by Simon Brett
It took some minutes for the hysterics to subside. Carole drank her coffee, feeling rather guilty for precipitating this reaction. But Philly had wanted the information.
When she was calmer, Jude said, 'There's clearly quite a lot you're not telling us, isn't there, Philly?' This prompted a feeble nod. 'And if you don't want to tell us any more, that's fine. But what you know is clearly troubling you, and if you think sharing it might help . . . ?'
The suggestion dangled in the air for what seemed like a long time before Philly tore off a sheet of kitchen roll and wiped her nose firmly before saying, 'All right, I'll tell you. It'll be useful practice for me, because no doubt I'll have to repeat it all for the police sometime soon.'
* * *
Chapter Sixteen
Neither woman responded, unwilling to break the confessional atmosphere. Philly took a deep breath and started. 'Mark's life has always been complicated. Basically he's married. He was married when we first met - and he didn't make any secret of the fact. He wasn't one of those men who passes himself off as a bachelor and only reveals his real status when the woman's too involved to back out. No, he told me early on that he was married, but he told me things had been difficult with his wife for a long time. She's Irish, very temperamental, called Nuala. Drank a lot, and encouraged him to drink a lot too. Very much part of that City drinking culture. Obviously I was only hearing Mark's side of things, but she did sound an absolute nightmare, a real emotional vampire.
'So when we first started seeing each other, he was having a terrible time. He kept telling her he was leaving and every time she'd overreact.'
'In what way?' asked Jude.
'She'd get ill - or pretend to get ill.'
'Any suicide attempts?'
'Yes, but those were no more real than the illnesses.
She'd take enough pills to make her woozy, but not enough to do any permanent harm. She'd announce on the phone to Mark that she'd slashed her wrists, but when it came to it, she just got a little scratch, something that would heal up without even leaving a scar.'
'Was she ever hospitalised after these attempts?'
'No way. She didn't want a doctor to see how far she'd been from doing herself any real damage. It was all just for Mark's benefit.'
'And did he respond to these "cries for help"?' asked Carole.
'He did at first, yes. After a while, he came to recognize them for what they were - just straightforward emotional blackmail. And then things got better.'
'How?'
'Two things. One, Mark settled some money on her.'
'Bought her off?'
'You could call it that. Anyway, Mark could afford it. He'd saved a lot from his bonuses while he'd been in the City and he'd made what seemed at the time to be some pretty shrewd investments. So Nuala got a monthly payment for keeping out of his hair, and she seemed quite happy with that.'
'If she was reconciled to the ending of their relationship, why didn't they get a divorce?' asked Carole.
'Nuala refused that. She said it was because of her Catholic upbringing, though she had no faith at all. I think it was just a way of keeping an element of control for the moment when she might need it.'
'You said there were two things that improved the situation,' Jude reminded her.
'Yes. The money was the first. The second was even better. Nuala met someone else. She got into a new relationship. Suddenly she didn't care anything about Mark . . . though actually I don't reckon she ever did. Anyway, it left him and me free to make our move down here. Everything seemed fine.'
'So what went wrong?' asked Carole.
Philly's face screwed up into an expression of wry despair. 'What didn't? The company in which Mark had most of his investments suddenly went belly up. You know how volatile the stock market's been recently and his were pretty high-risk companies. He lost a packet. Keeping our lifestyle going down here and making the payments to Nuala . . . well, there just wasn't enough money in the bank. And then to add to the problems, Nuala's new relationship broke up. Her bloke found out - just as Mark had done - what she was really like, and he got out as quickly as he could. So suddenly Mark's not only getting financial demands from Nuala, she's also back on the emotional blackmail routine.'
'Illness, suicide attempts?'
'All that, Jude. And Mark . . . well, he's a decent bloke. She could still get to him. I kept saying he should ignore her. Call her bluff. Let the spoilt bitch go ahead with one of her threats. I knew she'd never really top herself. But Mark didn't see it that way.'
