by Simon Brett
‘Hm.’ Rosalie Achter nodded her head thoughtfully. ‘Did you suggest that to the police?’
‘Sorry?’
‘When the police interviewed you, did you mention your theory about him having been tied to a heavy weight?’
‘No, I didn’t. I’ve learnt over the years that the police don’t take kindly to theories from unqualified amateurs. If the body had been weighted down, I’m sure they could have worked that out for themselves.’
‘Yes.’ The girl seemed obscurely pleased by the answer.
‘When she first heard we’d found the body, did your mother pass any comment about it?’
‘Like what?’
‘Anything, really.’
‘No. Well, I think she said, “Another bastard drowned after having a skinful – serves him right!” Something like that.’
‘And when you spoke to her yesterday … you know, once the body had been identified as that of Amos Green … did she say anything about him then?’
‘No. Why should she say anything about a person she’d never met before?’
Carole had to admit that she didn’t know, really.
They seemed to have finished their conversation about the same time they’d finished their drinks. Neither suggested a refill. Rosalie said she had to get back to Polly’s for her ‘bloody shift’.
Carole was thoughtful as she walked back to High Tor. What interested her most was not the girl’s belligerence towards her mother but, given the negative reactions Rosalie had given to all Carole’s questions, why she had so readily agreed to meet in the first place.
FIFTEEN
Jude was surprised by a knock on her front door on the following morning, the Saturday. She opened it to reveal a woman in her sixties wearing a pale blue linen dress. Her grey hair was cut in a stylish pageboy bob and she wore large dark-rimmed glasses.
‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘My name is Janice Green and I believe you are one of the people who found my husband’s body on Fethering Beach last week.’
Jude had called through to Carole and now the three women were sitting over coffee on the draped armchairs of Woodside Cottage’s sitting room. Carole and Jude made appropriate comments of condolence, but Janice Green swept them aside.
‘What I’m currently feeling about Amos’s death is more surprise than intense bereavement. I fell out of love with him many years ago.’ Her words were not bitter or self-pitying, more matter-of-fact.
‘But,’ she went on, ‘I am obviously intrigued as to how he died. I’ve been questioned by the police who seem convinced he committed suicide but, needless to say, they aren’t vouchsafing me much information. So, having read in the paper about you two having found his body, I thought I’d come and see if you had any useful information.’
‘Which paper was it you saw the news in?’ asked Carole. ‘The Fethering Observer?’
‘No. Daily Mail. His death did make the national news. That would have pleased Amos, I think. Fame at last.’ She read in their faces that some explanation was required. ‘My husband didn’t lack self-esteem.’
‘And how did you find out where we lived?’ asked Carole.
‘Oh, I thought Fethering was the kind of place where everyone would know everyone – particularly if they had the notoriety of having found a body on the beach, so I asked in a café near the front.’
‘Polly’s Cake Shop?’
‘Yes.’
Carole and Jude exchanged looks. It was probably just coincidence that Janice Green had entered the premises where her husband’s body had been found before its immersion in the sea. But on the other hand …
‘I read in the paper,’ said Jude, ‘that your husband lived in Kingston.’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘You imply that that was in the past.’
‘We hadn’t cohabited for over five years. Amos moved out.’
‘And where had he been living since?’
The strangely unemotional widow shrugged. ‘He shacked up with some woman. Whether he was still with the same one when he died I don’t know. I would have thought it was unlikely. His flings didn’t tend to last very long. He could have shacked up with a good few since I last saw him.’
‘Do you have children?’ asked Jude.
‘No. Possibly one of the many reasons why our relationship didn’t work out.’ She was still brusquely unsentimental. ‘Anyway, would you mind telling me about when you found his body?’
‘There’s not a lot to tell,’ said Carole.
‘Never mind. Any detail you can remember. I thought I had firmly closed the book on the chapter of my life that involved Amos, but since I heard of his death, it seems to have opened itself up again.’
So Carole and Jude told her exactly what they had seen. At first, out of sensitivity, they did not describe the state of the corpse as they had found it. But Janice wanted every last detail. And remained unflinching as they supplied them.
At the end of their narrative, she said, ‘Thank you. I wonder whose husband he’d pissed off this time.’
Carole looked at her curiously. ‘Are you suggesting that he might have been killed by a jealous husband?’
‘Of course that’s what I’m saying. Amos had antagonized a good few in his time. More than one of them had come after him. A couple even beat him up. So I assume there was one who took rather more extreme measures.’
‘You don’t buy the police’s suicide theory?’
She shook her head firmly. ‘No. And surely the ropes that were found round his ankles would knock that on the head. They must have been fixed to something to weigh the body down.’
‘That was the conclusion we had come to,’ said Carole.
‘Apart from anything else, nobody who knew Amos would ever believe that he’d kill himself. As I said, far too much self-esteem. Amos thought he was God’s gift … not just to women but to the entire world.’ For the first time a note of exasperated affection came into her voice. ‘And he did have a lot of charm. Most people were bowled over when they first met him. I certainly was. He was a difficult man to dislike.’
‘Unless you were the husband of one of the women he went after?’ Jude suggested.
