by Alice Castle
‘I haven’t been here since Charlie’s christening,’ said Katie. ‘I’d forgotten how beautiful it is.’
‘Did you have it here? How grand,’ said Beth.
Charlie’s christening had taken place in the dim, distant, and frankly rather grim period before she and Katie had first met at the playgroup in the strangely chalet-shaped St Barnabus Parish hall in the Village. At the time, Beth had been reeling from the double shocks of motherhood and widowhood, which had come hard on one another’s heels, and neither of which she’d been properly braced for.
‘I’m leaving Ben’s christening options open,’ said Beth.
Katie smiled understandingly. They both knew it was never going to happen, due to Beth’s perennial inability even to get round to prevaricating about anything that wasn’t a total essential.
‘I came to a fortieth birthday party here, too, a couple of years ago. One of Michael’s friends,’ Katie said. ‘It was quite a do. Fireworks in the garden, a vodka luge. They know how to put on a party. I love it here. What an atmosphere.’
Beth looked a little dubious. With the Bridge Club still making its ascent on the stairs, like a rickety group of mountaineers, the place wasn’t at its most seductive. But she could see that, in the right circumstances, it had possibilities. And there was no question that the Club was very lucky to be playing every week in such a beautiful place.
‘We should probably make a move now,’ Beth said, just as Wendy leaned over the banisters at the top of the stairs and waved her scarf at them like a semaphore signal. ‘They all seem to have made it to the top.’
A couple of minutes later, Beth and Katie were at the entrance to a beautiful long room with parquet flooring of an even richer gold than the priciest Manuka honey stocked in the village deli. Autumnal sunlight slanted in from floor-to-ceiling windows and bounced off the strange mother-of-pearl petals dangling from several modern chandeliers. To Beth’s somewhat jaundiced eye, these looked like the bathing hats once sported by 1950s beauty contestants.
Here and there on the walls were oil paintings of stuffy-looking men in uniform and women who appeared to have been born ugly and gone downhill as the years piled on. She suspected these might have been bought as job-lots at the auctioneer in West Norwood, to add a bit of atmosphere. Belinda MacKenzie had similar canvases in her formal dining room, and no-one in Dulwich had ever been able to spot a likeness between the paintings and their hosts, try as they might.
The large room was set up for bridge, with five square tables fully laid out with green baize cloths, four spindly gold chairs around each one. On the cloths were strange brown plastic boxes, the size of a chunky old phone, and even odder flat red square containers, three times the length and the width of a pack of cards. Beth and Katie shrugged shoulders at each other as the Club members stood around in huddles.
Both Wendy and Deidre MacBride stepped forward at exactly the same moment. Deidre clapped her hands loudly, Wendy just waved her scarf, then saw Deidre’s set face and took a quick pace backwards again.
‘Members. If I could have your attention, please?’ It was framed as a question, but there was no doubt that Deidre expected instant obedience. She got it. Everyone fell silent and looked expectantly towards her.
‘I’ve been asked to gather you all together today in order to, ahem, lay to rest some very odd ideas that seem to have developed about the sad passing of one of our most popular players, Alf Pole.’ There was a murmur as everyone said ‘shocking, shocking’, or ‘good fellow’, or just generally expressed their sadness. ‘Alf is much missed, of course,’ said Deidre, lowering her iron-grey head for a moment. Even her rough tweeds seemed to take on a mourning look. But it soon passed. ‘The main thing, though, is to get us back to doing what we do best – playing bridge. So we need to quash these silly rumours pronto.’
This seemed to be taking things a step too far for Wendy. She’d let the ‘odd ideas’ comment whistle past, but now that Deidre was openly condemning rumour-mongers, she burst into speech.
‘Deidre, thank you so much for getting everyone together, so good of you to indulge us and help put these, er, stories to rest. Who among us has heard that something wasn’t quite right about Alfie’s death? Just put your hands up, please.’
