by Simon Brett
“No. In some ways I was grateful that they didn’t. I suppose that made it easier for me to control my emotions. But at the same time I kept wishing that they would say something, acknowledge her death. I mean, they’d known her for over ten years. But I suppose everyone finds their own way of coping with tragedy.”
“And what’s your way of coping with it?”
“Finding out what really happened, how Polly actually died. I’m determined to do that. I’ve told…” he baulked at giving the name “…this other girl I’m seeing that we’re not going to meet up again until I’ve got to the truth.”
Jude recognized the strategy. Piers was assuaging his guilt by punishing himself. He wanted to close the chapter of life with his previous girlfriend before focusing all his attention on the new one.
“Incidentally,” she asked, “did your parents approve of Polly?”
“I think they liked her OK. They’ve always been terrible snobs, so they approved of the Le Bonnier connection. But I think they’d probably have preferred her to be a corporate lawyer rather than an actor. Mind you, they’d have preferred me to be a corporate lawyer rather than a writer.”
“And Lola and Polly got on?” It was the question Jude didn’t want to ask. She liked the owner of Gallimaufry and didn’t want to think ill of her. But the fact remained that Ricky and his wife had both been seen in Fethering on the night of the fire. Lola was in the frame as a suspect.
“Yes, they always did. Polly and I were an item before I met Lola.”
“I know that. The reason for my question was that Lola told me…you and she…at the Edinburgh Festival…”
He blushed. “Polly never knew about that, so there was never any awkwardness between the two of them.”
“Good. And what about you and Lola now?”
The blush spread as far as his prominent ears. “To resort to a cliché, we’re just good friends. Nothing more.” Jude’s quizzical look demanded amplification. “Look, she’s one of my closest woman friends. I can talk to Lola about stuff I wouldn’t dare raise with anyone else, and maybe it’s because we were once lovers that we’re so relaxed with each other. But I promise you there is nothing more to our relationship than that. Lola is absolutely devoted to Ricky. He’s the love of her life. She wouldn’t even consider going to bed with anyone else.”
“And do you reckon that Ricky is equally faithful?”
Piers looked awkward as he answered. “I’m honestly not sure. I mean, I know he had a reputation as a womanizer in the past, but I think marrying Lola has settled him down a lot. Whether a leopard can totally change its spots, though…I really don’t know.”
“But if you were to hear that Ricky had had an affair, you wouldn’t be that surprised?”
Uncomfortably, he confirmed that he wouldn’t.
“And you haven’t heard any rumours connecting him to anyone in particular?”
“No, and I’m not likely to. Look, I live in London. I don’t know anything about the rumour-mill of Fethering.”
“Of course you don’t.” Deftly Jude redirected the conversation. “You know the book Polly was writing, the one she mentioned to Carole?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, I just wondered if you knew where it was.”
“Where physically, you mean?”
“Physically, geographically, whatever. Do you have a manuscript of it yourself?”
Piers shook his head. “I don’t know that she ever even printed it out. I’ve never seen a hard copy. The bits of it I read I read straight off her laptop.”
“And where is her laptop? In your place in London?”
“No. Polly never went anywhere without her laptop. She had it with her when she came down here. It’s quite a small one, she put it in her leather rucksack. So I suppose it must have still been with her…in Gallimaufry…when she…” With an effort of will he regained control of himself. “I asked Lola about it. The police told her they’d found the remains of a laptop in the shop. Totally destroyed by the fire. There’s no chance of retrieving any information from it.”
“And that laptop would have contained the only copy of her book that Polly had?”
“I assume so. Certainly she didn’t have another computer. I suppose she might have done a printout or backed up the book on to a flash drive or something, but she never mentioned that to me.”
“Just a minute…Polly told Carole that she’d shown some of the book to an agent.”
“Serena Fincham, right.”
“Well, she must have had a hard copy to send her, mustn’t she?”
“No. She emailed it.”
