Zosia served them. She looked tired, her customary brightness dimmed. The stress surrounding the Crown and Anchor was getting to everyone. They got their large Chilean Chardonnays, and both went for salads, chicken for Carole, salmon for Jude.
“I see we’re not Ted’s favourite people today,” Jude observed to Zosia.
“Not just you. No people are his favourite people. He is in a bad state.”
“Is he still on the whisky?” asked Carole.
The Polish girl nodded glumly. “I think so. He is very unhappy, but he will not talk about what is making him unhappy. He…what is that idiom you have? He puts it in a bottle?”
“He bottles it up,” said Jude.
“Yes, that is what he does. Which does not help. This ‘bottling-up’, I think, makes things worse for people.”
Carole, for whom life had been one long process of bottling-up, nodded.
“We’ll get it out of him eventually,” said Jude.
Zosia grinned, without much optimism.
“Has Ted heard about the latest death?” asked Carole. “Up at Copsedown Hall.”
“Oh yes. News of tragedy travels fast in a place like Fethering, that I have learned since I have been here. There is more gossip, I think, even than in a Polish country village.”
“Did Ted say anything when he heard the news?”
“I don’t know. I was not here when he was told. But he certainly does know.”
Just as they were about to find a table, Jude noticed a book propped up behind the bar. A Poke in the Eye, by Dan Poke. When she pointed it out, Zosia said, “This was left the evening he did his act here. It was for sale, I think, but nobody wanted to buy it because the cover was torn or something.”
“Could I have a look at it?”
Jude took the book over to the empty alcove Carole had found for them. When she opened it, she realized that not only the torn dust jacket made it unsaleable. The spine had broken in more than one place, leaving the contents like an unevenly sliced loaf of yellowing pages.
“Must’ve been published quite a time ago,” Jude observed. She checked on the copyright page. Yes, the book was nearly ten years old. “So that was when Dan Poke was presumably at his peak of popularity.” Carole looked at her quizzically. “Publishers tend only to go for showbiz autobiographies from the really hot names. People who’re currently big on telly. I suppose you don’t know how well his television career’s going at the moment, do you?”
Jude had supposed correctly. Carole left her in no doubt that the sort of programmes people like Dan Poke might be involved in were not her favoured viewing.
“No, but you can’t miss them, when someone’s really hot. You see them on trailers between other programmes. Television celebrities are all over the newspapers.”
“Yes, even The Times,” said Carole with an aggrieved sniff, “quite often has colour photographs of showbiz nonentities on the front page. It’s sometimes terrifying how downmarket that paper’s gone, you know.”
Jude wasn’t really listening; she was following a train of thought of her own. “No, I don’t think I have seen much about Dan Poke recently…”
“So in what way is that relevant?”
“Just thinking. I mean, OK, he’s been on telly, so he’s still a big name in a little place like Fethering, but I think it’s a while since he was really in the big time…”
“I repeat my question: in what way is that relevant?”
“I don’t know. He just seems to indulge in all the behaviour of a big star, when probably he isn’t that big a star.”
“Isn’t that how show business works?” asked Carole acidly.
“Yes, maybe…” Jude’s eyes strayed back to the book’s copyright page. “Huh, and he didn’t even write it himself, anyway.”
“What?”
Jude pointed out to her friend the words: ‘Copyright © 2001 Richard Farrelly’.
“So? Lots of show-business autobiographies have ghost writers.”
“Not so often for comedians. Particularly the stand-ups. They pride themselves on producing their own material.”
Carole couldn’t see that that was particularly relevant either, and their conversation moved on to other topics. But later, when Ted Crisp himself delivered their salads, Jude asked him, “Who’s Richard Farrelly?”
His face was still set in an expression which said he wasn’t going to engage in conversation with them, but he couldn’t see the harm in responding to that.
“Why do you ask?”
Jude indicated A Poke in the Eye on the table.
“Because Dan Poke got him to ghost his autobiography.”
Something that was almost a grin appeared through the thatch of Ited Crisp’s beard. “Richard Farrelly didn’t ghost it.”
“What?”
“Richard Farrelly is Dan Poke. Oh, come on, what are the chances of a comedian’s parents christening him with a gift of a name like ‘Dan Poke’?”
“You mean ‘Dan Poke’ is a pseudonym? Dan Poke is really Richard Farrelly?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Oh, Ited, while you’re here, could we just have a word about – ?”
But Carole was cut short. “Sorry, a lot to get on with.” And the landlord vanished back into the kitchen.
Jude sighed and looked across at her friend with sympathy. She’d detected that Carole was taking Ted’s brusqueness more personally than she was. But then Carole Seddon took everything personally. “Don’t worry. We’ll soon all be friends again.”
“I’m not worried,” Carole lied. “If he wants to play games, well, it doesn’t bother me. What I’m much more concerned about is where we go next in our investigation, having drawn a blank at the Cat and Fiddle.”
“Yes.” Jude took a mouthful of her excellent salmon salad and looked thoughtful. Then she said, “I wonder if we have drawn a complete blank at the Cat and Fiddle…”
“Hm?”
“OK, the pub appears to be under new ownership, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the old owner’s vanished off the face of the earth.”
“Shona Nuttall,” said Carole.
“Exactly. I mean, she may have sold up the pub and taken off to spend the proceeds in well-heeled retirement in Tenerife or somewhere.” The recollection of the woman with her deep perma-tan encouraged this image. “On the other hand, she might still be living locally.”
“Who’d know that? Ted?”
“Possibly. Though in his current mood he wouldn’t tell us.” The skin around Jude’s brown eyes crinkled as she tried to nail down an elusive memory. Suddenly it came to her. “Zosia might have a contact number for Shona Nuttall. They certainly met when she was trying to find out what had happened to her brother.”
Given the slackness of custom in the Crown and Anchor, it wasn’t difficult to attract the bar manager’s attention. And yes, she did still have a home number for Shona Nuttall stored in her mobile. Though whether the ex-landlady was still living there, Zosia couldn’t say.
Jude rang the number straight away. It was answered by Shona Nuttall. When told that her caller wanted to know the circumstances of her selling the Cat and Fiddle, she said yes, she was more than happy for them to come and talk to her about it.
Thirty-Two
“What’s your recollection of Shona Nuttall?” asked Jude, as the Renault purred sedately towards Southwick.
“Pushy. Full of herself.”
“You didn’t take to her?”
“Certainly not. She’s far from being my kind of person.”
Jude smiled inwardly. What Carole was saying was that she didn’t normally mix with pub landladies. And this from a woman who’d had a brief affair with a pub landlord. But Jude knew better than to make any comment on the anomaly.