There was a pause and then hand after hand went into the air. Beth looked on, unsurprised. When wasn’t there a whisper doing the rounds in Dulwich? Some were big – over preferential treatment in the school entrance exams, or shenanigans amongst the estate agents. And some were small – over whose cat had been pooping in which garden, to name but one controversy in her own road alone. In a place like Dulwich, there would always be talk. And an unexplained death in broad daylight was bound to attract conspiracy theorists.
Wendy was now looking rather like Magpie when she’d managed to nab Colin’s favourite spot on the sofa. ‘So I expect I’m not the only one who’d like to get a bit of, erm, closure on the whole tragic situation,’ she said, and heads nodded everywhere.
Deidre, who knew when she’d been outflanked, clapped her hands again.
‘All right then, everyone. Take the seats you had last Tuesday then, just before the break. And let’s see if we can get this whole charade over with as quickly as possible. Then we might be able to play some proper bridge.’ There was a murmur of approval at this.
Beth hoped that Deidre hadn’t locked too successfully into the Bridge Club’s main preoccupation – playing the game they all loved. They were bound to prefer that to reconstructing a crime, but it was vital that the procedure wasn’t rushed. Wendy, on the other side of the room, raised her brows at Beth. It seemed she had the same doubts.
Everyone was milling around now, taking their seats. Beth and Katie stood by the ornate fireplace, looking on as people got settled. Once they were sitting down, they levered open the brown boxes, which displayed racks of cards marked with numbers and little hieroglyphs which, on closer inspection, turned out to be spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds. The red boxes were left in the centre of the tables in piles of three, like offerings on an altar, being worshipped by each quartet of players.
Wendy wandered over to join Beth and Katie, and started to explain in a low voice, ‘The brown contraptions are bidding boxes. People use those so there’s no ambiguity about what they’re saying. And the red slabs in the middle, they contain the hands everyone’s playing. Each set of thirteen cards goes into a different compartment, marked with North, South, East or West, so no-one gets the hands mixed up. Then, once those three rounds of hands have been played, the cards are passed on to the next table. That way, everyone in the room plays the same hands of cards. That’s why it’s called duplicate bridge, you see.’
Beth, who didn’t see at all, nodded vaguely, hoping that a penny would drop at some point. But wait a minute. If every single person in the room had played the same cards, and someone here had been responsible for poisoning poor Alfie, then an anomaly in one performance might well indicate who was responsible. If this worked, as she hoped, then finding the murderer might, for once, actually be easy.
But already she’d thought of a problem. ‘How do you know these are the exact hands that were played last time?’
‘Simple,’ said Wendy. ‘We write down all the cards on little slips of paper that are kept at the back of each of the red boards. That way we can refer easily to hands if someone brings up a problem later.’
‘Does that happen? Doesn’t everyone trust each other?’ asked Katie, seeming astonished.
Wendy shrugged. This was Dulwich. This was bridge.
‘There’s so much admin involved in this game. Is this normal? Or is this some kind of weird variant that suits people here, because so many people have run businesses or the civil service or whatever?’ Beth asked.
‘Don’t be silly, dear,’ said Wendy repressively. ‘This is how bridge is played all over the country. Well, we don’t follow all the English Bridge Union ways; we have our Dulwich innovations. But it’s all quite st
raightforward when you get the hang of it.’
Beth exchanged a glance with Katie. She wasn’t sure, when she was retired, whether she’d have enough time to get used to the rules of bridge before she finally turned up her toes. It all seemed a lot like hard work. The marvel was that it seemed to appeal so much to all these people. But then, they were a different generation. The one that hadn’t had access to Netflix, iPlayer, and the internet. They’d had to make their own entertainment – and endlessly arcane rules.
Another clap from Deidre MacBride broke into Beth’s thoughts and cut effortlessly through the beginnings of chatter from the tables dotted around the room.
‘Now then, everyone, if we’re all quite set up for this whole little, erm, escapade? Yes? Well then, you may play,’ she said magisterially, and as if by magic she produced a little golden hand bell from her capacious tweed pocket and rang it once.
