She had a copy of that week’s Fethering Observer, with a photograph of Heather Mallett on the front, and among the small ads, the regular entry was still there. She rang the mobile number that was printed in the box.
Her call was greeted by a laid-back ‘Hi.’
‘Am I talking to KK Rosser?’
‘You are. Guitarist extraordinaire. Leader of Rubber Truncheon, the best undiscovered and unsigned band this side of Memphis. Available for any kind of gig – weddings, birthdays, bar mitzvahs, hen parties, divorce parties – you name it, we’ll provide the best evening of music you’ve heard since Woodstock. So, what is the occasion for which you require our services?’
‘Actually, I saw your advertisement in the Fethering Observer for singing lessons.’ Carole planned to start with a conventional enquiry before moving on to the meat of her investigation.
‘Oh, right. Well, that’s a turn-up.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, because I get so few enquiries about the singing lessons. Lots for Rubber Truncheon, of course.’ He was probably lying. ‘But very few for the old singing lessons. Haven’t had an enquiry about that for … ooh, six months at least.’
‘Well, actually, that wasn’t what I really wanted to ask you about.’
‘Oh?’
Carole now decided that she should use a little subterfuge by pretending that she wasn’t totally retired from the Home Office. ‘The fact is, I’m making enquiries into the death of Heather Mallett.’
The line went dead.
‘Oh, general chat, you know,’ Blake Woodruff replied. ‘Heather told me what Alice was up to, all about the forthcoming wedding, that kind of stuff.’
‘Did she say anything about her late husband?’
‘His name wasn’t mentioned. Which, when I think about it, was perhaps rather odd. But I didn’t think that at the time. We only had a few telephone conversations, didn’t talk that much.’
‘And did Heather seem to have changed from when you’d last been in touch?’
‘She did a bit, yes.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, as I say, she always had a reclusive tendency, and that seemed to be more pronounced in our recent conversations. There was a kind of hesitancy about her, as if she was afraid something she said might upset me.’
The product of years spent with the permanently critical Leonard, thought Jude. ‘Nothing else, nothing odd?’
‘No, I don’t think so … Oh, there was one thing …’
‘What?’
‘Nothing odd, really. Just a coincidence.’
‘Oh?’
‘She’d met someone in Fethering who I’d known years ago.’
‘Who was that?’
‘I don’t know if you know, but I started out life … well, no, I’d done a little bit of living before that … but, at a very young age, I became a choral scholar at a cathedral school. Yes, I’m afraid the music bug has been with me for a long, long time. And it turns out that the master in charge of the choir back then … was choirmaster for the church choir in Fethering, who Heather sang with.’
‘Jonny Virgo?’
‘Yes, “Mr Virgo” to us back then. Mind you, that didn’t stop a lot of smutty-minded little boys making jokes about his surname. Anyway, I told Heather I remembered him, and I asked if he remembered me, you know, if he’d mentioned my name. And she said no. Which I thought slightly odd, because when someone has the good fortune to become famous, as I have had, then all sorts of people come out of the woodwork, claiming that they gave him his first job, they recognized his exceptional potential at a very early age, that they taught him everything he knew. But old Mr Virgo apparently didn’t do that. He didn’t claim to have taught me everything I knew.’
‘More than that,’ said Jude, remembering a rehearsal in All Saints. ‘He positively denied that he knew you and moved the conversation on very quickly when your name came up.’
‘Yes, Heather told me that. And at first, I couldn’t think of any reason for it. And then a memory came back to me.’
‘A memory of what?’
‘A memory of Mr Virgo telling me he loved me.’
‘What?’
‘It was the end of a choir rehearsal. The other choristers had gone from the chapel, off to supper, I think. It was just Mr Virgo and me, collecting up the hymn books. And he suddenly looked at me, and he said, “I love you, Woodruff.” Just that.’
‘Did he touch you?’
‘No. And it was never mentioned again. And I forgot about it.’
‘You didn’t tell anyone? Your headmaster or …?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, no! You didn’t in those days. I was … what … nine? I didn’t know what love meant. I knew I loved the family cat – that was about the extent of it. And it didn’t damage me in later life. I may have had a few romantic disasters on the way, partly to do with the amount I have to travel, but all of my disasters have been firmly heterosexual. So, Mr Virgo telling me he loved me had absolutely no effect at all on my life.’
‘It might have had a bigger effect on his life.’
‘Yes, OK, probably did. Maybe that was the first time he had faced the fact that he was gay, the first time he recognized that he could feel love for a small boy. I don’t know.’
‘But did Heather know about your encounter in the chapel?’
‘Yes. I told her while we were at university. You know, when you first have sex with someone, you tell each other about any previous sexual encounters … well, to be accurate, you give the other person an edited version of your previous sexual encounters, and I did tell Heather about Mr Virgo being in love with me, told her about it as a joke, really.’
‘Did she mention it in one of your more recent conversations?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Did she say if she told anyone else about it?’
‘She said she’d told Alice.’
‘Had she?’
Jude went straight round to High Tor. It took a while before she could tell her story, because Carole was so keen to bring her up to date with the progress of her own investigations. But eventually Jude was able to report the conversation she had just had with Blake Woodruff.
‘What do you think that means?’ asked Carole.
‘I think it means that Alice may potentially be in as much danger as her stepmother was. We must see she’s looked after.’
‘And we must tell the police to have a word with Jonny Virgo,’ said Carole, in her best Home Office voice.
‘Yes.’ Jude glanced at her watch. ‘At least we know Alice is all right at the moment.’
‘Oh?’
‘She told me she’d booked a three o’clock singing lesson with KK Rosser.’
‘But,’ said Carole slowly, ‘I spoke to KK Rosser this morning. He hasn’t had any enquiries about singing lessons for more than six months.’ Jude looked at her, aghast. ‘Which must mean that Alice is having her singing lesson with someone else.’
TWENTY-FOUR
Carole had never before broken the speed limit on Fethering seafront, but all caution was abandoned in the Renault’s dash to the Shorelands Estate. And, once inside the enclave, she certainly must have broken many of the local regulations as she screeched to a halt outside Sorrento.
The front door was locked.
‘Shall I ring the bell?’ asked Carole.
‘No, round the back!’ Jude led the way, at a speed surprising for a woman of her bulk.
It was as she had hoped. In her bid to let fresh air into the house, Alice had opened the sitting room’s French windows.