The Corpse on the Court

by Simon Brett

  ‘Yes, but she wasn’t very interested. Busy with all those children, and I think Vladimir was there when I rang.’ The way she mentioned his name showed that she was aware of the domestic violence in the Gretchenko household.

  ‘Did you tell anyone else?’ asked Carole. ‘About what you saw on the court?’

  ‘No. Oh well, yes. Just one person.’

  ‘And who was that?’

  ‘There’s this lady who plays tennis here – or at least she used to – and she’s been very kind to me since I joined the club and—’

  ‘Felicity Budgen,’ Jude surmised.

  ‘Yes.’ Tonya was too emotionally drained to wonder how Jude knew that. ‘Anyway, I did tell her about what happened, you know, me being here that night.’

  ‘How did she react?’

  ‘Oh. Well. She’s a very kind woman, Felicity. She didn’t bawl me out about being with Ned. She said she’d never breathe a word to her husband about it . . . though she might talk to George Hazlitt and get him to have a quiet word with Ned.’

  Maybe it was that ‘quiet word’ Jude had overheard in Oenone Playfair’s conservatory. ‘When did you have this conversation with Felicity, Tonya?’

  ‘Oh, just this afternoon, before I left to come over here.’

  ‘And did you tell her you were coming here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And,’ asked Carole, ‘did you tell her about everything you’d witnessed on the court that night?’

  ‘Yes, I did. Felicity’s the only person I can really talk to. My babushka’s always too busy looking after my grandfather and Marina’s caught up in her own problems. Felicity’s always been a good listener.’

  Carole and Jude were both wondering how the chairman’s wife would have reacted to what she had listened to from Tonya that afternoon. That depended, really, on how much of it she already knew.

  ‘And you told Felicity about the man in the window at Lockleigh House?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  Both Carole and Jude were kicking themselves for not having thought of Cecil Wardock earlier. Tom Ruthven had described him as ‘the eyes and ears of Lockleigh House’. Insomniac, sitting at his window rereading the books that he had published, he could easily have witnessed all the comings and goings through the little gate on the night in question. Cecil Wardock could well be the perfect witness. Why on earth hadn’t they thought to question him before?

  ‘Well, we’re on the spot,’ Carole concluded. ‘We must go and see him. No time like the present.’ She rose from the sofa, then looked down to see why Jude wasn’t doing the same.

  ‘What’s up?

  ‘There’s a call I have to make,’ said Jude miserably.

  ‘Ah.’ Carole knew who it would be to. ‘Shall I wait here for you?’

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’

  The bit of the pros’ office with the computers and phones in it was locked, but there was a kind of anteroom whose door was always open. On its walls were lists of match results, members’ handicaps and so on. From wooden pegs hung hire rackets and others that the pros had just restrung or repaired. There was also a glass-fronted cabinet, displaying new rackets and a variety of kit items marked with the distinctive Lockleigh House tennis court insignia. Crossed rackets underneath a fish.

  It was from the relative security of this room, with its door closed, that Jude rang Piers.

  ‘Hello, light of my life,’ he answered cheerily. ‘I’m missing you like mad. When are we going to meet?’

  ‘Piers,’ said Jude evenly. ‘I’ve found out more about what happened at the court the night Reggie Playfair died.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Including the fact that you were having an ongoing affair with Felicity Budgen.’

  To give him his due, he didn’t come back with blustering denials. He just said, in a dull voice, ‘I was going to tell you about that, in time. About Felicity. And you have to believe me – that’s over.’

  How many men over the years, thought Jude, have used that line to a new lover about a previous one. But at that moment she did actually believe Piers.

  She heard the main entrance to the court click open, then the sound of footsteps walking softly down past the court towards the club room. Presumably one of the doubles players for the seven o’clock court.

  ‘Listen, that’s what caused it all,’ Piers protested.

  ‘Caused what?’

  ‘This whole mess. It was me saying to Felicity that things were over between us that set the whole thing in motion.’

  ‘And when did you tell her?’

