by Simon Brett
“In a while, crocodile,” he responded, his seriousness matching hers. Then he turned to Jude. “She’s right, of course. It will be a boozy lunch.”
“Are you going somewhere local?”
“No, up to London. Drive to Fedborough, get the train to Victoria, boozy lunch today and a few more boozy meetings in the next couple of days. Hope I’ve sobered up by the time I have to drive back from the station on Wednesday.”
“Will this be the first time you’ve been to Fedborough Station since you took Polly there on that Sunday?”
“I suppose it will.” He grimaced. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
“No, no, don’t worry. Just something I’m going to have to come to terms with.” He still didn’t sound like a man whose stepdaughter had been killed only a week before. But, as Lola had said, it was hard to work out what someone as positive as Ricky was actually feeling.
“I hope you don’t mind my asking, but have the police got any nearer to explaining what happened?”
“Don’t apologize. Everyone’s asking the same questions. And I don’t blame them. We want to get to the bottom of it as much as anyone else. But I’m afraid the police haven’t told us anything definite yet.”
Jude thought there was no harm in repeating the question she’d put to Piers about the whereabouts of Polly’s mobile phone. Ricky said he had no idea. “I would assume that it was destroyed in the inferno at the shop.”
“Probably, I expect you’re right. I was just thinking, if the phone was found, it might explain a few things.”
“How so?”
“There’d be a record on it of the calls and texts Polly had received, maybe even the message that had made her change her mind and go back to Fethering.”
“I suppose that’s possible. But since the phone is now probably an unrecognizable melted blob of plastic and metal…” He didn’t need to finish the sentence. “Anyway, I must get off to this lunch.” He made a childish stomach-rubbing gesture. “Lovely lunch. Best meal of the day. Except nobody lunches properly these days. Back in the sixties, early seventies, we’d have these proper lunches every day. Start with two or three Camparis and orange, have at least a bottle of wine per head and round it off with a couple of brandies. Lunch was part of the creative process back then, bloody good ideas came out of lunch. That’s why the current state of the music business is so formulaic and anodyne. None of the bloody accountants who run things these days ever have a proper lunch. Sandwiches at the desk, a bottle of fizzy water…no surprise no original ideas come out of that. Oh, don’t get me started.”
Jude could have observed that she hadn’t got him started, that he seemed quite capable of self-starting without any help from anyone. But she didn’t. Instead, she asked, “Ricky, thinking back to that Sunday, the one before the fire, could you – ?”
He looked at his watch. “Got to be on my way or I’ll miss the train. Good luck with Mother. Oh, by the way…” He stepped closer to Jude and spoke with a new earnestness. “Don’t worry if she says anything odd.”
“What kind of odd?”
“Well, if she starts making accusations about anyone. She’s a wonderful woman, in very good nick for her age, but occasionally she does get confused. Usually when she’s had a shock of some kind. And what’s happened with Polly has really knocked her sideways. As a result, Mother may say some strange things. Just ignore it. As I say, she’s confused. I’m sure she’ll soon be back on an even keel.”
“But what kind of – ?”
“Sorry, Jude, must be off. Just don’t take any notice of anything Mother may say about Polly’s death.”
∨ The Shooting in the Shop ∧
Twenty
Even on her bed of pain Flora Le Bonnier did look rather magnificent. Though the white hair was ruffled from her attempts to get into a comfortable position amidst the piled-up pillows, nothing could spoil the fine bone structure of her face. There remained a theatrical grandeur about her.
Jude had been fully prepared for the old woman’s attitude to be imperious, but in fact it came closer to humility. “It’s so good of you to come and interrupt what is, I’m sure, a well-deserved break for you.”
“It’s absolutely fine, don’t worry about it.” Jude’s voice had taken on a soothing tone, already part of the healing process. “Now, let’s just find where the source of the pain is.”
