by Simon Brett
“And is she still here in Fethering?”
“Oh no. She’s long dead now. Even when she came to our wedding, she was quite doddery. She went into a home soon after, and I don’t think she lasted there very long.”
A new thought came to Jude. “Was Flora Le Bonnier at your wedding? Surely she would have been there to see her son married?”
“No, she couldn’t come. Making a film somewhere, I think she was. But she sent us a very generous present. A silver tea set. I’ve still got that at home.”
“Going back to Auntie Vi…you knew her, didn’t you?”
“Oh yes. I often used to go back to her place after school. With Ricky. For tea.”
“And do you know what relation she was to him? Was she Flora Le Bonnier’s sister?”
“I don’t think she was a relation.”
“But he called her Auntie Vi.”
“That’s what she liked to be called. By all the kids. She looked after other kids, you see, as well as Ricky.”
“What, she was a kind of paid child minder?”
“More a foster parent, I think you’d call it. All the kids loved her.”
Jude’s mind was having difficulty keeping track of the new information, and the new thoughts that led from it. “Did Ricky talk much about his mother when you knew him?”
“No. Very little.”
“Or his father?”
“He never mentioned a father.”
“But people…other children at school, they must have asked if he was related to Flora Le Bonnier?”
“Why should they have done?”
“Well, it’s not a very usual surname, is it?”
“Le Bonnier?”
“Yes.”
“But Ricky wasn’t called Le Bonnier at school.”
“What was he called?”
“He was just ‘Ricky Brown’ then.”
“So when did he start calling himself Le Bonnier?”
“When he went up to London. When he pretended he wasn’t married to me. When he came under the influence of the first Devil Woman.”
Oh, thought Jude, here we go again.
♦
Gulliver finally got his walk, with his mistress and her neighbour. Because she didn’t want him chewing unsavoury things on the beach with his injured gums, Carole kept him on the lead. He took a very dim view of that.
Carole and Jude had agreed that they had to pay a visit to Old Garge. He was the only one who had potentially new information, which might untangle some of the confusions that were building up around their investigation.
The padlock was in place on the hut’s door, locking the hasp on to its ring. Knocking produced no reaction. No classical music wafted from the interior. The place was empty and, though Carole had only been there a few hours before, it felt as though it had been empty for a long time. And that it might stay that way for a long time, too.
As the two women walked back up the beach, they were aware of the scrutiny of two uniformed officers sitting in a Panda car by the Promenade. The men had clearly been watching their approach to the hut. Carole and Jude were not the only people interested in the whereabouts of Old Garge.
∨ The Shooting in the Shop ∧
Twenty-Six
If it hadn’t been for Gulliver, they would have had a drink at the Crown and Anchor. But he wasn’t allowed in the pub, and leaving him tied up outside on a winter’s day would have been sheer cruelty. So they returned to High Tor and while the dog settled down in front of the Aga, Carole opened another of the Chilean Chardonnays. “Most people still think it’s Christmas, after all,” she said.
The Aga’s heat was cosy, so they stayed in the kitchen.
“I’ve just realized,” Carole announced, “that we’ve been very stupid.”
“In what way?”
“Well, there’s one question we should have asked ourselves much earlier, as soon as we met Ricky Le Bonnier.”
“And what is that question?”
“Why he’s called Le Bonnier.”
Jude caught on immediately. “Yes, of course. Le Bonnier is Flora’s maiden name, and the way she went on about her family history, it’s one she’s very proud of.”
“And it’s common, I believe, for actresses to retain their maiden names for professional purposes.”
“Particularly if they don’t marry.”
“True. Though we’ve no idea whether Flora ever did marry.”
“No mention of any weddings in her autobiography. Which, of course, takes us straight back to the question of who Ricky’s father was.”
“Yes.” Carole felt acutely frustrated. If only she’d realized the importance of the information at the time, she might have pressed Old Garge on the subject of possible paternity. But then Piers had interrupted their discussions. And, come to that, why had Piers suddenly arrived at that moment? What was his connection with the former Rupert Sonning?
“Well,” said Jude, “we know that at school Ricky was known as Ricky Brown. So the logical answer might be that he was the son of Flora Le Bonnier and a ‘Mr Brown’.”
“Do you think Kath’d know more about that?”
“I doubt it. She said Ricky never mentioned his father. What she did talk about, though, which might be relevant, was the time when Ricky left her to go and work in the music business in London, when he was seduced away by the first of his ‘Devil Women’.” Carole’s eyes looked up to the ceiling in exasperation. “I was wondering if that was when he changed his name. Realizing, perhaps, that Le Bonnier was a name that might carry some weight in the world of show business?”
“It’s possible,” Carole conceded. “and clearly at some point there was a big change in Ricky’s relationship with his mother. During his childhood she appears almost to have denied his existence, but when she was here at your party she seemed close to hero-worshipping him.”
“Yes.” It was Jude’s turn to look frustrated now. “If only I’d thought to ask these questions when I went to sort out Flora’s back.”
“Maybe she’ll have a relapse and summon you again.”
