The Fethering Mysteries 09; Blood at the Bookies tfm-9

by Simon Brett

  She noticed that Andy Constant had just entered the pub and so, with an ‘Excuse me’, edged her way towards a table for two she’d just seen vacated.

  He flopped down in front of his pint, long limbs drooping in a parody of exhaustion. “God, I’m wiped out. I find directing takes more out of me than acting ever did. Particularly with these kids…you never quite know what they’re going to do from minute to minute.”

  “They seemed very disciplined to me, from what I saw on stage.”

  “Yes, but it takes a while to get into their heads what acting’s about. Very few of them understand the concept of an ensemble. They don’t know that acting’s not about the individual, it’s about everyone working together.” Which Jude understood as ‘everyone doing what I tell them’.

  “Still, the show played pretty well tonight,” Andy Constant went on complacently. “I like it when the audience gasps.” The audience had indeed gasped, but only at the crowbarring-in of a few four-letter words, which Jude hadn’t reckoned added anything.

  “I’m intrigued that the show was worked out through improvisation,” said Jude. “It all felt very structured.”

  He grinned, as if she had given him a compliment. “Yes, well, the ideas the kids come up with are not always very practical. You have to have someone there who’s shaping the thing.”

  “And in this case that person was you?”

  He acknowledged the fact with a nod, took a long sip of his lager and then looked at Jude through narrowed eyes. She guessed that at some stage he had been told he looked sexy doing that, and was annoyed with herself for actually finding it sexy.

  “So…Jude…I don’t know much about you.”

  “No.” That was, generally speaking, the way she liked things to stay. “Well, I live in Fethering. Is that enough information?”

  “I’d like to know whether you’re married?”

  “No.”

  “In a long-term relationship?”

  “No.”

  “I’m surprised. You’re an attractive woman.”

  “Thank you.” Jude had never been coy about accepting compliments. “And what about you…in the marital stakes?”

  He ran his fingers through his long grey hair, flattening it either side of the central parting. “I am technically married, in that my wife and I haven’t bothered to divorce, but we haven’t really been married for sixteen years…no, I tell a lie, it’s seventeen now.”

  “Children?”

  “A couple.”

  “How old?”

  “Oh, finished with education. Off our hands.” The answer was airy and, to Jude’s mind, calculatedly vague. He didn’t want her to know exactly how old he was, which probably meant he was older than he looked.

  This impression was confirmed by the way he immediately moved the conversation on. “You haven’t got any further in your search for the killer of Tadeusz Jankowski?”

  “No further progress. Nor in finding a connection between him and Clincham College.”

  That caught him on the hop. A momentary expression of anxiety was quickly quelled as he said, “Well, I think you’re very unlikely to find one.”

  “Carole and I can keep looking.”

  “Of course you can. It’s a free country. Though, with the current government, I’m beginning to wonder…” It was a line he had to say, to maintain his pose as the free-thinking outsider.

  Their exchange of information was still incomplete, so Jude asked, “And are you in a relationship at the moment?”

  He did the narrowed eyes routine again. “Nothing I couldn’t get out of if something better came along,” he murmured. God, the arrogance of the man.

  “I think we should meet again,” he announced suddenly. “When we have more time to…appreciate each other.”

  “It’s a thought,” said Jude, against her better judgement.

  “A good thought.” He smiled lazily. “I’d suggest extending, this evening’s encounter, but…” He shrugged “…I’m afraid there’s some stuff I’ve still got to sort out back at the college.”

  Jude didn’t say anything. The bar was quieter now. The first rush of students had gone back to the campus. Her hand was lying on the table. Andy Constant moved his forward as if to touch it, then abruptly changed his mind as he caught sight of the approaching Sophia Urquhart.

  “Andy, bit of a problem.”

  He looked shaken and turned to face the girl. “Something to do with the show?”