“So, so far as you know, there’s not a single copy of Polly’s book anywhere in the world?”
“No. I’m afraid it died with her.”
Was Jude being hypersensitive to detect an undercurrent of relief in his words? But then a new thought came into her head. “What about Polly’s mobile? Do you know if the police found that?”
“Lola didn’t mention it. But I assume that would have been destroyed in the blaze too.”
“She would have had it with her?”
“Oh God, yes. Never went anywhere without her mobile. She kept it in one of those phone sock things. Hideous fluorescent pink.”
Remembering this personal detail about the dead girl once again threatened his fragile emotional equilibrium, so Jude moved quickly on. “Piers, when we last spoke, just before Christmas, you had just heard about Polly’s death…”
“Yes, that’s why I came down here to Fethering.”
“But then you hadn’t heard how she died. At that time, presumably, you thought she’d been killed by the fire in Gallimaufry. Of course, we now know she had been shot.”
He shook his head, as though trying to dispel the image her words had created. “Which really means we can rule out an accidental death. We are talking about either suicide or murder. Piers, you probably knew Polly as well as anyone did. Would you say she was capable of killing herself?”
There was a long silence before he replied. “I just don’t know. You can be very close to someone, think you’re sharing every thought, every emotion, and then something happens which makes you realize you never knew them at all. And that’s a bit how I’ve been feeling since Polly…since she died. That there are whole areas of her personality that I never knew at all.”
Jude remembered Lola using almost exactly the same words about Ricky. Was it just coincidence, or could it mean that she and Piers had discussed the situation? She listened carefully as the young writer continued, “I know Polly hadn’t been happy in recent months…well, for years, possibly. I think she’d expected that finding acting work would prove easier than it did. Maybe she thought her famous surname – even though she’d only got it through her mother’s remarriage – would give her an entrée to the West End, but it certainly didn’t. And I guess there were other things that might have been upsetting her.”
“Like her relationship with you?”
“Well…”
“Piers, you told Carole and me last time we met that you were just about to break off with Polly, as soon as Christmas and the New Year were out of the way. She must’ve had an inkling that something was in the air. Weren’t there any rows or disagreements between you?”
“A few, yes.”
“About what?”
“Mostly about the fact that we were doing less things together. My work was taking me away a lot of the time, so Polly was having to spend more and more evenings in the flat on her own. She didn’t like that, so sometimes when I got back late we’d have fights – particularly if I’d been drinking, and, given the nature of the work in which I’m involved, I usually had been drinking. Television’s a very sociable business,” he pleaded in mitigation.
“When you talk of having ‘fights’,” asked Carole sternly, “do you mean actual physical violence?”
“God, no,” Piers protested. “I’d never hit anyone – and certainly not a woman.”
>
“Did Polly know about your new girlfriend, the one from the sitcom?”
“No, I’m sure she didn’t.”
“She wasn’t even suspicious that you had someone else?”
“I don’t think so.” But he didn’t sound very sure about it.
Jude picked up the interrogation, moving off on a sudden tangent. “Presumably Ricky and Lola know more about the progress of the police enquiry than you or I do?”
“Probably, yes. They certainly seem to have spent a lot of time talking to various detectives.”
“But have they passed any details on to you?”
He shrugged. “Bits and pieces. Lola usually tells me most things.”
As soon as he’d said the words, he wished he hadn’t, but Jude didn’t pick him up on them. “Has she said whether the police have found the gun which killed Polly yet?”
“I don’t think so. I can’t recall her mentioning it. Why would that be important?”
For someone with a Cambridge education, Piers Duncton could sometimes be surprisingly dense. Or so wrapped up in his own concerns that he couldn’t see the bigger picture. “Because,” Jude explained patiently, “if they did find a weapon, then the death could be either suicide or murder. If they didn’t, suicide becomes much less likely. It’s quite tricky to dispose of a gun after you’ve shot yourself.”