  ‘Obviously –’ he sounded exasperated now – ‘I told her when I met you.’

  ‘So it had been going on up until three weeks ago.’

  ‘To some extent. We didn’t see each other very often. I think the relationship was on the way out before I met you. But, anyway, Felicity got into a very bad state when I told her. And somehow once it was over, she seemed to get even more worried that Don would get to hear about it.’

  ‘And you understood what Reggie said about “secrets” during the Sec’s Cup to be a threat that he was going to spill the beans?’

  ‘I didn’t hear it that way. But Felicity did. She was desperately worried that Reggie was going to tell Don. She said we had to silence him.’

  ‘And so between you you came up with a rather elaborate plan to eliminate Reggie?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And fortunately you had on hand a conveniently loopy estranged wife whom you could persuade to—’

  ‘I didn’t persuade—’

  ‘You know you’ve committed murder, Piers,’ said Jude solemnly.

  ‘No, I haven’t. You’ve got it all wrong.’

  ‘I don’t think so. You set up Jonquil to kill Reggie.’

  Suddenly Jude heard Carole’s voice calling from the far end of the court. ‘Excuse me – can I help you?’ Then there was a sound of footsteps hurrying past and the clicks of the court door opening and closing.

  And through all this, Jude could hear Piers Targett saying, ‘It wasn’t me who set Jonquil up. It was Felicity!’

  Then Carole was at the door. ‘There’s this strange woman just come in, looking for Tonya. She said she was going to kill her!’

  Jude looked out of the office window. Immaculately dressed as ever in a pale grey trouser suit, Felicity Budgen was walking sedately across the garden toward Lockleigh House.

  In one hand was a handbag.

  In the other was the metal crank used for adjusting the height of the real tennis net.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  By the time Carole and Jude got outside the court Felicity Budgen had disappeared inside Lockleigh House Nursing Home for the Elderly. They didn’t have to talk, they both knew where she was going. She had failed to kill one witness of her crimes, Tonya Grace. She was hoping to have better luck with Cecil Wardock.

  The woman on reception in the great hall of Lockleigh House called after them as they rushed to the stairs. ‘Hey, you can’t go up there!’ But Carole and Jude took no notice.

  They dashed along the landing and burst in through Cecil Wardock’s door.

  The tableau that greeted them there might have been comical in different circumstances. Cecil Wardock, his chair facing away from the window on this occasion, was looking up at them in bewilderment. Behind him, in front of his precious bookshelves, stood the elegant Felicity Budgen, the crank handle in her hand upraised to be brought down on his thin skull.

  At Carole and Jude’s entrance she froze, then slowly lowered her arm.

  ‘Well,’ said Cecil Wardock, ‘aren’t I the popular one this afternoon? Delighted to see you again, ladies. To what do I owe this pleasure?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Jude, inadequately in the circumstances, ‘we were just passing.’

  ‘Well, what a nice surprise. Felicity was just getting a book down for me.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. Placing the crank handle on a table, she reached into the bookshelves. ‘Kat
herine Mansfield: A Biography – that was the one, wasn’t it, Cecil?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Felicity dear. Very stylishly written. Author’s sadly dead now.’ He stroked the book lovingly. ‘Beautiful artefact, isn’t it? Any book is, but this one more than most.’ He let out a dry chuckle. ‘Can’t see anything as beautiful as this ever being replaced by a Kindle, can you?’

  Once again Cecil Wardock stroked his book, then opened it at the title page. ‘So much still to read,’ he said. ‘So much still to read.’

  THIRTY-FIVE

  After her murder threat and her attempt to commit the real thing, Felicity Budgen had become remarkably docile. She made no demur about accompanying Jude and Carole back to the tennis court’s club room and, once there, agreed that a strong cup of coffee might be a good idea.

  While the coffee was brewing, the four young men about to play the seven o’clock doubles emerged from the men’s changing room. They recognized Felicity, who greeted them with effortless politeness and said she looked forward to encountering them for a game sometime soon. The rest of their conversation was played out against a background of cheery shouts from the court and the sound of balls thundering on penthouses.