“Maybe…” A new thought came to Jude, spreading a beam across her rounded face. “But of course we will be seeing both Ricky and Flora on tomorrow evening.” Carole looked puzzled. “Their New Year’s Eve Party at Fedingham Court House.”
“Oh yes.” Puzzlement gave way to anxiety on Carole’s face. “Are you sure I’m invited to that? I mean, I haven’t received an invitation.”
“Of course you’re invited. I asked specially. And, given the number of questions to which we need answers, it’ll be a good thing to have us both there.”
“Yes, it will.” Carole drummed her fingers impatiently on the kitchen table. “So what can we do till then? In terms of investigation?”
“Well, I suppose tomorrow morning you can have another attempt to talk to the Devil Woman who Kath saw in Ricky’s car on the evening of the fire.”
“Anna. Yes, I’ll try that. And at least tomorrow morning I’ll have Gulliver with me, so I won’t look such an idiot.”
Jude smiled inwardly at this latest of her neighbour’s neuroses as she said, “The other thing we can do is try to find Old Garge again.”
∨ The Shooting in the Shop ∧
Twenty-Seven
The Wednesday morning was not so cold. The entire country was still in its state of holiday torpor, but for Carole Seddon Christmas seemed a distant memory. She had survived – even enjoyed – the day itself, but now normal life had to continue. She wanted to put the last week behind her. Going to the Le Bonniers’ New Year’s Eve Party would be an incongruous reminder of the season.
Gulliver, who appeared to have suffered no ill effects from his surgery, watched the well-practised preparations for a walk with tremendous tail-wagging enthusiasm. When they reached Fethering Beach, Carole didn’t have the heart not to let him roam free. The tide was low. Gulliver lolloped off to practise emergency stops in the sand. Carole sat in the shelter where sh
e had last talked with Anna, and waited. Her timing was precise again; it was twenty past seven.
And this time she got a result. Anna must have started her walk a little earlier than usual, because she and her Westie appeared round the corner of a weed-covered wooden groyne way down on the beach. Gulliver gambolled towards them, had a momentary exchange of sniffs with the other dog and then returned to his high-speed braking exercises. What a useful herald he is, thought his mistress, alerting Anna to my presence.
It seemed quite natural for Carole to rise from the shelter and walk down across the shingle towards her dog, and what she could almost call her dog-walking friend. Except that what she had to talk to Anna about might put a severe strain on their embryonic friendship.
After mutual greetings and an exchange of very English sentences about the comparative mildness of the weather, Carole decided she had to leap straight in. “You remember last time we met, we talked about the fire at Gallimaufry…?”
“Yes.”
“Have the police talked to you about it?”
“They asked me about security arrangements at the shop.”
“Not about anything else?”
“Why on earth should they ask me about anything else?”
“Just because you were seen with Ricky in his car near Fethering Yacht Club earlier that evening.”
The approach had been clumsy, but Carole couldn’t have asked for a more dramatic reaction. All the colour left Anna’s cheeks, making the red of her lipstick, by contrast, brighter than ever. She swayed as if she might be about to faint, and Carole reached out a hand to steady her. As soon as Anna felt the touch on her sleeve, she burst into tears. Not slow tears, but hysterical ones that shook her entire body as though electric shocks were coursing through her veins.
“Come on,” said Carole, uncharacteristically gentle. “Come and sit down.”
Leading the way up to the shelter on the Promenade with an arm over Anna’s shoulders, she could feel her body’s uncontrollable shuddering. Blackie, her West Highland terrier, uninterested in human suffering, trotted off to nose his way through piles of seaweed.
It took a while before Anna was calm enough to speak coherently, and her first intelligible words were: “I’ve been terrified of this happening. I knew it’d all come out one day.”
“All what?” asked Carole. Feeling awkward, she detached her arm from Anna’s shoulders.
“About me and Ricky. Why would the police want to know about us being there?”
“They are investigating a suspicious death. They’re bound to be checking everyone who has a connection with Gallimaufry.”
“God, then it’ll all come out.”
Patiently, Carole repeated, “All what?” There was a silence, broken only by Anna’s rasping breaths. “You don’t deny you were in the Mercedes with Ricky?”
“I don’t deny anything. I knew it’d all end in disaster. But I do love him.” That prompted a renewed burst of weeping.
As it subsided, Carole asked, “Are you saying that you and Ricky Le Bonnier were having an affair?” Anna nodded miserably. “Had it been going on for long?”
“A couple of months. No, nearly three. I started working at Gallimaufry as soon as the place opened in September. I was there on the first day at the gala celebration. And it was early October when…” The memory was too painful for her to supply more details. “Oh, I was very stupid, I know, but very vulnerable. It had been so long since any man had shown any interest in me, in that way…I thought, coming here to Fethering, I could make a fresh start, be someone new. But you can never get away from who you really are.”
“And the hair and the make-up,” asked Carole gently, “was that part of being someone new?”
Another sad nod. “Yes, and that probably just made me look ridiculous. But it gave me confidence for a time when I first came here. I thought I’d really got away from…the situation I was in before. But then the first thing I do when I arrive in Fethering is to screw up totally and start having an affair with a married man.”
Carole couldn’t stop herself from saying, “In this case, a much-married man.”
