‘Ah. Do I detect I’m with that contingent of the Devil’s Disciple company who believes we have a murder on our hands?’
‘I’d never rule out any possibility.’
‘Hm.’
‘Do I gather, Neville, that you do rule out that possibility?’
‘I think an accident is the more likely scenario. As to murder …’ He acted as though he were contemplating the possibility for the first time. ‘Well, if it was, we wouldn’t lack for suspects, would we? Was there anyone in SADOS whose back Ritchie Good hadn’t put up?’
‘I don’t really know,’ Carole lied. Jude had kept her up to date with everything. ‘I haven’t been with the group for long.’
‘No, of course not. Well, someone with an ego the size of Ritchie’s doesn’t really notice whose sensibilities he’s trampling over. I mean, did you hear what he said to cause the big bust-up with Elizaveta?’
‘Yes, I got reports of that from Jude.’
‘Ah, your pretty friend, yes.’ He said this as though he were a great connoisseur of the feminine gender, and Carole felt an atavistic pang from her childhood, the inescapable fact that she would never be known as ‘the pretty one’.
Putting such thoughts firmly to one side, she asked, ‘And did Ritchie insult you in the same kind of way?’
‘No, he laid off me pretty much.’ The smug smile re-appeared. ‘He recognized that I was a lot more intelligent than he was. And at least as good an actor. So he tended to avoid direct confrontation with me.’
‘There was no rivalry between you?’
‘Good Lord, no. Well, certainly not on my side. I had no reason to be jealous of Ritchie. I suppose he might well have been jealous of me, though.’ Again it seemed that this monstrously egotistical thought was a new one to him. ‘Yes, he probably was jealous of me.’
‘I wondered if there was ever any rivalry between you over women …?’
‘Women?’
‘Women in the company.’
‘How do you mean?’ He spoke innocently, but there was a kind of roguishness in his manner too.
‘I just wondered whether there might have been any conflict between the two of you over some woman you both fancied …?’
‘Unlikely.’
‘I mean, Ritchie Good apparently had a habit of coming on to every woman he met. He even came on to me,’ confided Carole, blushing slightly.
‘I don’t think that meant much with him. Just a knee-jerk reaction,’ said Neville, unaware of how offensive his remark might be. ‘Ritchie was all mouth and no trousers. Glib with the chat, but he didn’t follow through.’
‘Unlike you …?’ Carole suggested rather boldly.
Neville Prideaux smiled a wolfish smile. ‘I generally get what I want. And besides, Ritchie was in a different position from me. He was married.’
‘And you are not?’
A thin smile answered the question. ‘I got divorced when I retired. A wife who is excellent as a house mistress at a boy’s public school did not fulfil the requirements I had for the rest of my life. Now I am more of an emotional freelance.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I am not looking for anything long term in a relationship. As long as it’s still fun, I will keep on with it. Once it ceases to be fun, I end it.’
Carole found that Neville Prideaux’s charm was diminishing by the minute. Otherwise she might not have pushed ahead with her next line of questioning. ‘I heard someone chatting at rehearsals and saying that you’d had a fling with my predecessor …’
‘Sorry?’
‘Hester Winstone.’
‘Huh.’ He looked displeased. ‘You can’t have any secrets with this lot.’ Then he looked defiantly at Carole. ‘So what if I did? We’re both grown-ups.’
‘But I’d heard that Ritchie Good came on to her too.’
‘I thought we’d already established that Ritchie came on to anything in a skirt. Why, are you suggesting that Ritchie and I were rivals for Hester’s affections, and I murdered him so I could have uncontested access to her?’
This was so close to what Carole had actually been thinking that she had some difficulty making her denial sound convincing.
‘Well, I can assure you that wasn’t the case. Hester and I shared one night of what could hardly be described as bliss and decided mutually that ours was not going to be la grande affaire.’
‘Mutually?’
‘I decided and told her. She didn’t complain. Hester’s a very unstable woman.’
Carole didn’t disagree. Nor did she think it was the moment to ask Neville whether he thought his behaviour might have contributed to her instability.
‘So,’ he went on, ‘if you’re looking for someone who might have murdered Ritchie, I’m afraid you’re very much barking up the wrong tree with me.’
‘And who do you think might be the right tree?’ No harm in asking.
‘Well, I actually think you’re stuck in a whole forest full of wrong trees. Because I firmly believe that Ritchie’s death was an accident. That probably Gordon Blaine was playing about with his precious mechanism and left the wrong noose in place. But, if I were going to waste my time playing amateur detectives … I think the question I would ask is: Who has benefited from his death? Who is more relaxed, as if with his decease a huge weight has been lifted off their shoulders?’
‘And what would your answer be?’
‘Davina Vere Smith.’
NINETEEN
On the Wednesday morning Jude travelled by train for the two stops from Fethering to Fedborough. She felt no guilt in not including Carole in the day’s mission. Jude, after all, was the one who had found Ritchie Good’s body. Maybe that gave her some obscure right to meet his widow.
On the train she remembered Gwenda saying that she wasn’t very mobile, and wondered about her level of disability. But the woman who opened the door of the terraced house in a road off Fedborough High Street showed no overt signs of illness and seemed to move with ease as she hastened to close the front door once her guest was inside. ‘Sorry, need to keep out the cold,’ she said.
Jude wouldn’t have thought it was that cold, even a bit above average temperature for April. She herself was only wearing a cotton jacket over a T-shirt and skirt. The two chiffon scarves wound around her neck were statements of Jude’s style rather than for warmth.
And the minute she stepped inside the house, she was glad not to be wearing more. The place was incredibly overheated, but Gwenda Good was wearing a cardigan over a jumper and fleece jogging bottoms. Over this she had on a plastic apron with a Minnie Mouse image on it. Her hands were in yellow Marigold gloves. She wore her greying hair in a thick plait and had unglamorous black-rimmed glasses.
Jude found it very difficult to assess the woman’s age, but certainly reckoned she was a lot older than her late husband.
‘Very good of you to come,’ said Gwenda Good, and led the way into a small sitting room that faced out on to the street. Wooden Venetian blinds were half-closed and two standard lamps were on to compensate for the gloom. One stood over a small table, on which was a bowl of water, dusters and sponges and some small china figurines. Gwenda gestured to them and said, ‘Wednesday, that’s the day I clean the collection. Oh, do sit down.’
As Jude sat in a leather armchair, she became aware of the ‘collection’ referred to. And the scale of it. It was clearly no coincidence that Gwenda had a Minnie Mouse on her apron. Because the image was reduplicated literally hundreds of times throughout the sitting room. Shelves covered the two side walls, and on one of these stood rows of figurines of Minnie Mouse in a variety of costumes and poses, dressed as a ballerina, as Santa Claus, as a tennis player, as a doctor, as a schoolteacher and many more.