  “No. A message from Joan.” She looked piercingly at Jude, not recognizing her but perhaps with a degree of suspicion. “If I could just have a quick word, Andy…”

  “Excuse me.” He shrugged, as if to apologize for the bad timing of all young people, and uncoiled his lanky body from the chair.

  There was a short exchange between him and Sophia, then he ambled back to the table with a magnanimous smile. “Sorry, she was just picking up on a note I gave her about tonight’s performance.”

  Which was a perfectly reasonable explanation for what had happened. But for the fact that Jude had exceptionally good hearing and had caught the words the two of them had whispered to each other.

  Sophia had said, “Joan thought her father would have gone straight after the show, but he’s just offered her a lift home. So she can’t come back with you tonight. She says she probably could tomorrow.”

  “Tell her she’d better be able to,” Andy Constant had hissed. “I want her.”

  “I’ll pass on the message.”

  “Make sure you do,” he said intensely. “Make sure she knows what I feel.”

  Jude found the exchange, to say the least, intriguing.

  ∨ Blood at the Bookies ∧

  Nineteen

  Andy Constant looked at his watch, before turning his narrowed eyes back on to Jude. “Actually, I could show you the college’s Drama facilities now if you like…”

  “I’ve seen the theatre.”

  “But not the Drama Studio. I keep a secret supply of hooch in the Drama Studio. We could have our second drink there.”

  “No, thank you,” said Jude firmly.

  Andy Constant’s reaction was like that of a spoiled child. He swallowed down the rest of his lager and, with a brusque ‘Thank you for the drink – I’d better go and sort things out back at the college’, left the pub.

  Jude was appalled by his behaviour. If she read what had happened right, Andy Constant had had some kind of assignation set up with the Joan that Sophia Urquhart had mentioned…quite possibly back in the Drama Studio. Within seconds of hearing that Joan couldn’t make it, he had, presumably on the ‘bird in the hand’ principle, asked Jude to share the delights of the Drama Studio with him. And when she, who hardly knew him, had refused, he had immediately thrown his toys out of the pram.

  But Jude had a feeling that wouldn’t be the last she heard from Andy Constant. She recognized the kind of man who wouldn’t acknowledge failure when it came to women. He’d be on the phone again before too long, suggesting another meeting. And Jude hated herself for knowing that she’d probably respond to his invitation.

  Oh dear, how weak she could sometimes be. Time to get back to Woodside Cottage. She reached into her handbag for her mobile to call a cab, and then realized she’d left it on charge in her bedroom. Never mind, there was bound to be a public phone in the pub. In fact there was a sign to it over the far side of the room.

  As she approached the bar, she found herself passing the three Urquharts. “Jude,” said Ewan bonhomously, “are you after another drink? Please, allow me to do the honours.”

  “That’s very kind, but actually I was just on my way. Going to phone for a cab.”

  “Oh, you don’t need to do that. You’re in Fethering, aren’t you? So are we. I’ll give you a lift.”

  “Well, thank you.”

  “And since the massed Urquhart clan are not leaving till we’ve had another dram, what can I get for you?”

  ♦

  Ewan Urquhart, as he
never missed telling everyone, drove a large sleek black Lexus. It must have been recently cleaned. In the damp February weather cars in West Sussex were very quickly spattered with mud from the roads, and his shone as though it had just come out of the showroom.

  The interior was also immaculate. Hamish had offered her the passenger seat, but Jude had said she was sure he needed the leg-room, so sat in the back with Sophia. She was aware of the girl’s distinctive and very expensive perfume. She was also aware that Sophia seemed subdued and out of sorts. Perhaps it was just the come-down after giving of herself in Rumours of Wars.

  The relative silence of his children didn’t appear to worry Ewan Urquhart, as he continued the monologue which, from what Jude had seen, filled his every waking hour. “I thought the show was pretty well done, but I’m not sure what the point of it was. I mean, good as a showcase for student talent perhaps, but not what you’d call entertainment. I can’t imagine anyone who hadn’t a vested interest…you know, some connection with the cast…voluntarily going to a show like that.”

