by Simon Brett
Carole and Jude had only been in their surveillance point for about twenty minutes when their luck kicked in. A bunch of students emerged from the campus, behaving even more flamboyantly than the others, and Jude was quick to recognize some of them from the cast of Rumours of Wars. She couldn’t see Sophia Urquhart amongst them, but it was definitely the Drama set. Even better, it included the girl whose pretty dark face was framed by long black hair. Better still, she was one of the group who decided to have a drink to start off whatever entertainment the evening might hold.
The Bull’s ‘Happy Hour’ seemed more or less permanent. The management recognized the value of their location and used low prices to encourage the students’ alcoholic consumption (not that many of them needed much encouragement). The Drama lot equipped themselves with pints of lager for both genders and commandeered a large table over the other side of the bar. Their presence doubled the decibel level in the pub.
“Well, there she is,” said Carole. “How do you propose that we start talking to her?”
“Not a problem,” said Jude, rising to her feet. “If you want to start a conversation with anyone involved in the theatre, all you have to do is to tell them how good their last show was. And fortunately I had the dubious pleasure of witnessing this lot’s last show.”
Carole, as someone who hadn’t seen Rumours of Wars, thought she should stay put, while her friend sashayed across the bar towards the loud assemblage of students.
Two of the boys were just coming to the end of some routine in cod French accents and Jude timed her entrance so that she rode in on a wave of laughter. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said, “but you lot were in Rumours of Wars, weren’t you?”
Their attention was duly grabbed. Someone actually wanted to talk to them about their work. They confirmed that they had been in the show. One or two of them put on the faces they had practised in their mirrors for the moment when they would be interviewed on television about their professional lives.
Time for the tactical half-truth. “I thought the show was terrific. Saw it on Friday. Really packed a punch.”
A couple of the girls agreed that it was powerful stuff. “We felt, like, absolutely drained at the end of it,” said one.
“Yeah, like, the director really made us get into our parts. Even if it’s only a couple of lines, he said, I want to feel, like, the energy you’re transmitting to that person.”
Yes, I bet he said that, thought Jude. And a lot more garbage along the same lines.
Their eyes were gleaming, pathetically hungry for praise. “Well, I thought you were all terrific. I mean, I used to act and I do know what I’m talking about,” They lapped it up. “And the staging, too. It was a real ensemble piece.”
“Yeah, that’s what Andy – he’s, like, the director – he said he wanted us to be an ensemble.”
“Yeah, he said we should be like the…Berlin Ensemble…?” the girl hazarded.
“Berliner Ensemble.”
“Right, whatever.”
“A lot of backstage effort went into that show too.” She looked at the dark-haired girl. “I didn’t see you in it. Were you part of the stage management?”
“No,” the girl said, in an accent that sounded very slightly Spanish. “I was the assistant director.”
“Ooh yes. Like, working very closely with the director,” insinuated one of the boys.
“Shut up!”
But he’d got the others going. “You sound guilty to me,” said one.
“Teacher’s pet,” crowed another. “Or teacher’s heavy petting, maybe?”
“Just shut up!” the girl said again. But there was no vindictiveness in their banter.
“I wonder, actually,” said Jude to the girl, “if I could just have a quick word with you…” Time for another tactical lie “…I’d love to ask you about how the improvisation element worked out.”
“Sure.” The girl seemed quite ready to detach herself from the teasing boys around her. Picking up her pint, she sidled out of her seat.
“Let’s go and join my friend.”
“Is she interested in the theatre too?”
“Oh yes. Very,” Jude lied. Then, as they approached Carole, she continued, “I was just saying how interested you are in the theatre.”
“Really?” Carole’s pale blue eyes looked daggers at her neighbour.
“What was it you wanted to ask about?” said the girl as she sat down easily between them.
“Well, I know Andy Constant, and I just wondered how closely you worked with him on the production? You know, as his assistant?”
She grimaced. “Not very closely at all, really. I mean, like, I had this title of assistant director, but really Andy did everything himself. I don’t think he’s very good at delegating.” No, I can believe that, thought Jude. “Andy had all the ideas, he wasn’t really interested in what I had to say.”
“But did you work with him on the improvisations?”
“Well, yes, but they were pretty useless. I mean, we all did improvisations, but Andy didn’t use much of our stuff. It was like he had the whole thing planned from the start, almost like he was working from a script that was already written.”
“Something he’d done before?”
“It felt like that at times.” Which didn’t surprise Jude one bit. She could imagine Andy Constant bringing out some long-written script, dusting it down, slotting in a few contemporary references and making his students think that they had worked it out through their own improvisation. That would be typical of his controlfreak approach to his work. And would also explain why Rumours of Wars had felt so old·fashioned.
