A glass-fronted set of shelves was full to bursting of stuffed Minnie Mouse toys, again in a wide range of liveries. Another section featured Minnie Mouse accessories – pencil cases, backpacks, lunch boxes, packs of cards, board games, jigsaws and so on. Above these hung an opened Minnie Mouse umbrella. Jude observed that even the cushion on her chair wore the distinctive image with its spotted red bow. And the two standard lamps had Minnie Mouse shades.
For once she was at a loss for words. She couldn’t think of anything nice to say about the aggregation of Minnie Mouses and yet to behave as if she hadn’t noticed it would be perverse. She ended up saying, rather limply, ‘Well, you’ve got quite a collection here.’
‘Yes, it’s not bad,’ Gwenda agreed, ‘but there’s always so much more out there. It’s hard work just trying to keep up. EBay’s made it easier sourcing the goodies, but you have to keep your eye on the deadlines there, or you could miss something great. And actually,’ she said as if admitting some shortcoming, ‘most of the stuff I’ve got here is post-1968.’
‘Sorry? Why is that significant?’
‘Post-1968 is modern. Pre-1968 is vintage.’
‘Ah.’
‘And the prices are vintage too. You can spend literally millions if you get into that market.’
Again Jude couldn’t think of anything to say. The question she was burning to ask – ‘why do you collect it?’ – didn’t seem appropriate at that moment. So she fell back on a more fitting expression of condolence. ‘I’m very sorry about your husband’s death.’
‘Thank you.’ The words were spoken automatically, without much emotion involved. Gwenda had gone back to sit at her table under the standard lamp, and continued with the cleaning process which Jude’s arrival had interrupted. She put each figurine in the water, swirled it round and then wiped it down meticulously with a cloth. Those whose hollow interiors were accessible were carefully dried inside with a sponge.
Gwenda appeared almost to have forgotten that there was anyone else in the room. Jude found it a little odd that she hadn’t been offered a cup of tea or coffee. After all, Gwenda was the one who had set up the encounter.
The silence was extended while the punctilious figurine-cleaning continued.
Eventually Jude said, ‘You wanted to talk to me about your husband …?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Gwenda, as if being reminded of something she had completely forgotten. She looked a little disgruntled at having her attention taken away from the task in hand. ‘You were the one who found him dead – that’s right, isn’t it?’
‘I was the one who raised the alarm, yes,’ Jude agreed, again keeping Hester Winstone’s name out of it.
‘And he was dead when you found him, not dying?’
‘He was definitely dead.’
‘And I gather just before that he’d been taking part in a demonstration of how the gallows worked.’
‘That’s right. He was part of a set-up with Gordon.’
‘Gordon?’
‘Yes. Gordon Blaine. He’d designed and built the gallows.’
‘Ah. I don’t know the names of any of the people Ritchie did his acting with.’ She said this as if it would have been rather bizarre for her to have known them.
‘Did you go and see any of the shows?’
‘No.’ Gwenda sounded surprised that the question needed asking. ‘I couldn’t, could I?’
This was such a peculiar statement that Jude immediately asked, ‘Why couldn’t you?’
‘Well, for obvious reasons.’ Which didn’t do much to clarify the situation.
‘What do you mean by—?’
But Gwenda was not about to offer explanations. ‘Ritchie didn’t talk about any of that,’ she said. ‘Except the women, of course.’
‘The women?’
Once again Gwenda just moved on. ‘From what you saw of Ritchie’s body, would you say his death looked accidental?’
‘It seems most likely that it was an accident, yes,’ Jude replied cautiously. ‘That is, if it wasn’t suicide. Do you know whether your husband ever had any suicidal thoughts?’
‘Good heavens, no. Ritchie had a very happy life. He liked his work at the bank. He enjoyed his play-acting. And then of course we had a very happy marriage.’
Jude knew it was impossible ever to look inside a marriage and see what’s going on, but she would have loved to know how Gwenda Good defined ‘happy’. She said, ‘You must have been very upset when you got the news of his death.’
‘Why?’ Again the strangest of responses.
‘Well, because your happy marriage was over.’
‘It had run its course,’ said the widow without sentiment. ‘That was when it was destined to end. There’s no point in getting upset over things that are preordained.’
This sounded like part of some spiritual package, so Jude said, ‘It must be a comfort for you to have your faith.’
‘I don’t have any faith,’ said Gwenda. ‘Just a knowledge that everything that happens is preordained.’
‘By whom?’
‘Oh, I don’t know that.’
This was becoming one of the most bizarre conversations Jude had ever participated in, and yet Ritchie Good’s widow did not sound at all unhinged. Everything she said seemed to be entirely logical, at least to her.
Jude had heard that Ritchie Good’s funeral had taken place the week before and assumed that, since the body had been released, the police investigation into the death had ended. So she asked, ‘Was there a good turnout for your husband’s funeral?’
‘I believe so, yes.’
‘You believe so?’
‘Well, obviously I couldn’t be there.’
‘Why obviously?’
‘I can’t leave the house,’ replied Gwenda, as if this were something that everyone in the world knew.
‘Do you mean you are agoraphobic?’
The woman dismissed the word with a shrug. ‘I’m not too bothered what people call it. I have no interest in psychobabble. I just don’t leave the house.’ This was spoken without any anxiety or self-pity, as a simple statement of fact. Not leaving the house seemed very normal to her.
‘Not even to go to the shops?’
‘I have everything delivered. I order online. What with that and eBay, I spend quite a lot of time on the laptop.’ Again this was made to sound like the most natural thing in the world.
‘A few minutes ago,’ said Jude, ‘you said that Ritchie didn’t talk about his amateur dramatics, but he did talk about “the women” …’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you mind if I ask what you meant by that?’
‘Not at all.’ Gwenda seemed pleased that the matter had been raised. ‘The thing is, Ritchie was a very attractive man …’
Jude was tempted to say, Well, he certainly thought so, but restrained herself.
‘… and so, obviously, he had lots of women throwing themselves at him.’ Gwenda looked straight at Jude for the first time in their conversation. ‘Did you throw yourself at him?’
‘Hardly.’ Throwing herself at men was not Jude’s style, though she couldn’t deny the initial attraction she had felt for Ritchie Good.
‘No, he didn’t mention you.’
‘Are you implying by that that he mentioned others?’
‘Oh yes. Ritchie told me everything. There are a lot of unattached women in amateur dramatic societies, and quite a lot of them came on to him.’
‘Don’t you think he did some of the “coming on”?’ Jude couldn’t forget his automatic ‘Where have you been hiding all my life?’
‘Oh no. He told me all about it. A lot of the women were very brazen. They would seek him out and try to get him on his own. Ritchie didn’t give them any encouragement. And then most of them would quite shamelessly try to get him to go to bed with them.’