'And is that why he walked out?' Jude asked gently.
'Yes. He was under so much pressure - from the money, from everything else - that he said he just needed a bit of time to sort things out.'
'So do you actually know where he is?' Carole's question was less delicately put than Jude's.
Philly shook her head. 'If I did, I'd go and find him, tell him he doesn't owe that crazy bitch anything. Tell him that he should be with me, not with her.' The tears, which she had been controlling very well, threatened once again to break through.
'You're suggesting,' Jude observed, 'that Mark has gone back to Nuala.'
'Well, what else am I meant to think? He says he's going away to sort himself out, for about a week I get regular texts from him, then suddenly nothing. Nuala's got her talons into him again.'
'Was that the first explanation you thought of?' asked Carole. 'You didn't worry that he might have had an accident or something?'
'I did at first. But after a while I thought if he had - even if he was dead - I would probably have heard about it, from the police, from the media, from somewhere. People don't just suddenly vanish from off the face of the earth.'
'It happens more often than you might think,' said Jude.
'Well, that wasn't my reading of the situation. I reckoned he'd probably gone back to Nuala. Back to the vicious spiral of drinking and emotional blackmail and . . . The alternative was that he'd gone abroad, just cut loose from everything and arranged a disappearing act. Either way, I wasn't ever going to see him again.' The thought was so painful that again tears welled at her eyelids.
'Well, at least now you know that he's alive,' said Carole. 'If he was seen down here only last week.'
'Yes. But that's not much comfort. Particularly if he was down here with another woman. I'd put money on the fact that that was Nuala.'
'Do you know what she looks like?'
'I've never met her, if that's what you mean. But from what Mark said, I gather she was very tall. Taller than him, nearly six foot. Very slim, and with long black hair. And those blue eyes Irish girls have.'
Carole made a mental note to check out that description with Curt Holderness if she got the opportunity.
'But why would they come down here?' asked Jude. 'Do you think they wanted to meet up with you, actually talk through the situation?'
'No, I wouldn't have thought that was why they came. I bet Nuala made him come down here, just so that she could crow over me. "So here's the nice little seaside idyll you set up with Philly, is it? Well, it was never going to last, was it, because you're back with me now, Mark." I can just hear her saying it.' And indeed for Nuala's imagined words Philly had taken on a hint of an Irish accent.
'That would be very cruel,' said Carole. 'Would coming here and crowing about your unhappiness be in character for Mark as you knew him?'
'Not for Mark as I knew him, no. But when he's with Nuala he's not Mark as I knew him. She poisons his mind. She's a vile malevolent bitch.'
'I thought you said you hadn't met her?' Jude pointed out mildly.
'I don't need to meet her. I know from the effect she had on Mark what kind of woman she is.'
As she tried to make sense of her boyfriend's actions, the pain that Philly Rose had suffered for the past few weeks had clearly now been curdled with paranoia. And deep hatred of the Irishwoman she had never met.
'Just suppose,' said Carole very calmly and judiciously, 'just suppose that Mark's moti
ve in coming down to Smalting was not just to crow over you.'
'What do you mean?'
'When he was seen by Curt Holderness, Mark and the woman were walking down from the promenade on to the beach.'
'Yes?'
'And when we talked before you said you reckoned he probably still had a key to Quiet Harbour.'
'Well, I'm not sure . . .'
'You said you hadn't found it among his things.'
'No, but-'
Carole cut through the interruption. 'You said when Mark left, he told you he "needed a bit of time to sort things out"?'
'Yes. Something like that.'
'Do you remember the exact words he used?'
Philly Rose's brow wrinkled as she tried to remember. 'He promised that he would come back to me, but he said there were things he had to sort out before he did. He said the main thing he had to sort out was Nuala.'
'And a few days after Mark, who had a key to Quiet Harbour, was seen at night-time going down to Smalting Beach in the company of a woman, human remains were discovered under the beach hut.'
Philly Rose's hands shot up to clasp her face, as she took in the full implication of Carole's words.
