The St Mary’s Hall car park was in darkness as they came out of the pub, but when they crossed the beam of a sensor an overhead light came on. In spite of the time pressure of her television programme, Carole characteristically said she must put up the back seats of the Renault before they set off. Anything out of place disturbed her, and the car must be returned to its customary configuration. Carole was the kind of woman who had a tendency to clear away her guests’ dinner plates almost before they’d finished eating.
While she repositioned the back seats Jude stood waiting. It was a mild evening for February, the first that offered some prospect of spring eventually arriving. She looked around the car park. The range of Mercedes, BMWs and Audis suggested that the members of SADOS didn’t have too much to worry about financially.
Out of the corner of her eye Jude caught sight of a movement behind the windscreen of a BMW quite nearby. Looking closer, she recognized the face of Hester Winstone, the Devil’s Disciple’s prompter.
And the overhead light caught the shine of tears on the woman’s cheeks.
Instinctive compassion took Jude towards the car. The closer she got the more sense she had of something being seriously wrong. Hester was slumped a little sideways in the driver’s seat and her eyes were closed. Peacefully closed, as though she were asleep.
Jude had no hesitation in snatching open the car door. As she did so, the prompter’s arm flopped to the side of her seat.
And from her wrist bright red blood dripped on to the surface of the car park.
FIVE
‘I still think we should call the police,’ muttered Carole. ‘Or at least send for an ambulance.’
‘Hester specifically asked me not to,’ Jude whispered back. They were in the sitting room of Woodside Cottage and the subject of their conversation had just gone upstairs to the loo.
‘Yes, but she’s not rational. People who try to kill themselves are by definition not rational.’
‘It wasn’t a very serious attempt to kill herself. Those nail scissors couldn’t have done much damage. The cuts are only surface scratches.’
‘Maybe they are this time, but people who do that kind of thing are very likely to try again. Someone in authority should be informed.’
‘Carole, I’d rather just talk to Hester for a while, find out what her state of mind really is.’
‘Not great, if she’s trying to top herself,’ said Carole shortly.
‘Please. I’d just like to talk to her.’
Jude’s words only added to Carole’s sense of pique. ‘I’d just like to talk to her.’ Nothing on the lines of ‘We should talk to her.’ Not for the first time that evening, Carole felt excluded. She’d been stuck at the Cricketers with the world’s most boring man, Gordon Blaine, while Jude went off with a bunch of people who had, by definition, to be more interesting. Then in the car park her neighbour had overruled her about getting someone from SADOS to look after Hester Winstone. It had also been against Carole’s advice that Jude had driven Hester back to Woodside Cottage in the BMW.
To compound these multiple affronts, the business of doing a temporary bandaging job on the would-be suicide in the car park meant that Carole had missed at least half of her chronicle of wimples and waters breaking.
‘Very well,’ she said huffily to Jude. ‘Well, I must go. I’ve got things to do.’
‘The children are off at boarding school,’ said Hester Winstone, ‘and my husband’s away at the moment.’
‘Where?’ asked Jude.
‘He’s on a cricket tour in New Zealand.’ Jude didn’t take much of an interest in the game, but she knew that there seemed to be Test Matches happening somewhere every day right around the world.
‘What, watching cricket?’
‘No, playing.’
‘Really?’ That was a surprise. Assuming that Hester Winstone was in her late forties, then her husband might be expected to be the same age or a little older. And though Jude knew that some men continued to play cricket into their fifties and sixties, she didn’t expect many to be involved in international tours.
Hester seemed to sense her need for explanation. ‘It’s a group of them, a kind of ad hoc team called the Subversives. One of the blokes works in the travel industry and he sets up the tours. They’ve been doing it for years. Some of the players are pushing seventy.’
‘How long do the tours last?’
‘Oh, never more than a month. Mike will be back next Friday.’
Hester Winstone seemed remarkably together and businesslike for a woman who had within the last two hours slit her wrists. Jude recognized that she was embarrassed and trying to talk about anything except the reason why she had ended up in Woodside Cottage.
‘And have you been involved with SADOS for long?’
‘Oh no. Disciple is the first show I’ve done with them. No, I just thought, now I’ve got more time on my hands …’
‘Have you done amateur dramatics before?’
‘Not really. Well, a certain amount at school, and I started to do a bit at college, but since then … life’s rather taken over … you know, marriage, children …’
‘How many children do you have?’
‘Two. Boys, both boarding at Charterhouse. Younger one started in September. Mike was there, so there was never any thought of sending them anywhere else. It’s a very good school for sport.’
‘Are your boys keen on cricket too?’
‘Oh yes,’ Hester replied, a note of weariness in her voice. ‘And football and tennis and squash.’
‘What about you? You do a lot of sport?’
A wrinkling of the lips suggested the answer was no. ‘I play a bit of genteel tennis with some friends, that’s about the limit of my involvement. Unless, of course, you count the hours I have put in making cricket teas, ferrying Mike and the boys to various matches and tournaments, helping to score in pavilions, shrieking encouragement on chilly touchlines.’
‘Sounds like you’ve served your time.’
‘Hm. Maybe.’
Jude was again struck by the incongruity of this normal – even banal – conversation going on with a woman whose right wrist was dressed with a bandage covering the cuts she had inflicted on herself. They weren’t very deep, but even so they must reflect some profound malaise within Hester Winstone. But maybe she just came from that class of women who’d been trained from birth to avoid talking about life’s unpleasantnesses.
‘From what you say,’ Jude began cautiously, ‘you could be suffering from Empty Nest Syndrome.’
‘Oh, I don’t believe in Syndromes,’ said Hester Winstone dismissively. ‘All psychobabble, so far as I’m concerned.’
‘Hm,’ said Jude gently, ‘but, whether it’s a Syndrome or not, things aren’t right with you, are they?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Look, you cut your wrist in the car, didn’t you?’
‘Oh yes, I just got over-emotional.’ She dismissed the incident as if it were some minor social lapse, like sneezing before she’d got her handkerchief to her nose.
‘But why did you get over-emotional?’
For a moment Hester Winstone was about to answer, but then she reached for her handbag, saying, ‘I must be getting home. Really appreciate your helping me out.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Jude firmly, ‘but I really don’t want you to go home straight away.’
‘What do you mean?’ She sounded affronted now. ‘What business is it of yours?’
‘It’s my business,’ came the calm reply, ‘because I found you in your car, having just cut your wrists. And I don’t really want you to be on your own until I’m sure you’re not about to finish what you started.’