“You have made me very angry, Mrs Seddon,” he announced through clenched teeth.
“I regret that, Mr Tilbrook,” she said, trying to sound cool, “but since I don’t know why I’ve made you angry, I’m not in a position to apologize.”
“You know things about me which I have worked very hard to keep secret.” Hardly surprising, thought Carole, if you did actually murder Ray. “Mrs Seddon, you’ve been spying on me. And you know what happens to spies when they’re caught, don’t you?”
Carole couldn’t fully understand her reactions. At one level, she could observe the scene and see what a ridiculous pompous little man Greville Tilbrook was. But another part of her was all too aware of the manic light in his eye, and the danger that lay within his anger.
“Are you threatening me, Mr Tilbrook?”
“It rather depends on what you do, Mrs Seddon. How you plan to use the information you have about me.”
“You’ll have to explain what you mean.”
“I mean – are you proposing to blackmail me?”
“Certainly not! I might consider passing on the information that I have about you to the police.”
“The police?” He looked almost relieved at the idea. “But this is not a police matter. I meant – are you proposing to pass the information on to my wife?”
“Your wife?” Carole hadn’t the beginning of an idea of what he was talking about. “Perhaps I should explain…?”
“I think perhaps you should, Mr Tilbrook.” So he did. And, needless to say, given who was talking, the explanation was not a short one. “The fact is that, without wishing in any way to mislead or give a false impression, I do find myself in a slightly delicate situation vis-a-vis the situation in which I find myself…if you get my drift…?”
Carole didn’t get his drift at all, but somehow there was no longer any menace in his manner, just acute embarrassment. And she found that watching Greville Tilbrook squirm was a most enjoyable spectator sport.
“Not to put too fine a point on it, Mrs Seddon, and without wishing to cause any hurt to any individual – most particularly not to my lady wife, a very fine woman who has been more than a helpmeet to me in the many and varied guises – or, if you will, hats – under which I conduct my life, the main inspiration of which, I may say without fear of contradiction, has always been a sense of civic responsibility, I would be very unwilling to have jeopardized a more than satisfactory status quo by any negative or counterproductive dissemination of information into the wrong ears. Fethering, by its nature, being, as it is, a village – a fact wherein, for many people, lies much of its charm – can at times, however, suffer from that natural propensity within village communities – and indeed many other small, tight-knit communities – for the business of any one individual to be regarded as the business of everyone. I refer, of course, to the proclivity amongst the mature citizens of an environment – ”
“Mr Tilbrook,” said Carole patiently, “what on earth are you talking about?”
He looked aggrieved to be interrupted. “I am talking about, as it were, what happened at the Crown and Anchor a week ago today.”
“Yes, it was very regrettable.”
“It certainly was. And I really do feel, without putting too fine a point on it, that the best solution, from the point of view of all concerned, would be that the whole incident should be forgotten.”
“You’ve rather changed your tune.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“On Sunday you were carrying placards saying Dan Poke shouldn’t be allowed to perform. Now you’re saying the whole thing should be forgotten.”
“It was not the, for want of a better word, performance by Dan Poke, to which I was, by the same token, referring.”
“Then, to what were you, ‘by the same token, referring’?”
Carole couldn’t resist quoting Greville Tilbrook back at himself, but he didn’t seem to notice her mockery as he replied, “I am referring to something which, by any stretch of the imagination, and when all’s said and done, is undoubtedly more important than that.”
“Ah, you mean the murder?”
“No, Mrs Seddon! Are you being deliberately obtuse?”
“I have never been deliberately obtuse in my life!”
“I am referring, Mrs Seddon, to what you told Beryl you had seen!” Carole could only look bewildered. She wasn’t aware of having told Beryl she’d seen anything. Greville Tilbrook went on, “Listen, none of us is, as it were, perfect. And, for my sins, I am not excluding myself, to be quite honest, from that category. The fact is that Margaret, my wife, whom I do not believe you have, up until this moment in time, had the pleasure of meeting…?”
Carole confirmed that she hadn’t.
“Well, Margaret is a very fine woman. Had we had any children, though we were not blessed in that way, she would undoubtedly have been an excellent mother to them. She is universally acknowledged to be, and this is something I can vouch for myself, a very fine housekeeper – or even, as I believe the popular phrase is these days, ‘homemaker’. She also has a commendable sense of civic responsibility. Margaret and I have, hitherto, lived a life of few arguments and, one cannot avoid the phrase, considerable domestic happiness. But, if I were to venture a criticism of my lovely wife – which I am only doing now, because of the gravity of the current situation – it might be that she is less affectionate than others of her sex – or should one say ‘gender’ nowadays – might, in the final analysis, be.”
Carole didn’t supply any further prompts. She just listened in amazement as Greville Tilbrook continued, “But when I met Beryl, I discovered that I had found a woman of, not to put too fine a point on it, a woman of considerably greater warmth, if you get my drift, than I had hitherto encountered in the marital home. And, though I have used the not inconsiderable powers of prayer and conscience to divert myself from the track on which I had, in a manner of speaking, embarked, I eventually came to the conclusion that I owed it to myself, for a moment not considering anyone else, to take advantage of the little extra happiness that was being offered to me, in the guise of – or, if you prefer, the form of – Beryl.”
Carole gaped. “Are you saying that you and Beryl are having an affair?”
“Of course that’s what I’m saying! And don’t pretend you don’t know, Mrs Seddon! After all, you’re the one who told Beryl that you’d seen us together last Sunday in the Crown and Anchor car park.”
Her knee-jerk reaction was immediately to explain that that hadn’t been what she meant, but she managed to curb the instinct. Having an embarrassed, apologetic Greville Tilbrook on the back foot would be infinitely more useful than facing his normal self-righteous persona. So, in a voice which she thought rather neatly combined pity and disapprobation, she said, “Well, you must understand, Mr Tilbrook, that the situation does put me in something of a quandary…”
“Yes, I can see that, Mrs Seddon.”
“Because, although I obviously have no wish to do harm to any other human being, one cannot forget that there is a moral dimension.”
“Oh, I do so agree.”
“So what would your advice to me be on what to do next?”
“Nothing! Don’t tell anyone!” The verbal simplicity of his answer was a measure of his panic.
Carole let him sweat for a moment before responding. “And that would be my instinctive reaction, Mr Tilbrook. I’m not a busybody. I have no wish to destroy a marriage…”
“Oh, thank you so much, Mrs Seddon.”
“…but, on the other hand, there is more than just a marriage to be considered here.”
He gaped at her. “How do you mean?”
“Like you, I also have a sense of civic responsibility. And unfortunately, the evening which you chose to canoodle with your girlfriend in the Crown and Anchor car park…in your car, was it?”