“You imply that being assistant director to Andy Constant wasn’t the most rewarding creative experience of your life.”
“No way. He just used me as cheap labour. Photocopying, typing up rehearsal schedules – that was the extent of my creative input.”
“So was that why you didn’t let them put your name on the programme?”
The girl’s forehead wrinkled with bewilderment. “My name was on the programme.”
“But I thought your first name was Joan.”
The bewilderment increased. “I’m not called Joan.”
♦
Her name, it turned out, was Ines Ribeiro. Her parents were part of the Portuguese community in Littlehampton. She had never been nicknamed ‘Joan’ by anyone. She didn’t know anyone in the Drama set who was called or nicknamed ‘Joan’. She had never met Tadeusz Jankowski. And, in spite of the insinuations of her friends, the suggestion that she might have been having an affair with Andy Constant shocked her to the core of her Portuguese Catholic being.
It was not Carole and Jude’s finest hour. After a very offended Ines Ribeiro had left them, they hastily finished their drinks and beat an ignominious retreat back to Fethering.
∨ Blood at the Bookies ∧
Thirty-One
That evening Jude was getting ready for bed when Zofia returned from her shift at the Crown and Anchor. “Please, I am sorry for intrusion,” said the girl. “May I just check the email on the laptop?”
“Of course you can. But actually it’s not here. I took it downstairs, so that you’d be able to get at it. It’s on the kitchen table.”
“Oh, I am sorry. I did not look down there.”
“No reason why you should have done.” Jude belted her dressing-gown around her substantial waist. “I’ll come down and see if anything’s come through.”
“I just wish to see if there is anything more from Pavel,” said Zofia, as they made their way down to the kitchen. “I asked him if he knew about Tadek’s Joan.”
“Well, let’s hope he knows more than I thought I did.” And, while Zofia got to work on the keyboard, Jude spelt out the failure of her trip with Carole to the Bull.
“Ah yes, there is a reply from Pavel,” said the girl excitedly. “Quite a long one. And look – he has attached another song as well.”
Jude looked at the lines of in
comprehensible words on the screen. “So what does it mean? What does he say?”
“I’ll tell you. First I get out my notebook, make some notes.” She opened the blue book on the kitchen table. Then, as her eyes scanned down the text, the girl translated from the Polish. “He say yes, Tadek did meet the English woman at the festival in Leipzig last summer. He say Tadek did call her ‘Joan’, but he think perhaps it is a nickname. The girl come up on stage and sing with the band one evening when they are in a club. That is how my brother meet her. And Tadek is in love…yes, yes, like he has never been in love before. Always the same with my brother. And Pavel says the woman is very beautiful.”
“What does she look like?”
“He does not say. Maybe later. It is a long email, and Pavel writes like he talks, all out of order, just thoughts as they come to him. Ah, and then he says the songs he is attaching are ones Tadek recorded in Leipzig with the girl, her singing to his accompaniment…Now he says why Tadek call her ‘Joan’. He think her voice like one of his favourite singers, Joan Baez.”
“Of course. His other song was called ‘Just Like Joan’. We got it wrong. The girl’s name wasn’t Joan, she was like Joan.” Jude was pretty sure now that she knew the mystery woman’s identity. “Can we hear the song?”
Zofia’s nimble fingers set up the playback. Again it was an amateur recording. “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’. Another Joan Baez standard. With Tadek’s acoustic guitar accompanying the pure soprano that Jude had last heard in the theatre at Clincham College singing ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”
∨ Blood at the Bookies ∧
Thirty-Two
Jude grinned with satisfaction. “I think we’re looking at an old·fashioned love triangle,” she told Zofia. “Sophia Urquhart is loved by two men. Your brother Tadek who we now know met her in Leipzig during her gap year, and Andy Constant who came on to her once she became enrolled in his Drama course.”
“OK, let me write this down,” the girl responded excitedly. She took a biro, opened a clean page of her notebook and drew three separate crosses. “Here are the corners of our triangle. We have Sophia Urquhart…” She wrote the names as she spoke them. “Tadek…and Andy Constant…We draw a line here…Tadek to Sophia…” She scribbled down, “He loves her.”
“And the same thing from Andy Constant to Sophia…” She wrote that down too, and nodded with satisfaction. “It’s beginning to make sense.”
“Yes. Of course, the one side of the triangle you haven’t filled in is the relationship between Andy Constant and your brother.”
“You think…it is hatred perhaps? Hatred enough to kill someone?”
“It’s possible, Zosia. At last we’re getting somewhere.” Jude beamed. “I think this deserves a celebration. How about a glass of wine before we go to bed?”
“I would like that very much.”
♦
The buoyant certainty Jude had felt the night before received a predictable inundation of cold water the next morning. “I don’t see how you can be sure she’d even been to Leipzig,” said Carole, reverting to her customary wet blanket role.
