Ted Crisp stood in his usual position behind the bar. His beard and hair showed their customary ignorance of grooming. The sweatshirt he wore was so faded that its original colour could have been black, blue or green; the advertising logo it had once shown off was now an incomprehensible blur. The idea that she had had an affair with him – however brief – still seemed incongruous to Carole. But not distasteful. She was glad their relationship had now settled down to a kind of joshing affection.
He was pouring the drinks before they ordered them. There was some comfort in that, thought Carole. Though she still didn’t think of herself as a ‘pub person’, it was good to have a haven where one was known and recognized.
‘How’re you, Ted?’ she asked.
‘Mustn’t grumble. Doesn’t stop me, though. Guess what this is an impression of.’ Suddenly he turned a full three hundred and sixty degrees behind the bar.
‘No idea.’
‘A counter-revolutionary.’
They gave the joke the groan it deserved. In a previous incarnation, Ted Crisp had been a stand-up comedian. If the one he’d just cracked was representative of his jokes, it was no wonder he’d sought alternative employment.
‘So you two got any news, have you?’
‘Well . . .’ Carole scoured her memory, without much optimism that she’d find anything interesting. Then she suddenly remembered. ‘Actually, my son’s getting married.’
‘Fancy,’ said Ted.
‘You didn’t tell me that,’ said Jude.
‘I’ve hardly had a chance to get a word in.’
‘True. Sorry.’
‘I keep forgetting you got a son.’ Ted scratched his chin through the thatch of beard. ‘Forget you’d been married, and all. Still, we divorcees have to stick together, don’t we?’
Carole didn’t like that. Her marriage was a private failure. She didn’t want it to be lumped together with all the other broken relationships.
‘What’s your potential daughter-in-law like?’ asked Jude.
‘I haven’t met her yet.’
‘But you must have got an impression from what Stephen said.’
Carole had. Her son had engendered an impression of someone she wouldn’t get on with. Someone whose agency had had a financial package set up for it, who had rich parents who were possibly not even British. Someone who had the rather affected name of Gaby. Of course she didn’t say any of that. She knew it was just prejudice. But then Carole, like most middle-class English people, had ingested prejudice with her mother’s milk.
‘Not really. Her name’s Gaby.’
She tried to keep disapproval out of her voice, which was just as well, because Jude said, ‘Gaby. That’s a nice name.’
‘She’ll probably talk your head off.’ In response to curious looks, Ted explained, ‘Gaby by name, gabby by nature.’
Yes, it was a blessing for everyone, really, that he’d not continued with the stand-up.
‘Anyway, I’m going to meet her soon,’ said Carole, with what she hoped sounded like enthusiasm. ‘Weekend after this.’
‘It’s very exciting,’ said Jude. ‘The prospect of grandchildren.’
That was the consequence of the marriage about which Carole hadn’t allowed herself to think. In spite of Stephen’s talking about buying a large family house, she had not followed the logic through. Grandchildren – they would provide another opportunity for her maternal skills to be found wanting. It was all daunting – and very confusing.
She was relieved that when they’d sat down, having ordered Ted Crisp’s recommendation of Dover sole, the conversation reverted to the events at Hopwicke House. A suspicious death was always so much more interesting than wedding plans.
‘I’ve a feeling there’s a kind of cover-up,’ said Jude.’
‘Aren’t you being a bit melodramatic?’
‘I got the firm impression from Detective Inspector Goodchild that he’d be very happy with a suicide verdict.’
‘From what you say, the death did look like suicide. And presumably the police like things nice and straightforward.’
‘Yes, but I got the feeling there was more to it. As if Detective Inspector Goodchild had been talked to by someone . . . and that someone didn’t want the investigation to go any further.’
‘What makes you say that? Do you have any evidence?’
‘No.’ The idea was quickly dismissed. Jude had always placed more reliance on instinct than evidence. ‘Those Pillars of Sussex are an incestuous lot. All scratching each other’s backs. They’ve got a lot of influence locally. If they wanted something kept quiet, I’m sure they could arrange it.’
Carole went into wet-blanket mode, a position that came distressingly easily to her. ‘Jude, you don’t know any of the people involved. You only met them last night – and that was hardly meeting in any meaningful sense. You may not have liked the Pillars of Sussex setup – I don’t like secretive all-male associations either – but that doesn’t mean they’re in a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.’
‘No, I agree. But there’s one person I do know up at the hotel, and she’s behaving totally out of character.’
‘Your friend Suzy?’ This was said with the inevitable flicker of disapprobation.
‘Yes. She denied having seen that threatening note. I know she saw it – she showed it to me. So somebody’s been putting pressure on Suzy. And I want to know who.’
Although she was not convinced by them, Jude’s suspicions had at least kept Carole’s mind off thoughts of her son and his fiancée. But it couldn’t last. When she got back to High Tor from the Crown and Anchor, there was a message on the answering machine.
‘Hello, Mother. It’s Stephen. Just a few details about the weekend after next, when we’re going to be in Sussex. We want a good base for looking at property, and we wouldn’t dream of landing on you, so we wondered if you’d check out a place Gaby’s heard about near Worthing called Hopwicke Country House Hotel. Could you just look at it, see if it’d be all right for us? Could you confirm you’ve got this message? Thank you.’
Carole’s first thought was: there’s a coincidence.
Her second was: what does he think I am? ‘Could you just look at it, see if it’d be all right for us?’ Yes, sir, of course, sir, three bags full, sir.
And her third was: At least I don’t have to worry about sleeping arrangements here at High Tor.
Because she was Carole Seddon, the relief from the third thought brought her more comfort than the second thought had brought her discomfort.
Chapter Ten
‘Listen, Jude, if there’s one subject I know about, it’s publicity. Good and bad.’
It was true. Suzy Longthorne had suffered the attentions of the press pack ever since she was in her teens. She had been flattered by them, fawned on, extravagantly praised, worshipped even. Then she had been criticized, carped at, pilloried, vilified. She, of all people, knew how quickly a media darling could become the target for all the mud that could be slung. And she knew how irrelevant the actual behaviour of a celebrity was to the press’s treatment of it. Suddenly, on a whim, they could turn against you, at the flick of a switch converting every positive to a negative.
‘I’ve put a lot of time and money into building up Hopwicke House,’ she went on at the other end of the phone. ‘I’m not about to throw all that away because of a burst of bad publicity.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying that a suicide at the hotel is about the worst thing that can happen. But it’s containable. The poor young man’s family won’t want it blazoned all over the papers. The Pillars of Sussex certainly won’t want that either. And the police, for once, seem quite inclined to be discreet. OK, there may be some publicity when the inquest happens, but hopefully that can be kept to the minimum too.’