But Rosalie had already moved on. She swilled down the remains of her drink. ‘So what shall I do now – make a scene? Really bugger up Kent and Sara’s celebration. Tell Sara what a devious bastard she’s taking on; spill the beans about all the shady deals he’s been involved in over the years; destroy any hopes of happiness they might have?’
For a moment she looked as if she was about to put that plan into action. Then her shoulders slumped, tears started in her eyes and, with a mumbled, ‘I must go’, she edged her way through the crowd to the exit door.
‘Do you think we should go after her?’ asked Carole.
To her surprise, Jude shook her head. ‘I think it’s something she’s got to sort out on her own.’
They might have had further discussion, had Sara Courtney not come across at that point to give them both lavish hugs. She too had had a little too much to drink, but it hadn’t had the destructive effect on her that it had had on Rosalie Achter. Sara seemed positively to sparkle from head to toe. ‘I’m having such a wonderful time,’ she said. ‘I’d given up hopes of ever having an engagement party.’
‘Didn’t I tell you you should, “Hang on in there”?’
‘You did, Jude, you did. And bless you for it.’ Sara let out a little giggle. ‘Well, maybe you should be next.’
‘Next to do what?’ asked Carole.
‘Get engaged. Get married – now it’s legal for you.’
The look on Carole’s face when she heard this was one that Jude would cherish for a long, long time.
TWENTY-FOUR
‘Well, there’s one positive thing we have got out of the evening,’ said Jude.
They were sitting in the unkempt cosiness of Woodside Cottage’s sitting room. The fire had just been lit and was beginning to draw. Though they had both had quite a lot at the Yacht Club, Jude had insisted they needed ‘another drink to debrief’. And Carole hadn’t put up much of an argument against the idea.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
‘Related to the investigation.’
‘Ah, you were thinking of what Rosalie said about Quintus Braithwaite getting up to secret things in dinghies.’
‘I wasn’t, actually, though I agree that might be something worth investigating.’
‘Yes. And what’s more, Jude, we’ve never really followed up on the theft of Quintus’s dinghy, have we? You know, the night Sara saw the body.’
‘You’re right, and we will try to find out more about that, but the piece of information I was pleased we got this evening was the name of Rosalie’s father.’
‘Hudson Vale.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Well, apart from being a rather unusual name, in what other way is it of use to us?’
‘It gives us an opportunity to find out more about Josie Achter.’
Carole still couldn’t see where all this was leading. Jude explained, ‘I’ve still got a feeling that there is some connection between the dead man and Josie Achter.’
‘And where do you get that from? The corpse’s aura?’
Jude was used to these jibes at her practices and beliefs, but as ever she didn’t rise to this one, saying instead, ‘I’ve just a feeling there’s something relevant in the Achter family background – or perhaps I should say the Vale family background.’
‘Well, if you say so.’ Carole didn’t sound convinced.
Jude produced her laptop and switched it on. ‘Hudson Vale, Hudson Vale … there can’t be many Hudson Vales around, can there?’ She clicked through to Google and consulted the screen. ‘Plenty about the Hudson Valley in New York State. And there’s a road in Coventry actually called Hudson Vale.’
‘I wish I knew what you were trying to find out,’ said Carole plaintively.
‘I’m just trying to get a contact for him. Ah, this looks promising.’ She moved the laptop round so that Carole could see the screen. The website was headed: ‘HUDSON VALE PHOTOGRAPHY’. And the examples of his work showed that he was more than just a wedding snapper.
There were pictures of supermodels and pop stars, portraits of minor royals and magazine spreads. When it came to photography, Hudson Vale was clearly near the top of the tree.
Jude clicked on to the ‘Contact’ page. There was an email address and a telephone number. If she’d had less to drink at the yacht club, she probably wouldn’t have rung it at after nine in the evening. But as it was, she did.
The answering voice was gentle, public school educated. ‘Hello?’
‘Is that Hudson Vale?’
‘Speaking.’
‘I want to talk to you about your daughter Rosalie.’
‘Oh God,’ said the voice. ‘You’re not from the police again, are you?’
Hudson Vale didn’t mind seeing them on a Saturday. ‘Ergh,’ he’d said on the phone, ‘when I started in this business I had a wedding every bloody Saturday. At least thank God I don’t have to do that any more. With brides you very quickly get simpered out.’
Their appointment was for eleven o’clock. As Carole’s Renault joined the A3 at Milford, a cold, wintry rain began. It hadn’t let up when she turned off the motorway, following the signs to Esher and Kingston, and looked as if it was set in for the day.
Hudson Vale was still living in the fine, five-bedroomed Georgian house he’d shared with Josie and Rosalie. He answered their knock on the door very promptly, as if he had been waiting in the hall for them. A tall, willowy man with long white hair and fashionably round, black-framed glasses over startlingly blue eyes, he led them through the house to his studio. Through a closed door they passed they could hear the sounds of his twin daughters playing, presumably with their mother, but Hudson made no reference to them.
The studio had been built on to the back of the house and to a very high spec. Presumably, if this was where he met his clients, it needed to be smart. Jude got the impression that it was a part of the house the two little girls were not allowed to enter.
What was striking was that, while the walls of the rooms they had come through had been decorated by paintings from various hands, in the studio everything on display was Hudson Vale’s own work. Even more striking was how many of the photographs were of Rosalie; some in colour but most in monochrome. Black and white was clearly his favoured medium. Rosalie as a baby, Rosalie as a little girl, Rosalie trembling on the edge of adolescence. There was a particularly charming colour print of her, aged perhaps eleven, giving her father a big cuddle. The pale blond hair of the younger Hudson Vale contrasted with Rosalie’s tight, jet-black curls, and his blue eyes sparkled with happiness.
There were no images of Rosalie after the age of eleven. To Jude the lavish display contrasted sharply with the complete lack of family photographs in Rosalie Achter’s soulless flat in Fethering.
Hudson’s studio was well equipped. Gesturing to the inevitable Italian machine, he offered his guests coffee. Jude asked for a cappuccino. Carole, who in a café would have demanded ‘ordinary black coffee’, asked for an Americano without milk.
The garden-facing wall of the studio was all glass doors, which could clearly concertina back to the sides when the weather was more clement. Though the rain was still lashing down and it was February, the garden was well tended and must have looked glorious in the summer. Jude commented on this while Hudson made the coffee.
‘Yes, it’s beautiful,’ he responded. ‘I have to confess I do rather love this office. Sometimes I almost resent having to leave it to go out and take photographs.’ He gestured towards two closed doors. ‘I’m very self-sufficient here, you see. Bathroom through there. The other’s my darkroom.’
‘I didn’t know photographers still used darkrooms,’ Carole observed.