* * *
Chapter Seventeen
Philly had clearly wanted them to leave. She needed to be alone to assess the full import of the new suspicion that Carole and Jude had planted in her mind, and they reckoned they would do more harm than good by staying with her.
It was around twelve when they emerged from Seashell Cottage. 'Lunch?' suggested Jude hopefully.
Carole's face disapproved. 'It's a bit early,' she said, 'and I've got the remains of a chicken in the fridge back at High Tor.'
'Oh, go on,' said Jude.
'No.' Carole was very firm. 'There's something else I want to do first.' And she led her friend along the Smalting promenade to a small former bakery, over whose shop windows was a silver-lettered sign reading 'Zentner Gallery'.
As she pushed the door open a bell tinkled, but the room they entered was empty. Its small space was inventively used. By the counter stood rotating stands of postcards and greetings cards. On the wall behind it hung framed prints of the predictably popular - Van Gogh's Starry Night, Jack Vettriano's Singing
Butler, Warhol's Marilyns, and so on. Sample posters and standard-sized frames were stacked upright in boxes to be riffled through. On the counter itself were grouped a selection of bookmarks, paperweights, decorative pencils and other knick-knacks. These items presumably kept the tills ticking over and were bought mostly by browsers who'd come into the shop with no intention of buying any original artwork.
But there was quite a lot of that on display in the rest of the gallery. On a central table stood bronze sculptures, mostly hares running and salmon leaping. Some colourful abstracts decorated the back wall, out of reach of the sun. On the side opposite the counter was a display of works by three artists. Nearest the window were some predominantly blue fantasy scenes - long-haired blue maidens peering through blue ferns at blue Arthurian boats on blue lakes with brooding blue Tolkien mountains in the background. Further back were a selection of splashy pictures of racehorses, all looking exactly the same, except presumably to their owners. And between the two was an array of Gray Czesky's bland seascapes and South Downs-scapes. Carole moved forward to look at them.
'Can I help you?' A small woman in her early fifties with short black hair appeared from the back of the shop, rubbing her hands on a J-cloth. 'Sorry, just been doing some framing. The glue gets all over the place.'
'Good morning,' said Carole. 'I was interested in these.'
'They're by Gray Czesky.'
'From the subject matter it looks like he's a local.'
'Could hardly be more local. Lives just four houses along from here. By the way, I'm Sonja Zentner.'
'Carole Seddon.'
'And I'm Jude. So you own the gallery?'
'Yes. Fulfilling a long-held dream. I spent twenty years teaching art to uninterested teenagers, and always promised myself I'd retire early and do this.'
'Good. And how's it going?'
Sonja Zentner twiddled her hands in a 'so-so' gesture. 'Comes and goes. Better in the summer, obviously. And the framing keeps things ticking over. Anyway, Carole, you like the Gray Czeskys, do you?'
'Yes,' Carole lied.
'But how much do you like them?' Sonja Zentner grinned. 'Enough to want to buy one? Here are the prices.' She handed across a printed sheet.
Carole's immediate reaction was that Gray Czesky's watercolours seemed very expensive. The cheapest was five hundred pounds and the prices ranged up to over a thousand. 'Oh well, I don't think—'
'Does he take commissions?' Jude interrupted.
The gallery owner laughed. 'Show me the artist who doesn't take commissions. Of course he does.'
'Because you see, we live in Fethering and Carole was only saying the other day that she'd really like a decent watercolour of Fethering Beach to hang in her sitting room.' Jude carefully avoided the look of suppressed fury in her neighbour's eyes. 'And she'd really like to talk to Gray Czesky about it.'
'No problem. I can call him now, if you like. He's usually at home. He might well see you straight away.'
While Sonja Zentner made the call Jude looked demurely out of the window at Smalting Beach, confident that Carole wouldn't make a fuss until they were alone together.
The gallery owner put the phone down. 'Yes, that's perfect. Gray's there and would be delighted to talk to you about a potential commission. As I say, he's just four doors along. The house is called "Sanditon".'