As the sound died away, the groups at the tables leaned forward, prised the clumps of cards out of the red boards, and began sorting them into suits, all careful not to show their hands to their neighbours. There was a desultory hum of conversation. Deidre, standing near the door, looked hawkishly at any table where the murmurs threatened to break out into outright talking, and a couple of times the bell was heard to give the tiniest of tinkles. Immediately each time, silence fell. Bridge was a very serious matter.
Wendy watched, with Beth and Katie, as the first groups started ferreting in their bidding boxes and plopping thick wedges of cards down onto the tables. ‘You see, the card on the top of the pile indicates the bid – one spade, one no-trump, or whatever.’
Beth steepled her eyebrows at Katie. Yes, that was all as clear as mud.
‘Wait a minute, Mum, shouldn’t you be over there?’ Beth asked, pointing to the only table where there were two people, not four. Wendy seemed rather reluctant to leave them and, once she’d finally taken her seat, Beth could guess why. There were now three at the table. Poor old Alfie had never seemed more absent from the scene.
Chapter Ten
Beth and Katie looked on, a little bemused, as all around the lofty ballroom, grown-ups ignored their beautiful surroundings and the gorgeous park outside, and concentrated feverishly on a few square inches of green. The cards were mounting up, but not in the middle of the table. Instead, the players placed the cards face up in front of them, then turned them over once each trick had been played and lined them up, either vertically or horizontally. It seemed quite different from the way Beth had played as a child, when the cards had been heaped in the middle and then scooped up by the victor.
Beth sidled over to where Deidre was standing, little bell at the ready, and hissed to her, ‘Why are they playing like that? Keeping all the cards separate?’
Deidre looked her up and down quickly, as though not quite believing anyone could be so ignorant. ‘It’s duplicate bridge,’ she whispered back, as though that explained everything.
‘And that means…?’ Beth said encouragingly. Deidre sighed, and drew Beth and Katie a little way away from the tables, towards the door.
‘We don’t want to disturb them,’ she said.
No, thought Beth. Because they’re playing a game. Heaven forfend that anyone make a sound.
‘Do you two know anything at all about bridge?’ Deirdre asked scathingly. ‘There are rules, you know.’
‘We’re beginning to see that,’ said Beth, with what she thought was commendable understatement.
Deidre raised her eyebrows but breezed on. ‘The rules we follow make it easier to make sure there’s no, ahem, sleight of hand. People only touch their own cards, the cards are always kept separate as they travel from table to table, and each pair of players has a chance to check scoring. That way, if there’s a dispute, the director is able to step in quickly and sort things out. There shouldn’t be doubt in any given situation.’
Beth was privately amazed. She’d thought bridge was a pleasant way for her mother, set in her ways and living alone, to get together with friends a few times a week for a bit of mildly sociable mental stimulation. But all these preparations, which seemed to be exclusively preoccupied with heading off any possibility of cheating, or of accusing anyone else of cheating for that matter, suggested that bridge was more like open warfare than a jolly pastime for elderly folk.
‘Is this really necessary? These precautions?’ Beth couldn’t help asking.
Deidre gave her what could only be described as a dark look. ‘Believe me, I wouldn’t be running this group without them. It simply wouldn’t be worth my while.’
‘Do you really get a lot of cheating?’ Katie piped up.
‘No, we don’t. For the simple reason that we apply all the rules. Rigorously. And that means that there is very little opportunity to, shall we say, manipulate the card play.’
‘Are you playing for cash prizes or something? A car, maybe? Exotic holidays?’
Deidre’s smile was a little wry. ‘There’s a cup, which is handed out once a year. But it’s a century old now and requires a lot of polishing, so it’s not that popular. Believe it or not, people just play for the kudos of winning.’
‘But they’re willing to cheat? All for an old, tarnished cup?’ Beth was staggered.
‘They don’t cheat. Because we have rules,’ said Deidre firmly. ‘And they are obeyed.’
‘By everyone?’ Beth was remembering that there had been an issue on the day when Alfie had died. Wendy had been flustered because there’d been a dispute. It was one of the reasons that the poor old man hadn’t been discovered sooner.
‘Well. Most people,’ said Deidre, with an air of finality. ‘Look, we really can’t talk now. As you can see, the hands are in full swing.’