“Yes, but it seemed to work,” Anna protested. “Ricky and me. I mean, he was totally upfront. It’s not like he pretended that he wasn’t married.”
“Be rather difficult to do that, wouldn’t it,” Carole observed tartly, “given the fact that you were working for his wife, and she presumably introduced you to him?”
Anna nodded abjectly. Carole felt some pity for her, but stronger than that – in fact, she was surprised by its strength – was the anger she felt towards Ricky Le Bonnier. Why was it that some men were incapable of fidelity? There he was, settled with a new glamorous young wife, two small children, idyllic life, and he still couldn’t stop himself from groping any other woman who looked like she was available.
“Did Lola know what was going on?”
“No, no. We were very discreet.”
“So discreet that you were spotted in a car together the evening before Gallimaufry burnt down.”
“That was unusual. Nobody would have thought twice about it, if ghastly things hadn’t happened afterwards. Otherwise it could have been completely innocent – the owner’s husband giving a staff member a lift back after work.”
“On a Sunday?”
Hearing the scepticism in Carole’s voice, Anna buried her head in her hands, quietly sobbing.
“And was it at the shop that you and Ricky had your assignations?”
An almost inaudible “Yes.”
“Why not at your place?”
“I’m in rented rooms. The landlady lives on the premises. She’s a nosy cow.”
“Right. And of course there was a furnished flat upstairs at Gallimaufry, wasn’t there? Which no doubt had a convenient bed available. Oh yes, I remember. Lola had wanted to rent out the flat, but Ricky wasn’t keen on the idea. Now we know why, don’t we?” Carole couldn’t keep the scorn out of her voice. “Didn’t you ever stop and think what you were doing to Lola? Didn’t you think you had any loyalty to her?”
“Nothing we were doing was hurting Lola.”
“Only because she didn’t know.”
“Ricky would never do anything to threaten his marriage.”
“Oh no?”
“No. He’s just one of those men who’s capable of loving two women at the same time.”
“I’ve heard of them,” Carole snorted. “And no doubt he told you that he was like that because he was a creative person, and creative people have to be judged by different moral standards from the rest of the world?” The way Anna evaded her eye told Carole that her conjecture had been correct. She felt even more furious with Ricky Le Bonnier, and her anger spilled over towards Anna. “Well, you’ll have to find somewhere else for your trysts now. Your little love-nest had sadly been burnt down, hasn’t it?”
Her victim offered no resistance as verbal blows thudded in. “And have you seen Ricky since that assignation, since the Sunday before Christmas?” Carole continued harshly.
“No. We had a bit of a tiff that evening and I was worried he was trying to end our relationship. But it turned out all right – that’s what we were talking about in the car. We were making up, saying that we’d got too much going to stop it just like that. Ricky promised he’d ring me over Christmas, but now all this has happened, it must be very difficult for him to…”
There was no need for Carole to ask. She now knew that when they’d last been in the same shelter and the mobile had rung, Anna had been hoping for a call from Ricky. Her expression of disappointment at the time was explained.
Carole moved quickly on to details of timing. “You were seen in Ricky’s car about eight o’clock that Sunday evening…”
“Who saw us?”
“That doesn’t matter. Now, according to Ricky himself – and Lola, come to that – he had gone to take his daughter Polly to catch the seven-thirty-two London train from Fedborough Station. Had he already ma
de the assignation to meet you after he’d done that?”
“No. He called me at about seven-fifteen that evening. He said he couldn’t stop thinking about me and he’d suddenly got half an hour free…and he could pick me up on the corner of my road and…” Her words petered out as she realized how shabby the arrangements sounded.
“You were honoured, weren’t you? A whole half-hour.”
“You don’t know what our relationship was like, Carole,” Anna protested.
“It seems to me I’m getting a pretty fair impression of it. From what you’ve just said, it was like any other hole-in-the-corner adulterous affair. So, you both got back to the shop in his car at about eight, enjoyed half an hour of…each other’s company – and then what? Did Ricky do the gentlemanly thing and drive you back to the end of your road?”
“No, I walked.”
“So he didn’t do the gentlemanly thing. How gallant.”
“Carole, we are in love.”
That plea got the contemptuous snort it deserved. “Tell me, Anna – and this is important – did you see Ricky leave Gallimaufry that evening?”
“No, he was still in the shop when I left.”
“Right. And you say you haven’t seen him since?”
“Haven’t seen him, haven’t heard from him.” The woman was on the verge of further tears. “Do you think the police are likely to question me again?”
Carole shrugged. “If they’re doing their job properly, I think they should.”
“So Lola will find out about Ricky and me?”
Anna’s scarf had slipped down, revealing peroxide blond hair whose roots needed doing. Tears had spread her mascara and her scarlet lipstick was smudged. She looked so crushed and feeble that Carole couldn’t help feeling a surge of pity. “Maybe not,” she replied, with no knowledge to justify the assertion. “It may not be necessary for Lola to be told.”
There was a silence. While they were talking, they hadn’t noticed a thin, cold rain begin to fall. Down at the water’s edge Gulliver and Blackie were engaged in their own independent but vitally important manoeuvres.