“At the infinitely dreary James and Fiona’s. Yes, I remember.”
Andrew Wragg seemed out of sorts, tired and listless. When they were on their own, it seemed, the partners reversed roles. Terry was the extravagant queen, Andrew the restrained introvert.
“Do I gather from what you said,” asked Jude, “that we’re your first visitors?”
“Yes. The avid art-lovers of Fedborough are somehow managing to curb their wild enthusiasm for my work.” He hadn’t risen when they’d entered, and now he slumped further into his chair. “God, it’s a dreary place. You two are not from here, are you?”
Carole shook her head.
“No, I remember it came up in conversation on Friday. Buggered if I can remember where you did come from, though.”
“Fethering.”
Andrew Wragg groaned. “That’s just as bad. Costa Geriatrica. The entire south coast is God’s waiting room, a repository for washed-up widows and washed-out maiden aunts. Why do you live down here?”
“It’s…convenient,” was the only answer Carole could come up with.
“Convenient for what?”
“Well…shops…the sea…the Downs. Anything you might need.”
“Assuming you don’t need intellectual or creative stimulus.” He turned his gaze on Jude. “And why do you live down here?”
She shrugged easily. “Everyone’s got to live somewhere.”
“Do you think you’ll stay here for the rest of your life?”
“I very much doubt it.”
Carole was amazed how much the words hurt her. She had come to rely on Jude too much. She was stupid. She shouldn’t have let her guard down. Life worked better for Carole Seddon when it was strictly circumscribed and self-contained.
“Where would you move to then, away from this rural mausoleum?” asked Andrew Wragg.
“Quite fancy Ireland,” Jude replied lightly. “Where would you go to?”
“London. If I stayed in this country. Otherwise, I don’t know. South America perhaps. Somewhere that’s got a bit of life. Somewhere where you don’t have to explain what an artist is.”
“You’re not seriously thinking of moving, are you?” asked Carole.
“If I could, I’d be off tomorrow.”
“Why can’t you?” asked Jude.
“Well, I…” He sighed and ran a hand through his short black hair. “There’s Terry and…That’s not going to last for ever, but…” He sprang suddenly from his chair. “God, I hate this place!”
Carole was beginning to understand the reasons for Terry Harper’s anxiety. It wasn’t just paranoia. His lover’s recurrent threats of leaving were real enough. The older man was living on borrowed time in the relationship.
“Did you know Fedborough before you moved into this place?” asked Jude.
Andrew shook his head. “No. Terry and I met in London. He kept saying he wanted to move back down here, but I didn’t think he really meant it.” Another gloomy shake of his head. “Now I know he did.”
Carole picked up on a detail. “You said ‘move back down here’. Terry had lived here before, had he?”
“Oh yes. Fedborough born and bred. Terry is a…what? ‘Pilchard’ is it they say locally?”
“Chub.”
“Right. A Chub.” He handled the word as though it were unwholesome. “So Terry thinks this is seventh heaven. He’s back where he grew up, sniggering gleefully at all the local gossip and intrigues. He loves it.”
“Whereas you,” Jude murmured, “from what you’ve been saying, don’t.”
“That is a very accurate assessment of the situation. Terry’s got it so wrong. He thinks everyone round here is tolerant of the fact that we’re gay. It’s rubbish. They’re all sniggering behind their hands at us. Harpies like Fiona Lister like to show how broad-minded they are by inviting us round, but she’s absolutely riddled with prejudice. She only wants us there as performing animals.”
“A role which, it must be said, you lived up to fully last Friday.”
“Oh, sure. They wanted a screaming queen, I gave them a screaming queen. Besides, I was very pissed. Only way I can get through an evening like that.” He let out an exasperated sigh. “Fedborough is about as tolerant of anyone different as a fundamentalist town in the Deep South of America.” He smiled crookedly at the two women. “Still, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that.”
Carole’s eyes blazed. She was about to put him right on his misconception, but Jude mimed an infinitesimal shake of the head. Not the moment to rock the boat. They were still pursuing an investigation; mistaken assumptions about their sexuality could be corrected at another time.
“If he was living in London before you moved down here,” said Jude slowly, “then presumably Terry never met Virginia Hargreaves?”
“Oh God, yes. He knew everyone in Fedborough.”
“Did he get on with her?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think he had a lot to do with her. But she was part of his precious Fedborough. You see, even when he was supposed to be living in London, he came down here every weekend. His mother was stillliving up near the Castle. That’s one of the reasons why he said we had to move down here, so that he could be nearer to her. Then, when she popped her clogs, my understanding was that we’d hightail it straight back to London.”
He looked at them grimly. “Terry’s mother died six months after we moved and look…” He gestured round the studio, whose earlier charm had been diminished by his obvious discontent. “Here I still am.”
“So what do you think will get you out of Fedborough?” asked Jude gently.
“My talent,” he replied. “I’m bloody good. Nobody else is doing stuff like this. I don’t want you to think I’m included in the Art Crawl simply because I sleep with the guy who’s organizing it.”
“We never thought that,” said Carole. Mind you, now he’d planted the idea in her mind, it began to take root there.
“No, my stuffs truly original. That’s why the bloody arts establishment has been so slow to recognize me for what I am. But it’ll happen, I never doubt that. And when my talent as a painter’s properly recognized, then I’ll be able to afford to go wherever in the world I want.”
Before they left, Carole and Jude took a detailed look at the work on show. Though they didn’t put the thought into words, both of them reckoned it would be a long time before Andrew Wragg was likely to get out of Fedborough.
Twenty-Nine
“I shouldn’t.”
“Oh, come on!”
What they were discussing was a Cream Tea. Cream Teas belong by rights to the West Country, where there is a tradition of meals featuring the local clotted variety. But the tourist industry has never been too picky about geographical exactitude, so all of Fedborough’s teashops offered the speciality, and the Olde Cottage, in which they sat, was no exception. When Jude made the suggestion, Carole had objected that she’d had a perfectly good lunch and tea wasn’t a meal she normally ate. Jude instantly overruled her and gave the order to the eleven-year-old waitress in black dress and frilly pinny.
Carole looked round the teashop with some embarrassment, fearing to see anyone she might recognize. Though certain that she wasn’t lesbian, she worried how deep the misinformation might now be engrained in the communal consciousness of Fedborough.
Jude grinned. She knew exactly what was going through Carole’s mind, but made no comment. Instead, she asked, “So where are we?”
“Well, we’ve ruled out the possibility that Roddy Hargreaves did it, haven’t we?”
“Yes, because that makes for such a boring solution.”
Carole deemed this answer to lack sufficient gravitas. “We have a better reason than that. A witness, the Rev Trigwell, who saw Roddy on to the ferry on the Friday, the twentieth of February, and who later saw Virginia alive in the Franks’s grocery. And another witness, James Lister; who picked Roddy up from Newhaven on the Tuesday, the twenty-fourth of February. Which, assuming our suspect wasn’t bouncing back and forth across the Channel like a yo-yo, would seem to provide him with an alibi for the time of his wife’s death.”