  ‘I think we know most of what happened,’ said Jude.

  ‘Did Piers tell you?’

  ‘Not really. He told me some things, but I’m not sure that they were all true.’

  ‘He would have been lying to protect me,’ said Felicity. ‘He’s a very honourable man, Piers.’

  Jude was not sure that she would have fully endorsed that description, but this wasn’t the time to take issue.

  ‘Look, I do want to say,’ the former ambassador’s wife went on, ‘that I hold nothing against you, Jude. Yes, I still love Piers, but I’ve known for a long time that I was not in a position to offer him the full-time support and attention that he needs. Whereas with you I think there’s probably a strong chance he’ll be able to find that.’

  Though that was another statement from which Jude’s opinion might now diverge, again she said nothing.

  ‘But I can’t deny that Piers’ announcement that he’d fallen in love with you was a profound shock to me. I don’t think I’d ever realized how much his presence in my life meant. Because I knew he could never be central to my everyday doings, perhaps I underestimated his importance. The knowledge that Piers was somewhere there in the background gave me the strength to get through times that were fairly tough for me emotionally. And when he said it was over between us . . . I think I went a little mad.’

  There was a silence. For a moment Jude felt tempted to apologize for the unwitting disruption she had caused to Felicity Budgen’s life, but she curbed the instinct.

  ‘When did you decide you’d have to kill Reggie Playfair?’ asked Carole, practical as ever.

  ‘Well, it was strange . . .’ Felicity’s manner, as it had been from the start of their conversation, remained politely matter-of-fact, as if she were hosting a charity tea party rather than confessing to a murder. ‘I suppose I had been suppressing it all the years since I started the relationship with Piers Targett but once it ended, all the guilt and paranoia I should perhaps have felt earlier came flooding in. I suppose, standing back from the situation for the first time, I realized the size of the risk I had been taking . . . you know, the threat I had been posing to my marriage to Donald.

  ‘And I became more than ever afraid that the news of what had happened might get out from someone who knew about it.’

  ‘Someone like Reggie Playfair?’ Carole suggested.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You had some history with Reggie, didn’t you?’ asked Jude.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, the speed with which he answered your texted summons to come down here to the court. Your message also included the words “like we used to do”.’

  ‘Ah. I understand. Yes, Reggie and I had met on the court a few times – and at night because he didn’t want Oenone to know. Those meetings also started around that period when I had abandoned my youngest to the joys of Eton. Reggie was in a bad way around that time too.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He never really got over the grief of losing their baby. Reggie wasn’t the sort to share emotional pressures – I don’t think he and Oenone ever talked about what happened – but somehow he seemed able to discuss it with me. Donald and I also lost a baby – a late miscarriage before we had Harry – so maybe Reggie found me empathetic about his suffering.

  ‘Also he had this strange fantasy about seeing the ghost of his dead daughter. And I had experienced similar hallucinations about the child Donald and I lost. So Reggie and I talked about that too.’

  ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ asked Jude gently.

  ‘I don’t see why they shouldn’t exist. Everything else in life is so untidy and unfinished. It doesn’t seem to me totally beyond the realms of possibility that some part of a dead person lingers in the world they are meant to have left behind.’

  ‘So you knew the story about Agnes Wardock’s ghost?’

  ‘Of course. Cecil Wardock told me.’ She spoke of him without any reference to – or perhaps memory of – the fact that she had only recently been trying to brain him with a blunt instrument.

  There was a silence. Then Carole asked, ‘So how many times did you and Reggie meet here?’

  ‘Oh, maybe a dozen over the years.’

  ‘And there wasn’t any sexual element in your relationship?’

  ‘On my side, certainly not. I’d known Reggie for years. Very fond of him, but I’d never felt about him in that way. Besides, I do have standards. Oenone’s a friend. I would never do that to a friend.’

  Jude couldn’t help saying, ‘It didn’t stop you with Piers.’

