The Corpse on the Court

by Simon Brett

  Sir Donald Budgen was extremely put out when Carole Seddon rang and said he should come and collect his wife from Lockleigh House tennis court.

  ‘She’s got her car there,’ he protested. ‘And I’ve got a dodgy back.’

  ‘She’s in no state to drive.’

  ‘Then she can organize a bloody taxi.’

  ‘You should come and collect her,’ insisted Carole.

  With bad grace he gave in.

  Carole, Jude and Lady Budgen didn’t talk a lot more. They just sat together in the club room, in a silence that seemed perversely companionable. When the doubles players came off the court at eight fifteen, Felicity joshed with them about their game and agreed it was a pity that nobody had taken the last booking of the day. Given the small number of real tennis courts in the country, it was a shame that any time-slot should go unfilled.

  The doubles players had changed and gone by the time Sir Donald Budgen arrived. ‘What is this nonsense, Felicity?’ he demanded. ‘You “in a state” – what on earth does that mean?’

  ‘She’s had a shock,’ said Jude gently. ‘She’s not well.’

  The ex-ambassador looked at his wife and something he saw in her face seemed to unnerve him. ‘What’s all this about, darling?’ he asked in a milder tone. ‘You can’t be ill, can you, old sausage?’

  And the idea that she might be really frightened him.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Carole and Jude might have known that Cecil Wardock would have been very neat in his record keeping. He had always been an efficient man in his professional life and he brought that efficiency to the log he kept of nocturnal comings and goings at Lockleigh House.

  They had gone straight back to the nursing home after the Budgens had left. In the interim since they had last been there the residents had had their evening meal. The woman on reception was of the view that it was rather late for another visit, and rang through to check Cecil Wardock’s own views on the subject. It was only with his enthusiastic say-so that Carole and Jude were allowed upstairs.

  Jude felt pretty stupid as they approached the old man’s room. She should have made the connection. After all, hadn’t Tom Ruthven described his distant relative as ‘the eyes and ears of Lockleigh House’? Jude herself had seen from his window how perfectly placed an insomniac Cecil Wardock would be to witness the arrivals and departures at the main gates of Lockleigh House. If they’d asked him earlier, they could have saved themselves a great deal of trouble.

  ‘It was when I first arrived here at Lockleigh House that I started it,’ the old man explained. ‘I was not in a very good state of mind at the time. My wife had not died long before and the step of moving into a nursing home seemed to me a huge one, an acknowledgement that, to all intents and purposes, my life was over. My sleeping patterns were completely destroyed and it was then that I embarked on my career as a nocturnal chronicler.

  ‘I was also at that time suspicious that certain of my possessions seemed to have disappeared in the course of the move from my own house. So initially my vigilance was directed towards the tracking down of thieves. In retrospect, I think that too was just a symptom of my general malaise. I don’t probably think anyone was stealing from me. It was my overriding misery that made me paranoid.

  ‘Anyway, as I settled down into the routine of my new life I came to terms with accepting that some things had gone forever, and I got into the pattern of reading –’ he gestured to the bookshelves – ‘which has provided me with such intellectual sustenance.’ He chuckled. ‘Do you know, I have only three more books to read before I reach the end of my entire publishing oeuvre.’

  ‘And then of course you start again at the beginning,’ said Jude.

  ‘That indeed has been my invariable practice, so there is no reason why the cycle should not be repeated one more time.’ But as he spoke the old man sounded distant and thoughtful.

  Then with an effort he brought his concentration back to the present. ‘I did not, however, break the habit of making entries in my log.’ He tapped a black-covered notebook on the table beside him. ‘An old man’s idle diversion, you may say, but I derived some harmless satisfaction from the record keeping.’

  ‘You only did it during the night time?’ asked Carole.

  ‘Oh yes, just while I was wakeful in the small hours. Frequently there was nothing to record. Weeks would go by with no after-hours visitors to the tennis court.’

  ‘And you never mentioned to anyone at the tennis court what you were doing?’