'Thank you, that's so kind,' said Jude graciously. Then looking down towards the white tent surrounding Quiet Harbour, she continued, 'Terrible, that business over there, wasn't it?'
'Oh yes. And, needless to say in a place like Smalting, all kinds of theories are being put forward about what actually happened.'
'Any theories that sound believable?'
'Most of them are pretty fanciful, to be quite honest. And I think they'll stay that way until we get a bit more information. The police haven't said anything more about what was actually found under the beach hut. Just "human remains". Once we know the age and gender of the poor unfortunate, I think that'll put paid to some of the sillier conjectures.'
'So what's the latest you've heard, Sonja?'
'There was someone in only this morning who was convinced she knew who'd hidden the remains under the hut.'
'Oh?'
'Yes, she reads rather a lot of crime fiction, I'm afraid, and she said that the police frequently ignore the most obvious solution. She said the first suspect should always be the person who discovers the body.'
'But in this case that was the Fether District Council-approved contractor who was about to repair the fire damage.'
'Oh no, Jude, she didn't mean him. She meant the one who discovered the fire damage. She was convinced that the murderer must be the woman who took over the hut rental from Philly Rose/
'Oh, was she?' said a very tight-lipped Carole.
'Jude, will you stop giggling!' They were walking along the promenade towards Sanditon. 'It is not funny. It is not funny that I've just been identified as a murderer. And it's even less funny that you have set up a meeting with an artist who's expecting me to commission him to paint a watercolour of Fethering Beach.'
'It's an introduction. How else were we going to get to talk to Gray Czesky?'
'But I don't want to commission a watercolour from him. Certainly not at those prices. Anyway, I loathe watercolours. I just find them so insipid.'
'Look, you're only discussing the possibility of commissioning the painting. Obviously you don't go through with it.'
'But I can't raise this man's expectations about—'
'Carole, it's a commercial transaction. He's offering a service that you can accept or refuse. You're just checking out the possibilities. It's quite plausible that you could subsequently find another artist prepared to do you a
watercolour of Fethering Beach at a much more reasonable price.'
'But I don't want a watercolour of Fethering Beach!' wailed Carole.
'It'll be fine.'
'It won't. Jude, you've put me in a very difficult position. I have to lie to this man about wanting a painting painted, and then I'll have to lie to him again about not wanting a painting painted.'
'As I say, it'll be fine. Trust me.'
'Huh,' Carole snorted.
Gray Czesky's studio was on the first floor of Sanditon, a large front bedroom commandeered for the cause of art. Carole and Jude could see why he had chosen it. A bay of huge picture windows meant that the light was excellent. The scene it illuminated, however, was one of total chaos.
Though the rest of the house, the hall into which the artist's wife Helga admitted them, the staircase and landing they were led through, was almost excessively neat, the studio was grotesquely untidy. Its bare boards and walls were deeply encrusted with spilled paint, the floor was a refuse dump of paint pots, broken brushes and soiled rags.
So total was the disarray that there was an air of parody about it, as though the artist had modelled his working space on images of Francis Bacon's studio. But here were no visceral canvases of tortured souls and twisted bodies. Instead, Gray Czesky's neat chocolate-box watercolours struck a discordant note in the surrounding squalor.
The artist himself also seemed a parody. His long, greying hair and paint-spattered clothing presented an image of someone who didn't care about his appearance, but a lot of effort had gone into creating that effect. It was in marked contrast to his wife's hausfrau look, her neat blue skirt and a pink blouse fussy with ruffles.
'If you'd like coffee - or a drink maybe - Helga'll get you some.'
Carole and Jude both refused the offer and Helga left the room, her husband hardly having acknowledged her presence. He reached for a whisky bottle fingerprinted with paint, and poured a good measure into a filthy glass. After a long swig, he gestured to a spattered sofa on to which Carole and Jude sat gingerly. Gray Czesky perched on a tall paint-covered stool.