‘To some extent. We didn’t see each other very often. I think the relationship was on the way out before I met you. But, anyway, Felicity got into a very bad state when I told her. And somehow once it was over, she seemed to get even more worried that Don would get to hear about it.’
‘And you understood what Reggie said about “secrets” during the Sec’s Cup to be a threat that he was going to spill the beans?’
‘I didn’t hear it that way. But Felicity did. She was desperately worried that Reggie was going to tell Don. She said we had to silence him.’
‘And so between you you came up with a rather elaborate plan to eliminate Reggie?’
‘No.’
‘And fortunately you had on hand a conveniently loopy estranged wife whom you could persuade to—’
‘I didn’t persuade—’
‘You know you’ve committed murder, Piers,’ said Jude solemnly.
‘No, I haven’t. You’ve got it all wrong.’
‘I don’t think so. You set up Jonquil to kill Reggie.’
Suddenly Jude heard Carole’s voice calling from the far end of the court. ‘Excuse me – can I help you?’ Then there was a sound of footsteps hurrying past and the clicks of the court door opening and closing.
And through all this, Jude could hear Piers Targett saying, ‘It wasn’t me who set Jonquil up. It was Felicity!’
Then Carole was at the door. ‘There’s this strange woman just come in, looking for Tonya. She said she was going to kill her!’
Jude looked out of the office window. Immaculately dressed as ever in a pale grey trouser suit, Felicity Budgen was walking sedately across the garden toward Lockleigh House.
In one hand was a handbag.
In the other was the metal crank used for adjusting the height of the real tennis net.
THIRTY-FOUR
By the time Carole and Jude got outside the court Felicity Budgen had disappeared inside Lockleigh House Nursing Home for the Elderly. They didn’t have to talk, they both knew where she was going. She had failed to kill one witness of her crimes, Tonya Grace. She was hoping to have better luck with Cecil Wardock.
The woman on reception in the great hall of Lockleigh House called after them as they rushed to the stairs. ‘Hey, you can’t go up there!’ But Carole and Jude took no notice.
They dashed along the landing and burst in through Cecil Wardock’s door.
The tableau that greeted them there might have been comical in different circumstances. Cecil Wardock, his chair facing away from the window on this occasion, was looking up at them in bewilderment. Behind him, in front of his precious bookshelves, stood the elegant Felicity Budgen, the crank handle in her hand upraised to be brought down on his thin skull.
At Carole and Jude’s entrance she froze, then slowly lowered her arm.
‘Well,’ said Cecil Wardock, ‘aren’t I the popular one this afternoon? Delighted to see you again, ladies. To what do I owe this pleasure?’
‘Oh,’ said Jude, inadequately in the circumstances, ‘we were just passing.’
‘Well, what a nice surprise. Felicity was just getting a book down for me.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. Placing the crank handle on a table, she reached into the bookshelves. ‘Katherine Mansfield: A Biography – that was the one, wasn’t it, Cecil?’
‘Yes, thank you, Felicity dear. Very stylishly written. Author’s sadly dead now.’ He stroked the book lovingly. ‘Beautiful artefact, isn’t it? Any book is, but this one more than most.’ He let out a dry chuckle. ‘Can’t see anything as beautiful as this ever being replaced by a Kindle, can you?’
Once again Cecil Wardock stroked his book, then opened it at the title page. ‘So much still to read,’ he said. ‘So much still to read.’
THIRTY-FIVE
After her murder threat and her attempt to commit the real thing, Felicity Budgen had become remarkably docile. She made no demur about accompanying Jude and Carole back to the tennis court’s club room and, once there, agreed that a strong cup of coffee might be a good idea.
While the coffee was brewing, the four young men about to play the seven o’clock doubles emerged from the men’s changing room. They recognized Felicity, who greeted them with effortless politeness and said she looked forward to encountering them for a game sometime soon. The rest of their conversation was played out against a background of cheery shouts from the court and the sound of balls thundering on penthouses.
‘I think we know most of what happened,’ said Jude.
‘Did Piers tell you?’
‘Not really. He told me some things, but I’m not sure that they were all true.’
‘He would have been lying to protect me,’ said Felicity. ‘He’s a very honourable man, Piers.’
Jude was not sure that she would have fully endorsed that description, but this wasn’t the time to take issue.
‘Look, I do want to say,’ the former ambassador’s wife went on, ‘that I hold nothing against you, Jude. Yes, I still love Piers, but I’ve known for a long time that I was not in a position to offer him the full-time support and attention that he needs. Whereas with you I think there’s probably a strong chance he’ll be able to find that.’
Though that was another statement from which Jude’s opinion might now diverge, again she said nothing.
‘But I can’t deny that Piers’ announcement that he’d fallen in love with you was a profound shock to me. I don’t think I’d ever realized how much his presence in my life meant. Because I knew he could never be central to my everyday doings, perhaps I underestimated his importance. The knowledge that Piers was somewhere there in the background gave me the strength to get through times that were fairly tough for me emotionally. And when he said it was over between us . . . I think I went a little mad.’
There was a silence. For a moment Jude felt tempted to apologize for the unwitting disruption she had caused to Felicity Budgen’s life, but she curbed the instinct.
‘When did you decide you’d have to kill Reggie Playfair?’ asked Carole, practical as ever.
‘Well, it was strange . . .’ Felicity’s manner, as it had been from the start of their conversation, remained politely matter-of-fact, as if she were hosting a charity tea party rather than confessing to a murder. ‘I suppose I had been suppressing it all the years since I started the relationship with Piers Targett but once it ended, all the guilt and paranoia I should perhaps have felt earlier came flooding in. I suppose, standing back from the situation for the first time, I realized the size of the risk I had been taking . . . you know, the threat I had been posing to my marriage to Donald.