“I rather thought it might have been.”
“He did it simply to hurt me, to see me react with pain.” Debbie rose from her chair, seething. “Well, I’m not going to give him the satisfaction. Francis thinks he’s destroyed me. He hasn’t! I’m a lot tougher – and a lot more determined – than he’s ever imagined. While we were married, I did play the doormat for him – I thought that’s what wives did – but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let anything he does get to me now!”
“Good for you, Debbie.”
“I put up with all his arrogance and infidelities…” Casually, Carole picked up the word. “Yes, your mother mentioned infidelities…”
“For a long time I didn’t realize what was going on. Traditional wifely role of ‘being the last to know’. And when I did find out, I even kind of accepted it. He met them in London, didn’t foul our own footpath down here. He wouldn’t have liked that, tarnishing his image in Fed-borough. You know, Francis has always had a rather chilling ability to divide his life into compartments. Me down here, lovers in London, and never the twain shall meet.”
“And what if the twain had met?”
“Sorry?”
“What if someone from his London life had come down here, a woman had appeared, threatening his respectable Fedborough image?”
“He wouldn’t have let that happen. If any woman came down here after him, Francis would have just got rid of her.”
Debbie Carlton’s hand leapt up to her mouth, as she realized the appalling implication of what she had just said.
Eighteen
Jude had suggested that they meet on Fedborough Bridge at twelve. Carole was there first. The water was high, flowing perversely upstream, as the tide from the sea was at its strongest. Occasional spars of wood and plastic bottles swirled on the green-grey surface. What lay beneath was as unknown and secret as Fedborough itself.
She looked upstream to the cluster of boatsheds and the silting-up excavation which Roddy Hargreaves had apparently once envisioned as a marina. The dilapidated buildings looked bleak and hopeless. Surely the local authority wouldn’t allow the site to stay that way much longer, an ugly canker on Fedborough’s ‘West Sussex Calendar’ charm.
The abandoned business brought a sudden chill of melancholy into Carole’s heart.
Then she saw Jude coming down the High Street, her clothes – today a thin Indian print skirt and long chiffon scarf over a blue T-shirt – drifting as ever around her. She looked untroubled, benign, as though living in the world she should be living in. Not for the first time, Carole envied that certitude. For her, life had always been a process of adjustment, trying to match her angular contours to the ill-fitting frame in which she found herself.
Like the child holding the bag of sweets, she decided to ration out her own revelations and hear Jude’s first. “How was Harry?”
“Getting better. Now I’ve given him the freedom actually to talk about what he saw in the cellar, he’s turned into the complete Hercule Poirot.”
“And have his ‘little grey cells’ come up with anything useful?”
“Not really. I’m afraid his theories feature too many aliens for my taste. One interesting thing he did tell me, though…”
“Hm?”
“Well, Harry had been worried about the police. You know, Grant went on at him about how irresponsible he’d been cutting the seals on the cellar door, so Harry was expecting a big rocket when the police came back to Pelling House to continue their investigations.”
“And?”
“And they haven’t come back. Which might suggest that, so far as the police are concerned, they’ve got all the information they want. Even that they might be close to solving the case.”
Which coincides, Carole thought, with them talking to Francis Carlton. But she didn’t voice the connection yet. She was still rationing out her sweeties.
“I find talking to Harry useful,” Jude went on. “He helps as a sounding-board, helping me to sort out my own thinking about the case.”
“I thought that was my role,” said Carole in a moment of potential spikiness.
Easy as ever, Jude defused the situation. “You are. You both are. The more input of ideas we get, the better. Being a sounding-board isn’t a competitive activity. If one person’s doing it, doesn’t mean that nobody else can.”
“No,” Carole wondered for a moment whether her life had always sought for exclusivity. Even from school days she’d wanted a one-to-one ‘best friend’, not a wide social group. And the difficulty of achieving that goal had maybe turned her inward, made her appear standoffish. In her marriage it had been the same, wanting David exclusively for herself. His desire to mix with more people was one of the elements which had started the frost between them. Even with Ted Crisp there had been –
Fortunately, Jude’s voice cut through the cycle of self-recrimination. “You get anything interesting from Debbie?”
“Well, yes.” And it struck Carole that she had really had a rather constructive morning. “For a start, I met Francis.”
“The ex-husband?”
She nodded. “And I found out that, throughout their marriage, he was a serial philanderer.”
“Ooh.” Jude rubbed her hands together with glee. “This sounds terrific. Lovely stuff. You know what we need?”
“What?”
“ A couple of large white wines and some South Downs Something-or-other from the menu at the Coach and Horses. Once we’re equipped with those, you can give me all the dirt.”
Giving the dirt about Francis Carlton had to be deferred. When they entered the pub, they found it full of lunchtime eaters and drinkers, but alone at the bar sat Roddy Hargreaves.
Oblivious to the weather, he was still wearing his Guernsey sweater, and he looked isolated. Presumably that day his cronies all had wives or jobs to go to. Without their support, he slumped on his stool. There was whisky in front of him rather than beer, and the intense way he concentrated on the glass suggested he’d been drinking for some time.
“Hello,” said Jude, as they waited for a barman to be free. “How’re you, Roddy?”
Very slowly, he removed his gaze from the whisky, but found it more difficult to focus on her.
“Jude,” she supplied. “Remember, we met here last week. And this is my friend Carole.” (This time, Carole was too intrigued to find the introduction embarrassing.)
Ah.” He seemed puzzled to be given the information, but was instinctively courteous. “Good afternoon, ladies!
A barman, the same one as on their previous visit, had arrived. “Two large Chilean Chardonnay, please,” said Jude. “And can I get you one, Roddy?”
“Wouldn’t say no to the same again.”
“Large Johnnie Walker,” the barman noted impassively.
“Do you mind if we join you?” said Jude, drawing up a barstool before Roddy had time to answer. “Are we going to get something to eat?”
“I wouldn’t mind a sandwich,” Carole replied primly. “You eating?”
Roddy shook his head. “ Some days eating seems rather to slip down my list of priorities. Today is one such day.”
They got in an order for ‘Generous Sussex-style Tuna Sandwiches’, without pursuing the interesting question of where one might catch a ‘Sussex-style Tuna’. Both of them wondered whether Roddy Hargreaves would need a prompt to continue talking. He didn’t.
“Seem to remember you said you didn’t come from Fedborough.”
“Fethering.”
“Ah, right. Thought you must be from out of town.”
“Why?”
“Because you came right up and talked to me.” Jude looked puzzled. “Why shouldn’t we?”