‘Yes.’ A grin. ‘Or unless you were married to him. As I say, a charmer. Had that wonderful self-deprecating Jewish humour. Always bouncing upright again after every setback, like one of those Wobbly men. Great to be with, great to have a fling with, very poor husband material.’
‘Did you tell the police,’ asked Jude, ‘that you didn’t believe he’d committed suicide?’
‘Oh yes. And they clearly thought it was just another distraught widow unable to come to terms with the fact that her husband had felt miserable enough to do such a thing. Which was not the case at all. As you see, I’m far from distraught. Just curious.’
‘Mm,’ said Carole, still a little surprised by the woman’s lack of emotion. ‘You’ve talked about your husband’s private life. What about work? Was he successful there? The paper said he was a chartered surveyor.’
‘Yes, he scraped through the exams and then proceeded to do as little work as possible for the rest of his career. He travelled a lot, working on different projects round the country, and became a past master at fiddling his expenses.’ She checked herself. ‘I may be being slightly unfair there. I think when he first qualified he did have some principles – aspirations, even. I hadn’t met him then, but from things he said I think he did have some ideals about ecology, sustainable development, that kind of stuff. But it didn’t last. Contact with the real world of wheeler-dealing and back-scratching soon made him cynical and selfish.’
Jude came in, ‘The paper also said he used to be a local councillor. Surely you have to have some sense of public duty to do that?’
‘Maybe Amos started out with that too. He became a councillor very young. By the time I met him, he’d given it up and was only out for what he could get.’
‘Were you his first wife?’ asked Carole.
; ‘Yes. And in retrospect I don’t for the life of me know why he wanted to get married. He seemed to be having a very good time flitting from flower to flower – and the amount of travelling he did made that all the easier. Maybe he thought marriage would settle him down. Well, if that was his plan, it didn’t work.’ Again there was no self-pity in her voice. ‘Anyway, it soon became clear to me that he wasn’t going to let the existence of a marriage licence curtail his extramarital activities.’
‘How long ago were you married?’ asked Jude.
‘Twenty-three years. Amazing we lasted that long, isn’t it? As I said, it soon became clear that Amos was going to be a serial adulterer. And I was faced with the choice of putting up or shutting up. Maybe if I’d found someone else, I might have felt the need to get divorced. But that didn’t happen, so we continued to cohabit.’
‘Until four years ago?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was there a particular reason why he walked out?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like,’ suggested Jude, ‘Amos meeting someone new; someone he really fell for?’
Janice shrugged. ‘Possibly. He did retain a romantic streak. He still embarked on each new relationship as if it was going to be the big thing, the real thing. But after a few weeks he always started looking elsewhere.’
‘Did he have any children?’ asked Carole. ‘You know, out of wedlock?’
‘Not so far as I know.’
‘And over the years, with his multiple infidelities, were you aware of any that really got through to him, that hurt him, perhaps, when the woman broke it off?’
‘It wasn’t the kind of thing he confided in me, obviously. And I think he generally made a point of ending things himself before the woman had the opportunity to get tired of him. He was a very shrewd operator,’ Janice concluded with grudging admiration.
‘But was there any time when Amos seemed particularly on edge while you knew he was having an affair?’
‘Not really.’ Janice Green looked thoughtful. ‘Well, there was a time, way back, just after we got married, when he did seem particularly tense. I’d forgotten about it till you asked, but yes, he was in quite a state. A worse state than I’ve seen him in since. In retrospect I think he was probably just tense because it was the first time he’d been unfaithful since we’d got married, and he was waiting to see how I’d react. And I was terribly upset at the time, so my recollection may not be completely accurate. But after that I kind of reconciled myself – not enthusiastically but effectively – to the kind of man I had married and let him go his own sweet way. And once Amos realized that he’d got away with it once, he didn’t get so uptight about his subsequent dalliances.’
‘And do you know who the woman was, that first time?’ asked Carole.
‘No idea. I fairly quickly came to the conclusion that the only way I was going to cope with an adulterous husband was by shutting my mind to all the details of his affairs.’
Jude nodded and said, ‘I understand that.’ Prompting immediate suspicion from Carole that her neighbour had once experienced a similar situation. Jude’s love life was much more extensive and varied in Carole’s imagination than it ever was in reality.
‘Anyway …’ Janice Green reached for her handbag. ‘I’ve taken up quite enough of your time. Thank you for talking to me.’
‘I hope it’s helped,’ said Jude.
‘I think it has, in a way. I think it will help me finally to close that chapter I talked about.’
‘Good luck.’
‘Thank you.’
‘And if we get any more information, you know, about what happened to your husband … would you like us to keep you informed?’
Janice Green sighed wearily. ‘Do you know, I don’t think I’m that bothered. I talked about “closing a chapter”, and somehow I think coming here this morning has helped me do that. It’s reinforced the feeling that I never did really know anything about Amos. And I think for the time being, I’ll leave things like that. I’m not keen to open the chapter again.’
‘So if we do find out anything else …?’
‘Why not tell the police? That’s the right thing to do, isn’t it? Then if they think what you’ve told them has any relevance to my life, well, they can get in touch with me, can’t they?’ Janice Green stood up.