‘Everyone’s played these cards before, though, right?’ Beth wanted to make sure she’d fully understood. ‘In that case, why are they putting so much concentration into it?’
Deidre laughed softly, her stern face transformed for a few moments. Instantly, Beth was able to see the attractive girl (or probably ‘gel’, as she’d have said herself) the woman had been half a century ago. ‘Half of them don’t actually remember the cards. Well, it was, what, a week ago, now, wasn’t it?’
‘And the other half?’ Katie put in.
‘The other half are trying to improve on last time’s scores. Of course.’ Deirdre mouth twisted back into its habitual lines, and the illusion of youth was gone. ‘Look, we really can’t be standing here chatting. We’re putting people off. They’re complaining.’ With that, she marched away abruptly to the table at the far end, where spare bidding boxes, a folder of last week’s scores, and an attendance sheet were laid out.
Beth looked around. No-one seemed to be complaining at all. Maybe Deidre just didn’t want to explain things to them? Or maybe she actually had something to hide.
Everyone’s heads were bent over the cards. Beth could see so many shades of grey. Maybe not fifty – this was SE21 – but a lot. In amongst them were a few women defying time with a dash of dye. And there was Wendy herself – one of the youngest present by at least a decade, though her hair had been white for as long as Beth could remember.
Beth had thought bridge was just longwinded whist. But no. In Dulwich at least, it seemed as riven with rivalry and toxicity as the set of Who Killed Baby Jane? Was there a hobby in the area that couldn’t get heated, though, she wondered? She’d heard in the past of tensions over allotments, jealousy at the Open Garden sessions, even passions rising at the annual Artists’ Open House weekends. Was bridge just another arena for this sort of intensity? Or had things really boiled over a week ago? And had murder really reared its ugly head?
Beth’s musings were interrupted by Wendy scraping back her chair across the parquet floor, resettling her scarves importantly, and getting up from the table. Her opponents gave her a surprised glance but said nothing. As she passed, Wendy gave Beth a look full of meaning, then swept out through the door and was last seen trailing down the stairs, her scarves billowing i
n her wake. Never let it be said that Wendy couldn’t do an exit.
‘Where’s Wendy off to?’ hissed Katie. Beth waggled her eyebrows in a way which she hoped suggested that all would soon be revealed. Katie put her head on one side, as though to say have you gone crazy? Beth smiled in what she hoped was an enigmatic manner. She didn’t want to have to explain everything yet.
Meanwhile, the cards were being played out all around them. ‘Let’s go and have a look, see what everyone’s doing,’ said Beth. They tiptoed off, gliding between the tables. Or rather, Katie glided, and Beth tried not to squeak too much as her cheap soles seemed to meld most unfortunately with the beautiful wax finish on the flooring while she trotted round.
It wasn’t hard to tell which of the pairs took the game most seriously. Those who were social players weren’t fazed when Katie and Beth popped up behind them. But those who considered that bridge was much too important to be treated as a spectator sport started to shuffle in their seats, look round at the women, and otherwise show obvious signs of unease.
Of all the little quartets, Beth recognised surprisingly few, given the years that Wendy had devoted to the game. She spotted Jules and Miriam, of course, who were still sitting at the table that Wendy had just vacated, chatting together in very low voices and apparently quite happy to idle the time away. And there were the Crofts, a couple she knew by sight. On the next table along was a serious-looking lady who could have been a retired teacher. She had half-moon spectacles perched on the end of her nose, attached to a string of rather pretty beads which Wendy no doubt envied. Her grey-blonde curls softened the effect of the shrewd eyes, glinting behind their glasses.
‘That’s Mrs Prendergast, she used to teach Maths at the College School,’ said Katie helpfully.
That explained a lot, thought Beth. Mrs Prendergast’s partner was a big man, his pale blue shirt at least a size smaller than its owner. Beth wouldn’t like to be around when his buttons finally decided they’d had enough of this arrangement. Tall and over-spilling the spindly chair in all directions, he was frowning over his cards like a hippo scrutinising a matchbox.