‘I know we haven’t, and I regret that much more. You were the one I wanted to keep in touch with.’
For a moment, there was a softness in Megan’s eyes, a flicker of the friendship that had once existed between them. But it vanished very quickly, and she was back on the attack. ‘In spite of that, it was Burton who knew you lived in Fethering, wasn’t it? I didn’t know that.’
‘I assume he heard through a mutual friend. I certainly didn’t tell him.’
‘No?’ Megan gave a weary sigh, topped up her wine glass and took a long swallow. ‘You can stop pretending, Jude. I know that your affair with Al started soon after our wedding. And it was your affair with Al that broke up a perfectly good marriage.’
‘That is just not true!’ In her shock, Jude spoke louder than she’d intended. A few of the other customers looked with characteristically English embarrassment towards their table.
‘Oh, I know what’s true,’ Megan assured her. And Jude realized how firmly the details of her recreated past had taken root in the woman’s mind.
‘And did you tell Detective Inspector Rollins about what you’ve just accused me of?’
‘Of course.’ Megan smiled complacently. ‘When you’re questioned by the police, you have to tell the truth, Jude. Surely you know that?’
NINE
On the train back from Victoria, Jude had a call on her mobile from Detective Inspector Rollins. She didn’t answer it. Partly this was because she didn’t want to share such potentially sensitive subject matter with a carriage-full of commuters. But also she wanted a bit of time to digest her encounter with Megan Sinclair.
The main feeling it had left her with was not resentment that her actions had been so traduced, but sadness. Before her marriage, Megan and she had been very close, but now that relationship was irreparably damaged. Her gloomy prognostications of the morning had proved justified. Jude found herself mourning the loss of a friend.
She also found herself chilled to the bone. In another of a series of lapses by Southern Rail, on that day, one of the coldest of the year, the heating in the carriages wasn’t working.
It was late afternoon when she arrived back at Woodside Cottage. Immediately she put on leggings, two jumpers, the central heating and an electric fire. For good measure, she lit the open fire in her sitting room.
She had intended to ring Rollins the moment she got in, but was waylaid by a message on her answering machine.
‘Hello, it’s Oliver Parsons. We met at the library the other evening. I hope you don’t mind my calling. I got your number from the phonebook. I just thought that, further to our conversation at the library … well, things have turned out rather surprisingly, haven’t they? Bit of a shock, what happened to our speaker, wouldn’t you say? Anyway, I just thought … if you’d like to talk about it further, give me a call.’ He provided his mobile number. ‘Look forward to hearing from you … maybe?’
His voice, she remembered, was urbane, slightly teasing. And there was more than a hint of flirtatiousness in his final ‘maybe?’ Jude also wondered about the truth of his assertion that he’d found her name in the phonebook. It was certainly there, but under one of her married surnames, ‘Nicholls’. Few people knew that. She reckoned Oliver Parsons would have had to do a bit of research to track it down. Which was interesting … possibly even flattering.
She had no hesitation in deferring contact with Detective Inspector Rollins and calling Oliver Parsons instead. The more information she could get about what had happened on the Tuesday night, the better equipped she would feel to face another interrogation from the police.
‘Hello, Jude. How very nice to hear from you.’ Again, the warmth and gratifying enthusiasm in his voice.
‘I was just ringing to say: thanks for your message.’
‘And does this mean you would like to talk further about Tuesday night?’
‘It does.’
‘Excellent. As I believe I mentioned at the library, I have – had – an interest in crime fiction. But crime fact is so much more exciting.’
‘What makes you think there’s actually a crime involved?
Her question seemed to throw him for a moment, then he replied smoothly, ‘One has only to listen to the views of anyone in Fethering. They’re all certain that Burton St Clair was murdered. And from all accounts, the police are crawling all over the village. Would they do that in the case of a natural death?’
Jude recognized that it was a moment for her to be discreet. ‘Who knows? I’m not very familiar with the workings of the constabulary.’
‘Nor me. Well, that is to say, I am only familiar with the workings of the constabulary in Golden Age crime fiction, when all it involved was being in a state of perpetual bafflement and waiting around for a polymathic amateur sleuth to come and solve the case.’
‘But where do you find a polymathic amateur sleuth in Fethering?’
‘Where indeed? Anyway, you would be happy to meet up and talk about the “case”?’
‘Yes.’
‘Maybe meet for a drink sometime?’
‘That would suit me. The Crown & Anchor?’
‘Ooh, I think not. Anything that happens in the Crown & Anchor is shared within seconds by le tout Fethering. I would advocate somewhere a little further off the radar.’
‘Fine. You tell me where.’
‘I could give you a lift there … since you don’t have a car.’
‘How do you know I don’t have a car?’
‘If you had a car, why would you be accepting Burton St Clair’s offer to drive you home on Tuesday?’
‘Fair enough. When do you want to meet?’
‘When you like, Jude. The end at which I am is permanently loose these days.’
‘I could do this evening.’
‘How serendipitous. So could I. Tell me when and I’ll be outside Woodside Cottage at the appointed hour.’
‘Six?’
‘Perfect.’
Jude had an hour to bathe and change clothes. Megan and Morden needed cleansing from her body. And the bones within that body needed the chill of Southern Rail thawed out of them.
She didn’t dress with any particular thoughtfulness for her meeting with Oliver Parsons. Or at least, that’s what she told herself.
Somehow, within the hour she’d had before he was scheduled to arrive, she didn’t find time to get back to Detective Inspector Rollins.
Oliver Parsons appeared at the appointed hour in a black Range Rover which looked huge in the street outside Woodside Cottage. He escorted Jude rather gallantly from her front door to the passenger side. Not wishing to repeat her sartorial insouciance of the Tuesday, she wore a thick woollen coat. And she needed it. In her brief journey to the car the air stung her cheeks. Inside, of course, all was toasty warmth.
‘Am I allowed to know where we’re going?’ she asked once they were under way.
‘The Hare & Hounds at Weldisham. Do you know it?’
‘Oh yes.’ The pub had featured prominently in one of Carole and Jude’s earlier investigations, which had been started by the discovery of some human bones in a barn near the village.
But when she and Oliver entered the Hare & Hounds that cold January evening, Jude saw that it had had yet another makeover. When she first saw it, the place had been all old tennis rackets, 1930s novel and pike in glass cases, in the style of a country house weekend party. On a more recent visit she had found the interior and the staff liveried in pale grey. Now everything was consciously mismatched: tables in a variety of sizes whose scrubbed surfaces were a colour chart of different wood tones, and a gallimaufry of different wooden chairs.
But with each incarnation of the Hare & Hounds, one trend was constant. The bar got smaller and the restaurant got bigger. Less and less were country pubs venues where the locals might slip in for a pint. Managements knew that their profit lay in the food.