Piers acknowledged the truth of this, then said, “Oh yes, I think Lola did mention something about the police having found a gun in the ruins of the shop.”
Jude found this sudden access of memory somewhat suspicious and her scepticism didn’t decrease as Piers went on, “Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think Polly may have taken her own life. There were signs in the last few months, signs I can only recognize in retrospect. God, if only I’d picked up on them and got help for her, Polly might still be alive today!”
His outburst of emotion also seemed suspect to Jude. “So why do you think she killed herself?”
He shrugged hopelessly. “Depression. It’s a very cruel illness. Insidious. And Polly had suffered from it all her life.”
He now seemed to be echoing exactly what Ricky Le Bonnier had said about his daughter’s death. “Just a minute,” Jude remonstrated. “Only a few days ago, you sat here in this very room telling me Polly was always talking about how happy her childhood had been.”
“I know,” said Piers. “But when I said that I was thinking she had died in an accident, and I didn’t think I needed to tell comparative strangers about her history of depression. Now, though, now that we know she committed suicide, we don’t have to maintain the pretence anymore.”
We don’t know she committed suicide, thought Jude, but no amount of further argument would shift Piers Duncton from his stated belief that his girlfriend had killed herself. Jude felt certain he was behaving like that because he suspected murder and was trying to protect the person who he thought might have done it.
She also was beginning to think that Ricky had supported the suicide theory for exactly the same reasons.
And that the person they both wanted to protect was Lola.
∨ The Shooting in the Shop ∧
Nineteen
Now knowing that Piers Duncton shared everything with his ex-lover, Jude was unsurprised the next morning, the Monday, to have a call from Lola Le Bonnier. But the reason for her making contact had nothing to do with Polly’s death. She wanted Jude’s help in her professional capacity.
“It’s Flora,” said Lola. “You know she’s been in a terrible state since…since what happened.”
“Yes. Has she taken a turn for the worse?”
“I don’t really know. But she’s now manifesting physical symptoms, which she wasn’t before. Basically, her back’s packed in and she doesn’t seem able to get out of bed.”
“Have you called the doctor?”
“That was my first thought, but Flora won’t hear of it. She doesn’t trust ‘those damned money-grabbing quacks’.” Lola’s impersonation of her mother-in-law was uncannily accurate. “She’s always relied on what are now called ‘alternative therapies’ – long before they were fashionable. In London, she’s got a network of acupuncturists and reiki healers, but down here…”
“I’m the nearest thing to an alternative therapist?”
“Exactly.” There was a slight giggle in Lola’s voice. Again Jude felt strong empathy with the girl, an attitude that clashed uncomfortably with the suspicions she’d been harbouring overnight. “I know it’s supposed to be holiday time, but would you mind coming to have a look at Flora?”
“Of course. I’ll be with you in as long as it takes.”
“I may have to go out, and I know Ricky has a lunch somewhere, and I’m not sure where Piers is, but Varya will be here. She’s the au pair.”
Jude knew that Carole would happily give her a lift in her immaculate Renault to the Le Bonniers’, but she didn’t ask the favour. She never liked to impose on her neighbour’s generosity when it was for work.
♦
Fedingham Court House had Elizabethan origins, still evident in the redbrick frontage and high chimneys of the main part of the house. But generations of owners had renovated and improved (according to their lights) the structure, so that the house had become a compendium of three centuries’ architectural styles. Jude’s taxi deposited her in front of elaborate, high wrought-iron gates which opened automatically after she had announced herself into the entryphone.
Though Fedingham Court House was impressive in size, there was nothing daunting about it. At the back of the grounds was farmland, which melted upwards into the soft hazy grey undulations of the South Downs. The gravel circle in front, on which stood the Mercedes 4×4 and a brand-new Mini, was a little untidy. The garden too was welcomingly unkempt, and a child’s swing hanging from a tree emphasized the homely impression. For the kind of person who could afford it – which presumably Ricky Le Bonnier could – it was the perfect family house.