In spite of Flora’s assertion ‘I can tell you that – it’s in the small of my back’, Jude ran her hands over the woman’s whole body. She didn’t touch, didn’t even remove the duvet, just let her fingers flow up and down an inch or two above the bedclothes. When she stopped, she said, “Yes, I can understand where you’re feeling the pain, but, in fact, the tension that’s causing it is in your shoulders. Our bodies have an amazing ability to refer pain, just as our minds can refer anxiety.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Flora, intrigued.
“Often when we’re worried about something, we refer that worry to something else.” Jude had done enough acting in her life to risk a professional parallel. “Like when you’re going on stage. What you’re afraid of is exposing your skills in front of a large audience, but that’s very rarely what you worry about in the moments before curtain up. Instead, you worry about throwing up, having an attack of diarrhoea, bringing the most primitive kind of shame on yourself. You worry about the possible symptom, rather than the real cause.”
Flora Le Bonnier was silent for a moment while she assessed this claim. Then she said, “You’re right. And in the same way, when you’re really, genuinely ill and you have to give a performance, suddenly you stop feeling pain for the duration of the show, and it all comes crashing in again the moment the curtain’s down.”
“‘Doctor Theatre’,” Jude agreed, knowing that her use of the actor’s phrase would increase the bond between them. “So, right now your body is reacting to the tension in your shoulders by giving you a pain in the small of your back.”
Flora seemed to accept the logic of that. She shifted in the bed and winced. “More importantly, though, can you do something to relieve that pain?”
“Yes, I think I can. If you get into the least uncomfortable position you can find and just slip your nightie down off your shoulders…”
Having been used to the constant attention of dressers in theatres and on film sets all over the world, the old woman showed no coyness about revealing her bony body with its skin the texture of muslin. Jude anointed the shoulders with the smallest amount of oil, and let her fingers flicker gently against the flesh. There was no physical strength required for what she was doing, just immense mental energy and concentration. Jude could sense the heat emanating from the woman’s body and focused her mind on melting away the tight knot of pain that was causing it.
After about twenty minutes both women felt the same flood of relaxation as the pain ebbed away. Flora sank back on to the pillows and Jude, totally drained, as ever, by the effort of healing, subsided into a bedside chair. A long, relieved silence stretched between them.
Then Jude said, very gently, “And of course our bodies and our minds go on playing tricks on us all the time, don’t they? Something that’s troubling the mind expresses itself in a bodily ailment.”
“Yes. Something which doctors – in the days when I still foolishly wasted my money consulting doctors – never seemed to understand. They seemed to regard the body and the mind as totally separate.”
“I think they’ve got a bit better about that kind of thing over recent years.”
“Huh. Well, I’ve yet to meet the traditional doctor who could do what you’ve just done for me.”
“Luck, I think. It seemed to work this morning.”
“Are you suggesting that your healing doesn’t always work?”
“I certainly am. Sometimes the magic’s just not there. I rarely know the reason…some fault in my concentration, scepticism from the patient…? I�
�ll never fully understand it. Still, so long as it works sometimes…” There was another silence, then Jude continued, “Well, then, Flora, what was it in your mind that was so dreadful it could completely immobilize your body?”
“Obviously it’s related to Polly’s death.” Flora seemed to feel some relief from making that statement. Jude didn’t prompt her, she let the old woman take her own time. “I think for me what happened was the culmination of many years of anxiety.” Another silence, while she gathered more of her thoughts. “What I’m going to say now may sound rather fanciful, but it is true. As you may know, the Le Bonnier family has a long history in this country dating back to the Norman Conquest.”
“I had heard that, yes.”
“And amongst the inheritances of that long history are certain advantages, of looks, of intelligence, of resilience, of bravery even. But there are also less welcome family characteristics which have been passed on. It may sound melodramatic, but in this context I cannot avoid the expression ‘Bad Blood’. Bad luck, anyway.”
