Which hardly counted as concrete evidence.
‘It’s strange,’ said Ted, ‘to think she was only in here on Monday, with the choir. And I never got much impression of what she was like.’
‘I don’t think anyone did, really,’ said Jude. ‘She was quite a complex woman.’
She was surprised how shaken she had been by the news of Heather’s death. Given what she knew about Alice’s guilt, she felt there had to be some connection. She looked out towards the sea. The weather was as good as it had been the previous day. A few hardy souls were even sitting at the tables in the pub’s garden, bordering on the dunes of Fethering Beach.
There was nothing to be seen there of the recent police activity. Heather’s body had been washed up at low tide. The police screens had been set up around it, but the returning sea had forced them to move their operations – and the body – elsewhere.
‘Of course,’ observed Barney Poulton, sharing more of his wisdom, ‘her husband didn’t die that long ago.’
‘No. Back in February,’ Jude confirmed.
‘So … delayed shock, do you reckon?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, you know, like, grief. Her husband’s dead, her stepdaughter’s married. She suddenly realizes she’s on her own, so she tops herself by jumping into the Fether.’
‘That’s not the way I see it,’ said Jude. ‘She was positively glowing at the wedding ceremony yesterday.’
‘And no mother/stepdaughter conflict like there had been at the funeral?’
‘Absolutely not, Barney. Rather the reverse. The two of them couldn’t have been closer. And if you go back to Heather’s husband’s death … well, she seemed to be relieved rather than upset by it.’
‘You can say that again.’ Jude didn’t know the woman who chipped in, but her clothes and vowels suggested she might be another resident of the Shorelands Estate. ‘I was at the wedding yesterday and, let me tell you, Heather was in sparkling form. No, if she fell in the Fether, she certainly didn’t do so deliberately.’
‘I was only there at the beginning of the reception. Did she drink a lot?’ asked Jude.
‘Not more than would be appropriate for the mother of the bride,’ said the woman, rather reprovingly.
‘Sorry, we haven’t met. My name’s Jude.’
‘Ramona Plowright. My husband’s Commodore of the Yacht Club.’ Clearly not one of those women who objected to being defined by her spouse. She went on, confirming Jude’s earlier conjecture, ‘We live up on the Shorelands Estate. Virtually neighbours of the Malletts.’
‘And do you know,’ asked Jude, hoping she didn’t sound too much like an investigator, ‘what Heather did after the wedding?’
‘No, Len and I left before she did. We offered her a lift, but she said she’d got stuff to do and would sort out a cab.’
‘What time would this be?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Tennish. Weddings go on so long these days. Church ceremony, reception, and then the young ones want to dance into the small hours. Fortunately, the church hall regulations mean that the music has to stop at half past ten, and they’re pretty strict about that, but even so … Len and I had no wish to be party poopers, but he’s got a bad back, so we didn’t stay to the bitter end.’
‘And were the newly-weds going straight off on honeymoon?’
‘No, spending the night at the Craigmullen.’ A recently opened five-star boutique hotel, converted from a former girls’ school on the edge of the Downs between Fethering and Fedborough. ‘Roddy apparently stayed there the Friday night, and his best man drove him into Fethering for the wedding. So, his car would be at the hotel, and the plan was that they’d drive off to Heathrow this morning. Then fly to … I don’t know, Maldives, I think it was. Though, given the circumstances, I can’t imagine they’ve gone.’
‘No,’ Jude agreed.
‘Absolute tragedy, isn’t it?’ said Ramona, feeling that perhaps she hadn’t expressed adequate sympathy. ‘So awful for Alice, to lose both parents so close together. Well, Heather wasn’t her birth mother …’
‘I knew that,’ said Jude.
‘… so, for the poor kid it must be like being orphaned twice.’
Any response to this was prevented by the arrival of Carole, flushed both by excitement and the pace at which she had scuttled from High Tor to the pub.
While Ted Crisp, unasked, poured another large New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, Jude introduced her neighbour to Ramona Plowright. Barney Poulton, Carole already knew – and she found him just as much of an irritating poseur as Ted did.
‘We were just talking about Heather,’ said Jude.
‘And we reckon her death,’ Barney pronounced, ‘was definitely suicide.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ said a rather riled Ted Crisp.
‘No, you take my word for it,’ the bar-room sage insisted. ‘She threw herself into the Fether.’
‘We don’t know that for sure,’ said Jude.
‘In fact, we don’t know very much,’ Ramona contributed.
‘No, but maybe Carole does know something.’ Jude gestured towards her friend, as if inviting her to take centre stage. ‘She’s just been interviewed by the police.’
Even Barney Poulton looked impressed by that. Carole gave Jude a rather old-fashioned look, to indicate that she’d been intending to discuss the matter à deux, but the excitement of having a larger audience proved too compelling.
‘So, what did they say?’ asked Ted.
‘Well, they wanted to talk to me, because I was on the beach early this morning with Gulliver – that’s my dog. And they wondered if I’d seen anything untoward.’
‘And had you?’ asked Barney.
‘No.’ She still sounded disappointed. ‘I only talked to another dog walker who’d met the dog walker who’d actually found the body.’
‘Incidentally,’ said Jude, ‘were the policemen who interviewed you the same ones who were in touch after Leonard Mallett’s death?’
‘No,’ said Carole dismissively. ‘Even if it was part of the same investigation – and they gave no suggestion that it was – it’s only in crime fiction that the same Detective Inspector and Detective Sergeant work on the same cases all the time. I’d never seen either of these two before.’
‘So, did they talk about suicide?’ asked Barney.
‘No, they didn’t. But they did say they were conducting a murder investigation.’
‘Murder? What made them think that?’
‘The marks on Heather Mallett’s neck,’ said Carole. ‘She was dead before she went into the Fether. She had been strangled.’
FOURTEEN
‘I didn’t want to tell all that about the police in front of everyone,’ said Carole, when they got back to Woodside Cottage. They had stayed in the Crown & Anchor for one of Ed Pollack’s excellent Sunday roasts. Jude had suggested going back to her place for a coffee, but when they arrived, produced an open bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. Carole made only minimum demur before accepting a glass.
‘You seemed to be enjoying it,’ Jude responded.
‘One has to put up a front when one’s with people. Anyway, I suppose I didn’t tell them anything important.’
‘You mean there was more important stuff?’
‘Well …’ Carole was forced to admit, ‘No, not that much. The other dog walkers must’ve given the impression I’d seen more than I had. The police weren’t actually with me very long.’ She sounded disappointed.
‘Ah.’
‘They asked me how well I knew Heather Mallett. To which the answer was: hardly at all, really. They’d have done better talking to you.’
‘I didn’t know her that well,’ Jude protested.