The front door was opened before Jude reached it by a young dark-haired woman she didn’t recognize but assumed correctly must be Varya. The au pair held a sleeping Henry in her arms and round one side of her legs peered the mischievous face of Mabel, excited to see one of the few people to whom she vouchsafed the great honour of her friendship. Round the other side of the au pair peered an equally curious Dalmatian.
“Hello, Mabel,” said Jude. “And what’s the dog called?”
“Spot the Dog.” The girl spoke with the seriousness of a child who’d spent more time with adults than with her own generation. Not hooded and scarfed as she had been at the swings by Fethering Beach, she was revealed to have wispy hair so blond as to be almost white, a striking contrast to her bright brown eyes.
“And is Spot the Dog the one who’s just had puppies?”
“No, he’s a boy dog. Boy dogs can’t have babies. Nor can boy men.”
“Ah, thank you for telling me that. So what’s the name of the lady dog?”
“You don’t say ‘lady dog’. You say ‘bitch’.”
Jude stood corrected and exchanged a grin with the au pair. “So what is the name of the bitch who’s had the puppies, Mabel?”
“She’s called Spotted Dick.”
“But isn’t Dick a boy’s name?”
“Yes, it is. So she shouldn’t be called Spotted Dick. Daddy chose the name. Daddy’s sometimes very silly.” But it was clear from her tone that Mabel approved of her father’s silliness. “Would you like to see Spotted Dick’s puppies?”
“Yes, please.”
Jude was led from the hall, which was heavily garlanded with decorations and featured a ceiling-high Christmas tree, into a huge farmhouse kitchen, off which, in a small scullery, the proud mother lay in a nest of rugs. Six small white puppies were feeding vigorously from her.
“They’re four boys and two girls,” Mabel announced authoritatively. “But we can’t keep them all. When they’re bigger, most of them will go to good homes. And the spot
s don’t show at first, but they will all be spotty.” She clearly took in and retained any information she was given.
After a few moments admiring the puppies, Mabel announced that they could go now. “Are you feeling better?” asked Jude as they passed through the kitchen. “Because I hear you’ve been poorly.”
“Yes, I’ve had an ear infection.” She produced a perfect parroting of the phrase. “I have lots of ear infections. I may have to have grommets,” she concluded proudly.
“But you are feeling better?”
“Yes. That’s because of the…” it was an adult word too far ‘antibibotics.’
“Good,” said Jude, trying hard to keep a straight face and not catch Varya’s eye. As they arrived in the hall they met Ricky, who was just putting on a Drizabone riding coat.
At the sight of Mabel, he crouched down and welcomed her into his arms. “Ooh, Daddy,” she squealed, “can we play a game? Can we play Hiding Things.”
“Sorry, lovely. Daddy’s got to go out to lunch, and then he’s got meetings in London for a couple of days, but he’ll be back on Wednesday afternoon. That’s only two days away, gorgeous. We can play Hiding Things then.”
“Is this going to be a ‘boozy lunch’, Daddy?” Another phrase she’d clearly picked up from adult conversation.
“Almost definitely, sweetie.” He stood up, with Mabel still in his arms. “Oh, hi, Jude. Very good of you to come and see Mother.”
“No problem.”
“I think it’s her back. Just stress, probably, you know, after what happened. She’s a tough old bird, but I’m afraid she’s not as strong as she’d like to think she is. And, as Lola probably told you, she’s never trusted doctors.”
“I’ll see what I can do for her.”
“Very good of you. I’ve told her you’re coming. If you don’t mind, I must be off, but she’s in the bedroom right opposite the top of the stairs.”
“I’ll find her.”
“Mm…” He hesitated for a moment, as if about to say something, but thought better of it. “I see Henry’s fast asleep, Varya.”
“Yes, Ricky. I was just taking him up to put him in his cot when Jude arrived.”