  “You don’t know anything about theatre, Daddy,” said his daughter truculently.

  “I may not know about theatre, but I know what I like,” he riposted with a self-satisfied guffaw. “And what I like is something with a structure. A ‘well-made play’ I think it’s called.”

  “An ‘old·fashioned play’ is what I think you mean.”

  “Nonsense, Soph. Certain standards are always viable. In my young day plays were crafted, not thrown together from the ideas of a bunch of self-dramatizing students. And craft is what plays should be about.”

  “I didn’t know you were a lover of the theatre, Ewan,” said Jude.

  “Oh yes, there’s some stuff I enjoy.”

  “Really?” asked his daughter. “But you never go to the theatre, Daddy.”

  “I do.”

  “Come on, before tonight, when was the last time you went to the theatre?”

  “Well…Well, I…”

  “See, you can’t remember. Honestly, Daddy, sometimes you’re so full of shit.”

  He wouldn’t have taken a line like that from anyone else, but when his beloved daughter said it, Ewan Urquhart just chuckled. “You may be right, but I know what I like.”

  “Do you get to see a lot of theatre, Sophia?” asked Jude.

  “Oh yes, I go whenever I can. It’s important, you know, because of the course I’m on. Andy sometimes organizes trips to the West End for us, and we get to see most of what’s on in Brighton and Chichester.”

  “Now Chichester used to do some good plays,” said her father.

  “Yes, but you never went to see any of those either.”

  “I remember you and Mum taking us to see some pantomimes there when we were little,” said Hamish, rather pathetically.

  But his contribution to the dialogue was, as ever, ignored, as his father chuntered on. “It’s a very insecure business, though, the theatre. I’m just waiting, Jude, till young Sophia sees the error of her ways and starts doing something sensible.”

  “It’s my life,” said his daughter passionately, “and I’ll do what I want with it!”

  Her father was instantly contrite. Clearly he didn’t like to upset his precious Sophia, “Yes, of course you will,” he said soothingly. “I was only joking.”

  “Dad’s always joking,” said Hamish, contributing his bit to the reassurance. “He’s really not getting at you.”

  “Huh,” was all the response they got from the girl.

  There was then a moment of silence, which Jude broke by asking, “Have you had singing lessons, Sophia? You’ve got a really good voice.”

  “Not much. We cover it a bit in general voice work on the course. But I have sung a bit with bands round here, and I did some singing with people when I was on my gap year.”

  “Gap year,” her father snorted. “Weren’t any gap years when I was growing up. You finished your education and you got down to work. Mind you, we didn’t have a government then that wanted to keep as many kids as possible as students to massage the unemployment figures.”

  Carole would agree with you on that, thought Jude.

  “I think,” he went on, “that university is just an excuse for not facing up to real life. I didn’t go to university and it hasn’t done me any harm.”

  “Nor me,” Hamish agreed.

  But of course he was just setting himself up for another parental put-down. “Yes, but the cases were slightly different. I didn’t go to university as a career decision. I reckoned the education I’d had at Charterhouse would be quite sufficient to see me through life. Which indeed has proved to be the case. Whereas you, Hamish, didn’t go to university because you were too thick to get in!”

  As before, all the Urquharts, including Hamish, enjoyed this joke at his expense.

  “So, Sophia, where did you go on your gap year?” asked Jude.

  “Oh, just round Europe. InterRailing, you know. France, Germany, Denmark.”

  “Did you get into any of the old Eastern Bloc countries?”

  “No.”

  “Thought you said you went to East Germany,” her father pointed out, nitpicking as ever.

  “Oh yes, I did. Sorry, I wasn’t counting that, because it’s part of Germany now.”

  “Geography never was your strong point, was it, Soph?” Another guffaw. “Though I think that’s actually just a women’s thing. No good at navigating, women – have to keep stopping to ask for directions.”

  “Whereas men get lost,” said Jude, “because they never will stop to ask for directions.”