Jude maintained the silence until Flora Le Bonnier felt able to continue. “I refer to what in earlier days might have gone under the blanket description of ‘madness’. In these supposedly more enlightened days we speak of ‘manic depression’ or what’s that new phrase they’ve come up with? ‘Bipolar Disorder’? Whatever you call it, I’m referring to a tendency, all too common amongst creative people, towards violent fits of self-loathing, a self-loathing which in its most extreme manifestations can lead to self-destruction.
“There has been a suicidal streak, a flaw, whatever you want to call it, in the Le Bonnier family. Some people have even been melodramatic enough to refer to it as ‘the Le Bonnier Curse’…anyway, it’s been mentioned for as far back as their history is recorded. And the fact that those family records are incomplete is due to that very flaw. In the early nineteenth century a certain Giles Le Bonnier not only killed himself but also destroyed the ancestral family home in Yorkshire when he burnt the place to the ground. Invaluable family records were also lost in the inferno. Because of that tragedy a contemporary historian would have trouble piecing together the distant history of the Le Bonnier family.”
Remembering what Carole had discovered through Wikipedia, Jude rather daringly said, “It has been suggested that the more recent history of the family is also hard to piece together.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“I gather that some newspapers have actually questioned whether you have any connection with the Le Bonnier family.”
It was a bold thing to say, and the icy hauteur with which Flora greeted it would have convinced most people of her aristocratic credentials. “I don’t read newspapers,” she announced imperiously. “I never have. Journalists have no interest in the truth; they look only for character assassination and sensation.”
“But don’t you even read reviews of your performances?”
“No, I never have. What possible benefit can one gain from reading them? A good notice makes you question yourself to such an extent about what it was you did that was worthy of praise that you become self-conscious; while a bad notice depresses you so much that you never want to work again.”
“Ah, right,” said Jude, deciding not to pursue that particular line of enquiry further. “You were talking about the ‘Le Bonnier Curse’…”
“Yes. The suicidal streak, I am glad to say, does not manifest itself in every bearer of the Le Bonnier name. I myself, though occasionally prone to black moods of despair, have generally managed to keep the demon at bay by concentrating on my professional work. Though I have always worried inordinately about being a transmitter of the family curse, my son Ricky, mercifully, seems untouched by it. I sometimes wonder whether he has ever had a negative thought in his entire life and, of course, his robust self-confidence has enabled him to make the enormous success of that life that he has.
“But his daughter Polly, I fear, was not so fortunate. As a small child, she was adorable, a blithe little lass without a care in the world. But as she got older, the shadows of her inheritance began to close in on her. The depression started to take over her life.”
“Just a minute,” Jude objected. “You talk about ‘the shadows of her inheritance’, but Polly has absolutely no connection to the Le Bonnier family. She was Ricky’s step daughter, not his genetic daughter.”
“I know that,” Flora replied patiently. “But I’m talking about ‘the Curse of the Le Bonniers’. It doesn’t just affect people who carry the ‘Bad Blood’ of the Le Bonniers in their veins. It affects everyone who becomes involved in the family.”
Jude’s credulity was being rather stretched by all this. Though Flora Le Bonnier’s narrative carried undoubted dramatic conviction, its contact with logic seemed very tenuous.
“So Polly,” the old actress went on, “became infected with bad luck as soon as she became part of the Le Bonnier clan. The Curse took its toll on her mother, too. It killed her.”
“Polly’s mother died of a drug overdose.”
“That was the means by which she died. What killed her was ‘the Curse of the Le Bonniers’. And then it reached out its tentacles to Polly, crushing her with depression, driving her into madness, and forcing her to follow the awful precedent of Giles Le Bonnier.”
After assimilating this, Jude said quietly, “So you think Polly started the fire at Gallimaufry?”
“What else is there to think?”