‘Just one more question before you go,’ said Carole.
‘Mm?’
‘Apart from a jealous husband, can you think of anyone else who might have wanted to kill your husband?’
‘No. As I said, it was difficult not to like Amos. Most people did … except for jealous husbands.’
As Jude saw Janice Green out of the front door, she reflected on the different ways in which different people coped with bereavement.
SIXTEEN
There was no news of an inquest on Amos Green. No news at all about Amos Green, as October slipped into November. Carole became prematurely obsessed with what she was going to give her two granddaughters for Christmas.
Jude continued a busy programme of healing. She didn’t hear much from Sara Courtney, which was good news. Not because she didn’t want to hear from her, but the fact that Sara was uncommunicative indicated that mentally she was healthy. And on the one occasion in November that Jude saw her in Polly’s Cake Shop, she gathered that her mental health was in no small measure due to the development of her relationship with Kent Warboys. All of which was excellent news.
Carole and Jude were frustrated by their lack of progress on the investigation of Amos Green’s murder, but there didn’t seem much they could do. Though they spoke on the phone to the dead man’s widow, she could add little to what she had told them at Woodside Cottage. She was, however, annoyed that the police had not yet released her late husband’s body, and so she couldn’t arrange the funeral which she hoped would bring final closure to that chapter of her life.
Carole and Jude seemed to have no further leads to follow. And, as ever, they had no idea what was going on in the official inquiry. Carole was of the opinion that the police were probably building up evidence to ensure that, when the inquest finally happened, the coroner would have no difficulty in passing a verdict of suicide.
Early in November there was another meeting of the SPCS Action Committee. And it was clear, in spite of Quintus Braithwaite’s customary bluster, that the impetus for action was trickling away. Except for the announcement that the order for SPCS Action Committee headed notepaper had been put through to ‘these very good people Phoebe knows in London’, nothing much seemed to have advanced since the previous meeting.
Numbers attending were down. There were considerably more ‘apologies’ recorded under the first item on the Agenda. Jude herself had been tempted just not to turn up and effect her resignation by continuing non-appearance rather than by any public statement.
But some residual loyalty to Sara did drag her along to Hiawatha, where she was royally bored. Flora Claire went on at great length about her latest idea for an alternative use for Polly’s Cake Shop, as a Naturopathic Health Centre as well as a café. She tried to inveigle Jude into this plan, saying that her brand of healing would be a fitting complement to the hot stone massage, body brushing and chocolate spa treatments that she was envisaging. Jude was uncharacteristically sharp in her rejection of any possible involvement. Her healing was a private and serious business, not a pampering resource for the idle rich of West Sussex.
When they got on to the Agenda item ‘Publicity and Profile’, Lesley Tarquin once again whipped out her iPad mini. On this occasion she was dressed in ultra-tight black leggings and a pink silk top so diaphanous that everyone knew she was wearing a red bra. Quintus Braithwaite’s eyes burned with ill-concealed lust every time he looked at her.
Lesley assured the committee that she was still in close contact with Vince at the Fethering Observer and was in regular touch with the West Sussex Gazette and Sussex Life. Jezza from FOAM FM was still on board, as were Will at Radio Solent and Fli
ck at Radios Surrey and Sussex. And it would only need a phone call for Barry at South Today and Fizz at Meridian to drop everything and rush to Fethering to cover the next SPCS Action Committee event.
Lesley was unfazed when Wendy Roote was uncharitable enough to ask whether she had actually got any publicity for anything yet. No, she said she was as yet just ‘getting her ducks in a row’, so that she could ‘co-ordinate a big media splash’ when ‘the time was right’. Wendy persisted, asking when the time might be right, and Lesley replied that it would be when the SPCS Action Committee had a ‘mega-story’ with which they could ‘carpet-bomb the punters’.
Quintus Braithwaite said that all sounded very good. Then he and Arnold Bloom became involved in a long argument on the choice of venue for the next meeting, which stayed only just the right side of insulting. (In fact Arnold Bloom’s description of the interior décor of Hiawatha probably was insulting.)
After ‘Any Other Business’, when diaries were brought out to arrange ‘Date of Next Meeting’, the level of unavailability or uncertainty about availability amongst the committee members and the argument as to whether Wednesdays were the best night for meetings suggested that the SPCS Action Committee, like so many local initiatives before it, was about to spiral away into nothingness. Jude didn’t think she would have to tender her formal resignation. Pretty soon there wouldn’t be any committee for her to resign from.
She was therefore very surprised to receive the following day an email summoning her to an EGM of the SPCS Action Committee at Hiawatha on the following Monday. The reason was not explained. When Jude mentioned this to her neighbour, whose Home Office experience meant she knew her way around committee protocol, Carole said this was illegal. Members of a committee summoned to an Extraordinary General Meeting must be informed of the purpose of the meeting, otherwise any resolutions they pass are invalid.
Jude rationalized that the EGM had probably been called to accelerate the process whose symptoms she had witnessed at Wednesday night’s meeting. The SPCS Action Committee was about to be put out of its misery and wound up.