  Cecil Wardock spread his thin hands wide in a gesture of ignorance. ‘I don’t know anyone at the tennis court. Well, except for Tom Ruthven and I certainly didn’t mention what I was doing to him. No, I don’t know the names of any of them . . . though I did make up names for some of the ones who appeared regularly.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘There’s a young man – I think he might work at the court, he’s certainly around there a lot . . . and he’s certainly around a lot after hours . . . him I nicknamed “Lothario”.’

  ‘Very appositely,’ said Jude.

  ‘As I say, I don’t know him, but I can’t think of another reason for his regular late-night visits to the court. Particularly because his arrival is always quickly followed by that of a young lady.’

  ‘Always the same young lady?’

  ‘Over the years there have been a few different ones. But recently it has been the same girl, the one with the bicycle. She I nickname “The Damsel in Distress”.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Carole.

  ‘Because she always looks a little frightened, as if she doesn’t really think she should be doing what she is doing.’

  ‘Your nicknames are very accurate,’ observed Jude.

  ‘Any other regulars there?’ asked Carole.

  ‘There’s an older couple. I don’t know whether they meet at the court for the same purpose as “Lothario”, but appearances make that unlikely, in her case at least. She is a very soignée lady, who looks as though in her mouth the temperature of butter would not change by the tiniest subdivision of a degree. My nickname for her is “Lady Muck”.’

  ‘And who does she meet?’ asked Jude miserably.

  ‘A tall man with long white hair. Whatever time of night, he always strolls through the gate as if he hasn’t a care in the world. I call him “The Smoothie”.’

  Jude nodded, avoiding her neighbour’s eye.

  Carole didn’t notice; she was too concerned with getting Cecil Wardock on to one specific date. ‘Could we go back to the night of the Tuesday before last . . .?’

  The old publisher flicked back through the pages of his black notebook. ‘Ah, that was quite a night, wasn’t it? Like Piccadilly Circus it was here then.’

  Cecil Wardock showed them the relevant page of fountain-pen-written entries and arranged with the girl at reception to have a photocopy made of it. When they were back at Woodside Cottage, over a bottle of Chilean Chardonnay, Carole and Jude once again read through the neat italic record of that night’s events.

  10.17 p.m. The Damsel in Distress arrives (with her bicycle).

  10.32 p.m. Lothario arrives.

  11.08 p.m. Lothario leaves.

  2.33 a.m. A tall (unknown) woman with long blonde hair arrives.

  3.19 a.m. A man driving a BMW enters through the main gates (for which he has an electronic entry card).

  3.47 a.m. The Damsel in Distress leaves hurriedly on her bicycle.

  4.41 a.m. The Smoothie arrives.

  4.53 a.m. The Smoothie leaves with the (unknown) tall blonde woman.

  7.22 a.m. The Smoothie returns through the main gates in his red E-Type Jaguar.

  7.29 a.m. A plump, blonde-haired lady arrives.

  There wasn’t much there that needed explanation. When he’d received the summons from Felicity Budgen, Reggie Playfair must have taken a taxi from London to Pulborough to pick up his car. Otherwise Carole and Jude could piece together the complete sequence of events.

  ‘Fun
ny,’ said Carole. ‘The one person who wasn’t actually at the court that night was the person who committed the crime. Felicity Budgen. She set the whole thing in motion.’

  Jude nodded listlessly.

  The nearest approximation Carole Seddon could do to a teasing grin appeared on her face. ‘“A plump, blonde-haired lady”. Hm. I wonder what nickname Cecil Wardock would have given you if he had the chance . . .?’

  ‘“The Sucker”?’ suggested Jude.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Of course the police never heard about Reggie Playfair’s murder. Just as well, probably. As Carole had observed, it would have been a difficult case to bring to court.

  And, except for a select few, none of the members of Lockleigh House tennis court had ever thought it was murder, anyway. Reggie Playfair had had a heart attack. ‘Poor old bugger.’ Only Jonty Westmacott still occasionally muttered darkly about ‘foul play’.

  So there was never any question of Felicity Budgen being prosecuted. But her husband did finally, unwillingly admit that she needed psychiatric help. She spent four months in an exclusive private clinic. The Budgens’ acquaintances were told this was for ‘a little gynie op’, which was acceptable in a way that treatment for mental illness wouldn’t have been.