  “Oh, touche,” came the response, but nothing was actually going to change Ewan Urquhart’s view of the opposite sex. “Now tell me, Jude, where is it you live?”

  “On the High Street. Just drop me anywhere now, it’s no distance.”

  “Nonsense. I will escort you to your front door. One hears of such terrible things happening to unaccompanied women these days.”

  “Well, thank you, I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

  But the Lexus had already turned into the High Street. “So tell me, which house is it?”

  “Just along there on the right. Beyond the lamppost.”

  “Oh, I’ve sold a good few properties along here, let me tell you. Prices skyrocketing. If you’re ever thinking of selling, Jude…”

  “Well, I had thought of having the place valued. You know, to sort of see where I stand.”

  “We’d be happy to do it. All part of the service at Urquhart & Pease. Isn’t that right, Hamish?”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  “By the way, I’m intrigued to know…” Jude asked. “Who’s Pease?”

  “My partner?”

  “Yes, the other part of Urquhart & Pease.”

  “Ah.” Ewan Urquhart chuckled, before producing another well-rehearsed line. “He doesn’t exist. When I set up the business, I reckoned two names sounded more authoritative than one. So that’s how Mr Pease got invented.”

  “Thank you for explaining that. It’d been intriguing me. Anyway, I might take you up on your offer of a valuation.”

  “Do, by all means.”

  Then, as the big car slowed down, Jude asked Sophia, “Tell me, while you were in East Germany, did you go to Leipzig?”

  The girl looked at her with some surprise. Then the line of her mouth hardened as she replied, “No. I’ve never been there.”

  ∨ Blood at the Bookies ∧

  Twenty

  Both Carole and Jude had shopping to do on the Saturday morning, but they joined up for coffee in the kitchen of High Tor at about eleven. Jude had not suggested meeting at Woodside Cottage because Zofia Jankowska had come in very late the night before and the poor girl needed her sleep. She was exhausted by the emotional rollercoaster she had been riding since she heard of her brother’s death.

  Carole was very pleased with herself about the information she had received from Gerald Hume and presented it to Jude with considerable aplomb. “So at la
st we have a name. Someone who, did actually know Tadek – or at least spoke to him in the betting shop.”

  “Pauline implied that he knew the woman. Melanie Newton, eh?”

  “And Gerald seemed to think she lived in Fedborough.”

  “Sounds like a job for the local phone book.”

  Flicking through the directory, they were beginning to wish their quarry had a less common name. There were forty Newtons listed. But when they narrowed the search down to Fedborough addresses, it looked easier.

  Only four. None of them had the initial ‘M’, but, as Carole and Jude agreed, the listing might well be under the name of Melanie Newton’s husband or another relation.

  “Well, let’s see if we get any joy. Are you going to call them or shall I?”

  “You do it, Jude.” Carole was suddenly embarrassed by the idea of phoning up complete strangers. “You’re better at lying than I am.”

  “Why do I need to lie?”

  “You can’t just ring up someone out of the blue, can you?”

  “A lot of people do. The number of calls I get about replacement windows and making wills and investing in land…”

  “Yes, or trying to sell you a mobile phone,…”

  “Perhaps I should do that. Make up some story. Pretend I’m from a call centre.” Jude made up her mind. “No, I think it’d be simpler – as usual – just to tell the truth.”

  “‘Hello, I want to talk to you about someone you spoke to five months ago’?” suggested Carole with disbelief.

  “Something along those lines, yes.” Jude phoned the first of the numbers. An answering machine message. She pressed the red button to end the call. “Bob and Marie Newton are not available at the moment. No Melanie.”

  She keyed in the next number. “Oh, hello, could I speak to Melanie?”

  She was informed, with some huffiness, that there was no one of that name living at the address.

  “Two more to go,” she said as she tried the third. Again someone answered. A woman’s voice.

  “Oh, hello, could I speak to Melanie Newton, please?”

  “I’m sorry. She no longer lives here.”