There was obviously quite a lot else to think, but Jude wondered whether there was any point in troubling Flora Le Bonnier with any of it. The old actress had made her mind up about her granddaughter’s death and, though the initial shock of her conclusions had hit her hard, she now was on the road to recovery. Until a definitive explanation of what had happened to Polly emerged, was there any necessity to mention the anomaly of the girl’s having been shot before the fire at Gallimaufry had been started? Jude decided that, on balance, there wasn’t. For the time being, she would allow Flora Le Bonnier to go along with her son’s suicide explanation of his stepdaughter’s death.
But as to the business about ‘the Le Bonnier Curse’, Jude didn’t believe a word of it. And, in spite of the compelling way Flora had spoken on the subject, Jude wondered whether the old actress really believed a word of it either.
She looked at the large watch strapped to her wrist by a wide ribbon. It was nearly one o’clock. As ever, when she was performing her healing routines, she had lost sense of time. “I must be off,” she said, rising and looking down at the old woman, whose body lay relaxed on the bed and whose eyelids were drooping. “I think you’ll sleep now. And I think when you wake up, you will feel hungry. Have something to eat then. You need to keep your strength up.”
“I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done.”
“No problem. Pleased to help.”
Flora Le Bonnier raised herself on her pillows and reached across to the bedside table. “Ricky’ll sort out what we owe you. But, please, take this.”
She picked up a copy of her autobiography, One Classy Lady, in two arthritic hands, using them as a seal might use its flippers. “Sadly, I am unable to inscribe this for you. My hands can’t grip a pen these days, which is a source of enormous frustration to me. But if I could write in the book, I would put: ‘To Jude, an infinitely welcome saviour in time of need, with love, Flora Le Bonnier.’”
Jude thanked her and left the room, knowing that by the time she reached the foot of the stairs, the old lady would be asleep.
As ever, when dealing with actors, Jude was aware of the potential for duplicity, and yet by the time she left Fedingham Court House she had become more convinced by Flora’s performance. Talk of ‘the Le Bonnier Curse’ was – to any outside scrutiny – complete nonsense, but the old actress had expressed what she believed to be the truth. In the taxi back to Fethering, however, Jude remembered Ricky warning her against believing Flora’s opinions about Polly’s death. What had he been af
raid his mother would say? Something that might betray him?
Because, in spite of their mutual alibi about tending the wakeful Mabel with her ear infection, Ricky Le Bonnier headed Jude’s current list of suspects. And, regrettably, Lola was not far behind him.
∨ The Shooting in the Shop ∧
Twenty-One
Normally Carole discouraged Gulliver from bringing anything back from Fethering Beach, fearing the introduction of unwanted ‘mess’ into the sacred precincts of High Tor. But the stick he had found that morning, and to which he shown such obvious attachment, seemed a harmless enough trophy. Scoured pale and smooth by long immersion in the sea and about a foot in length, it could have been purpose-built for ‘fetching’ games. Having scrutinized its every surface for the smallest fleck of tar, Carole allowed him to walk proudly home with the stick held in his jaws, and even to lie down and chew it in his favourite spot beside the Aga. Meanwhile, she busied herself around the house removing any motes of dust that might have dared to settle during the previous twenty-four hours.
The whine that brought her hurrying back to the kitchen was more aggrieved than distressed, but the sight that greeted her was not a pretty one. There seemed to be a disproportionate amount of blood over everything and it took her some time to locate the part of Gulliver’s body that was its source. Mopping with tea towels and kitchen roll eventually revealed that the blood was coming out of his mouth, prompting an immediate panic about an internal haemorrhage. This was assuaged when Carole spotted that the wound was actually on his gum, but seeing what had caused it gave rise to renewed anxiety.
The remains of Gulliver’s perfect stick lay bloodstained on the floor. His assiduous chewing had split the wood open, revealing the rusty rivets which held it together. It was one of those that had gashed the dog’s gum.
Within minutes Gulliver was sitting on a dirty rug on the backseat of Carole’s immaculate Renault on an emergency rush to the vet’s in Fedborough.