  ‘The situation was entirely different. Jonquil had effectively walked out of that marriage. And she continually put Piers through the kind of purgatory that . . . Well, let’s just say, I didn’t feel any guilt about Jonquil.’

  ‘Do you think,’ asked Jude, ‘that Jonquil ever had an affair with Reggie?’

  ‘No,’ Felicity Budgen replied firmly. ‘He wouldn’t have done that. I think even with me, though it was a sexual thing he felt for me, he wouldn’t have . . . I mean, if I’d been more accommodating, if I’d offered him any encouragement . . . No, he was devoted to Oenone.’

  Carole picked up the interrogation. ‘You said there was no sexual element on your side between you and Reggie. But for him you’ve just said it was “a sexual thing”.’

  Felicity Budgen grimaced. ‘Yes, sexual at some level, but . . . not real. I think in some strange way he did live in hope of my changing my mind about him at some point. But no, he was just infatuated with me.’ She spoke as if infatuation was a tiresome inconvenience that she had had to go through more than once during her life. Maybe it was an occupational hazard for women who went through life being as beautiful as Felicity Budgen, thought Carole.

  ‘And that infatuation continued right through to his death,’ she suggested.

  ‘Maybe. It wasn’t something I encouraged.’

  ‘I think you knew it was still there, though’ Carole persisted. ‘You knew he would immediately respond when you texted him to join you here “like we used to”.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘So,’ said Jude, ‘could we go back to what Reggie said after he’d had that fall at the Sec’s Cup?’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘You thought he was threatening to spill the beans?’

  ‘Exactly. And it was at that moment that I knew I had to kill him.’

  ‘But why,’ asked Carole, ‘did you set up that elaborate way of doing it?’

  ‘Well, would you believe that in my previous life I have very rarely been faced with the challenge of how to kill someone.’ A half-smile played around Felicity Budgen’s lips as she said this. ‘I have many competences – most of which have been necessary to my life as the wife of an ambassador – but murder is not one of th
em.

  ‘Also I was looking for a method that could look like an accident, and I knew from Oenone about Reggie’s history of heart trouble. As I say, he’d talked to me about his interest in ghosts . . . we’d even discussed the story of Agnes Wardock. And then when I mentioned the idea of dressing up as a ghost to Jonquil, she absolutely leapt on the idea.’

  ‘Oh, it was you who mentioned it to Jonquil?’ said Jude, relieved that at least one thing Piers had told her hadn’t been a lie.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you didn’t tell her the aim of the exercise was to kill Reggie?’ asked Carole.

  ‘Good heavens, no. I just said it was a bit of fun. You know, Reggie Playfair had been going on about the supposed ghost of Lockleigh House tennis court . . . wouldn’t it be jolly to set up a special viewing for him? Jonquil thought it was a hysterically funny idea.’

  Felicity Budgen smoothed a delicate hand across her fine brow. ‘I think I’ve been in a rather strange state recently. There are things I’ve done that I can’t really believe. I mean, what I’ve just said I did to Reggie . . . was that really me? Did I do that?’

  ‘I don’t think there’s much doubt about it,’ said Carole firmly. ‘Within the last hour you were also about to brain Cecil Wardock – and you threatened to kill Tonya Grace.’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’ She nodded as if reminding herself. ‘It all seemed terribly important then. It doesn’t seem so important now. I must have had a lot bottled up inside me. I think the reason that murder appealed was that I was so sick of being nice to people!’ The venom with which these last words were spat out seemed to surprise the speaker as much as anyone. ‘Yes,’ she repeated more calmly, ‘I have been in a very strange state.’

  ‘You’re not well,’ said Jude. ‘You need help, psychiatric help.’

  ‘What, a one-way ticket to the funny farm? Donald wouldn’t like that. Donald doesn’t believe in mental illness. He thinks all problems can be sorted out by a strong drink or a game of golf.’

  ‘Then Donald needs to change his ideas,’ said Jude. ‘Felicity, you definitely need help.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, almost gratefully. ‘I think I do.’