“Well, when you do see him, will you tell him to answer my bloody phone calls. Not to mention the phone calls from my solicitor.”
“I’ll ask him,” said Carole, “but I can’t guarantee that he’ll do it. As you must know, when Ted doesn’t want to do something, he can be very bloody-minded about not doing it.”
“Look, this is a legal matter. It’s not down to what Ted wants or doesn’t want to do. I need a divorce, and to get that my solicitor and I have to talk to him.”
“Maybe your solicitor could talk to his solicitor?” suggested Carole.
“Yes, fine. That’d be a start. Except Ted won’t give me a name for his solicitor.”
“I will try and find that out for you.”
But her magnanimity didn’t get any gratitude from Sylvia. “Do that. Then I can get things bloody moving.”
“You’re so keen to get a divorce because you want to marry Matt?”
“Not want to. I am going to marry Matt.”
“Congratulations,” said Carole drily.
There was an unpleasant light of mischief in Sylvia’s eyes as she went on, “And of course once the divorce has happened, there’ll be nothing to stop you and Ted getting married.”
“Thank you. But I don’t think that’s a very likely scenario.”
“No, I wouldn’t have thought so.” The woman looked Carole up and down in a disparaging manner.
“Why should he bother with a piece of paper when he can get what he wants for free?”
It was with great difficulty that her hostess bit back a response to this. Carole had suffered from more in-your-face insults since she’d met Sylvia than she had in all the rest of her nice middle-class life.
She channelled her anger into a polite but direct question. “Sylvia, do you want Ted to sell the Crown and Anchor?”
“Yes,” she replied, “unless he’s got some other loot stashed away that I don’t know about.”
“You want the proceeds of the Crown and Anchor to fund your divorce settlement?”
“Of course. It’s quite common when a divorce happens, the assets of the couple are divided up. That’s all I’m asking for.”
“But when you and Ted split up, he had no assets.”
“He does now. There’s got to be a hell of a lot of money tied up in that pub.”
“It’s a business he built up on his own, though. You had nothing to do with it. You didn’t even meet during all the years he was getting the Crown and Anchor going. You don’t have any rights to the money he’s made there.”
Sylvia smiled smugly. “My solicitor says I do.”
“Well, your solicitor is wrong.”
“I would think that my solicitor knows rather more about divorce law than you do, Carole.”
“That’s quite possibly true. But Ted’s solicitor will no doubt be at least as well informed as yours is.”
Even as she said the words, Carole wished she believed them. Ted’s casual mention of the man who had ‘dealt with the purchase of the Crown and Anchor’ did not inspire confidence in the arrival of a new Perry Mason on to his team.
“Maybe, but if Ted won’t tell me or my solicitor who his solicitor is, the whole situation becomes rather complicated. My solicitor says that there are legal sanctions that can be brought to bear on people who don’t respond to solicitors’ letters.” Sylvia was clearly parroting the words of her adviser as she voiced this threat. “And I’m sure Ted wouldn’t want to be in any more trouble with the law than he is already.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t.” Carole took a sip of mineral water before moving into more investigative mode. “With regard to his being in trouble with the law…”
“Hm?” Sylvia didn’t look very interested in pursuing the conversation.
“…he does seem to have had a sequence of bad luck, doesn’t he?”
Sylvia shrugged her tanned shoulders. “Bad luck or inefficiency.”
“Where would you say he’s been inefficient?”
“Well, that food-poisoning outbreak…got to be down to slack standards in the kitchen, hasn’t it?”
Carole restrained herself from a detailed defence of Ted and Ed Pollack’s standards of hygiene, instead suggesting, “Or down to sabotage?”
Sylvia’s puzzled reaction suggested that this was an idea which had genuinely not occurred to her before. And Carole didn’t think she was a good enough actress to make such a pretence. Her reactive question also implied she had just been given a new thought. “But who’d want to sabotage the Crown and Anchor?”
“Someone who wanted to make life tough for Ted. Someone who wanted him to have to sell up.” Carole decided to be bold. “Someone like you.”
The response to this too showed real bewilderment. “Me?”
“You want Ted to sell up, don’t you?”
“I want a proper divorce settlement. If he’s got other money stashed away with which he can fund that, well and good. If he hasn’t, then my solicitor says he’ll have to sell the pub to pay me off…” Every mention of her solicitor seemed to give the woman more confidence.
But Carole’s confidence was building too. In authoritative tones she announced, “The food poisoning was definitely caused by sabotage. Before he died, Ray Witchett admitted that he had changed round a tray of fresh scallops in the kitchen of the Crown and Anchor for some dodgy ones that he had been given.”
“Really?” This was all news to Sylvia.
“What is more, there is a strong suspicion that the dodgy scallops were delivered to the kitchen by your fiancé, Matt.”
“Matt?” came the amazed echo.
“Yes. How long have you known Matt, by the way?”
“Only a few weeks. We met in a pub in Worthing. I’d been staying in a B & B over there since I’d been trying to get some action out of Ted. You know what he’s like. He won’t answer phone calls or letters. If you want to get something out of him, you have to turn up in person.”
“Are you still in Worthing?”
“Yes.” She grinned with feline satisfaction. “But in Matt’s place now.”
“Right. Well, look, you know he works as a delivery driver for the brewery that supplies the Crown and Anchor…”
“Of course I do.”
“On the morning of the Monday when the food-poisoning outbreak occurred, Matt delivered some beer barrels in such a way that Ted and his staff had to go down to the cellar to unjam them. During that time it seems very likely that Matt went round to the kitchen and gave Ray the scallops that caused the sickness.”
“Really?” A change had come over Sylvia. From being bewildered, she now looked almost excited by the news she was getting. “You think Matt did that?”
“Yes. Did he tell you that was what he was planning to do?”
“No. He didn’t tell me anything about it.” She seemed more excited, even ecstatic.
“Are you sure you didn’t set him up to do it?”
“No. Why on earth would I?”
“Because,” Carole explained patiently, “the outbreak of food poisoning caused the pub to be closed down, which put more pressure on Ted, was a threat to his business, and made it more likely that he would be forced to sell the Crown and Anchor and pay you the settlement your solicitor is demanding.”
“Yes,” Sylvia said, as though she were spelling out to herself some wonderful news. “Yes, now you mention it, I can see that.”
“But are you saying you didn’t set Matt up to do it?”
“No. No, he must have worked it all out for himself. Oh, I’ve underestimated him,” she added fondly.
“What on earth do you mean by that?” It was Carole’s turn to be bewildered.
“I mean that I’ve always been slightly worried with Matt…you know, whether he really loves me as much as I love him. I mean, he hasn’t got a demonstrative nature. He doesn’t really show his feelings much…you know, except in bed.” There was no way she was going to miss that out. “But this shows how much he cares. He knew how upset I was about trying to get the divorce from Ted. He knew how much difference it would make if Ted had to sell the Crown and Anchor…and Matt, all on his own, out of his own head, worked out this clever plan to sabotage the scallops.” She hugged herself with glee. “Ooh, he’s such a lovely man.”