  Then Lady Budgen returned to The Old Manor and to her extensive good works. She went back to doing what she’d done all her adult life – being frightfully loyal to Sir Donald while smiling at a lot of people for whom she had no feelings at all. And their marriage was as happy as it had ever been.

  Cecil Wardock died within a few weeks of his last meeting with Carole and Jude. He had just finished rereading the final, bottom-right book on his shelves, but never got round to starting the cycle again at the top left. Which he would have regarded as a very neat, satisfactory death.

  The activities of Lockleigh House tennis court continued much as before. George Hazlitt still tried to recruit new members who would broaden the club’s demographic. Ned Jackson received a talking-to so severe that he never again used the court premises for anything other than real tennis. In time he married his long-term girlfriend, Kelly, and got his handicap down to plus three. Then he lost interest in real tennis at the professional level and took a job in marketing.

  And at eleven o’clock every Wednesday morning, the Old Boys’ doubles was played by Wally Edgington-Bewley, Tom Ruthven, Rod Farrar and Jonty Westmacott, the last-named of whom always had some physical reason to explain the age-related decline in his real tennis skills.

  Tonya Grace’s tennis, by contrast, improved by leaps and bounds. So much so that she was awarded the annual Potter Plate for Most Improved Player. She also found a boyfriend who was nice to her.

  And nobody ever did more than look at the pictures of Wally Edgington-Bewley’s magnum opus, Courts in the Act.

  Oenone Playfair remained as bright-eyed and cheery as ever when she was in company, and nobody ever knew what pain she suffered when she was on her own. She was, however, deeply relieved when Carole and Jude reassured her that her husband had never had an affair with any female member of the club.

  Carole Seddon had her own moment of triumph when she rang Susan Holland and was able to give the desolate mother her daughter’s phone number. At first, meetings between the two were difficult because of the paranoid jealousy of Vladimir Gretchenko, but very slowly the situation improved. Marina made contact with the local authorities about domestic violence, and even managed to get her husband along to some joint counselling meetings. The marriage was never going to be ideal, but maybe some progress could be achieved.

  And Susan Holland did get to know the four grandchildren of whose existence she had been unaware.

  The situation for Marina’s father was less happy. The story of his paying the daughter of his first marriage to keep out of his life and letting her mother believe her to be dead was leaked to the Brighton press and spread from there to the nationals. There was no secret about who had done the leaking. Susan Holland’s fury, when she knew that her ex-husband had been responsible for her eight years of anguish, knew no bounds. Destroying his career was the very least she could do by way of revenge.

  Very quickly the name of Iain Holland was no longer being mentioned by the ‘high-ups in the Conservative Party’ and his name vanished from their shortlists. The residents of his ward also took their first opportunity to elect another councillor in his place. And his new squeaky-clean marriage broke up.

  None of which, in Carole Seddon’s view, was sufficient punishment for what he had done.

  She, however, was much cheered by the return of her grandchild from Anaheim, Orange County, California. Lily, with her parents, came down to Fethering to see her grandmother on the very first weekend they were back. Carole thought Lily looked absolutely beautiful (though she did secretly feel that the souvenir cuddly Donald Duck they had bought for her in Disneyland was ‘rather vulgar’).

  And Fedborough’s Lady in the Lake remained forever unidentified.

  Returning to normal life in Fethering was harder for Jude. She and Piers Targett did see each other a few more times, but his lies – or perhaps, more accurately, the truths he had chosen not to reveal – lay between them. She did however believe him when he assured her he had had no idea that Felicity Budgen had set up Jonquil’s charade as the ghost of Agnes Wardock.

  Though Piers protested that he loved her, Jude could not forget the fact that his love for her had precipitated the events that led to Reggie Playfair’s death. She also knew that he would never be entirely free of the capricious demands of the woman who was still his wife, Jonquil.

  Jude loved Piers too, but increasingly she knew that their futures did not lie together. She was unlikely ever to go back on to a real tennis court. On the plus side, however, she would never have to face that awkward moment when she had to introduce Piers Targett to Carole Seddon.

  So Jude did the inevitable thing and told Piers that their relationship was at an end.

  But it hurt.