“Carole, of course she was there. She was the woman Tadek talked to his friend Pavel about, the one he followed to England.”
“I don’t understand how you can make that assumption.”
“I can make it because I heard Sophia sing in Rumours of Wars, and now I’ve heard the song she recorded with Tadek in Leipzig. I’d put money on the fact that it’s the same voice.”
“You’d put money on anything.”
Jude grinned. She reckoned her neighbour was behaving like this because it was not she who had made this latest leap of logic. Carole could be very competitive at times and that quality, coupled with her recurrent paranoia, could make her a difficult companion.
“I’m not so sure,” Carole went on sniffily. “Anyway, if what you say is true, who’s our murderer?”
“Well, having seen the kind of anger Andy’s capable of when he’s thwarted, I think he has to be way up the top of the list.”
“You think he killed the boy?”
“Two rivals for the love of the same woman. Wouldn’t be the first middle-aged man who’s felt his virility challenged by a young upstart.”
“But…But, Jude, there’s so much we don’t know, Tadek came to England to follow Sophia Urquhart…all right, it sounds from what his friend Pavel said that that’s true. So he was in love with her. But was she in love with him? And what did she think about her Drama teacher? Or him about her? It all seems terribly vague. You don’t know Sophia was having an affair with her teacher.”
“I’ve told you, Carole. I overheard Sophia apologizing to Andy that ‘Joan’ could not go back with him, because she was getting a lift home with her father. And that made him angry because he ‘wanted’ her. We now know ‘Joan’ didn’t exist, but was a nickname for Sophia. And I actually travelled in the car from the university with Sophia, so it was her father who was giving ‘Joan’ a lift home. It can’t be plainer than that.”
“I don’t know,” said Carole, infuriatingly unconvinced.
“Anyway,” Jude looked at her watch, “I’ll soon be able to find out about whether Sophia went to Leipzig or not.”
“How?”
“Because her brother Hamish is due here in ten minutes.”
“Why’s he coming?”
“To value the house.”
“Oh.” Carole also looked at her watch. She had already exercised her dog on Fethering Beach that morning, but she said curtly, “I must go. Gulliver needs a walk.”
♦
There was something of the play-actor about Hamish Urquhart. His manner was studied rather than spontaneous. Maybe, Jude reflected, being an estate agent was similar to the professions of lawyer, doctor and teacher, where young recruits took on the manners of people much older than themselves. In Hamish’s case, of course, he took on the manners of his father, becoming a hearty facsimile of Ewan Urquhart.
He was dressed in a gold-buttoned blazer and mustard-yellow cords. Under’his arm was a brown leather briefcase, from which he produced a clipboard, some forms and a pocket-sized laser distance measure. He also handed Jude his business card and some stapled sheets of details from houses Urquhart & Pease had recently sold.
“The property market’s still very buoyant at the moment, I’m pleased to say. Particularly down here in the south-east. We could sell every house that comes on to the market three times over. Just not enough product, that’s the problem. No, we’d have no problem in getting you a very good price for this.” He looked without total conviction around the clutter of the Woodside Cottage sitting room. Jude reckoned he was thinking, ‘even in this condition’. But he was too courteous to vocalize the thought.
“Now, if you don’t mind, I’d just like to go around the property, take some details, make some notes. You may accompany me if you like, or…”
“No, you just wander round at your own pace. The place is empty apart from me. I do have a friend staying, but she’s out this morning. Anyway, I’ve got some stuff to put in the washing machine.”
“Fine. Well, I’ll have a look at the kitchen first, and then be out of your way doing the rest of the house.”
“Yes. Would you like a cup of coffee or something?”
“No, thanks. Just had some at the office.”
He quickly checked out the dimensions of the back garden and the kitchen, then said, “It’s not pivotal at this juncture, but when you do sell, you’ll have to decide whether you’d want to take or leave your kitchen equipment. Oven, washing machine, what-have-you…”
“Oh, I’m not definitely thinking of selling. Just sort of…testing the water, trying to find out where I stand financially.”
“Yes, of course, Mrs…er, Miss…”
“Just call me Jude.”
“Right. Jude.”
She had decided that she’d question him about his sister after he’d finished the valuation,
so she set her load of washing going while he surveyed the house. It didn’t take long. Soon he was downstairs again, tapping at the kitchen door. They sat down either side of the kitchen table for him to give his verdict. Jude told him to push aside some of the clutter so that he would have room for his clipboard. She noticed that Zofia had left her notebook open on the table from the night before.
“Well, to be quite honest, Jude,” said Hamish cheerily, “Urquhart & Pease could get you a buyer for this property tomorrow. No problems at all. Fethering is quite a property hot-spot, a much sought-after area, because it’s still one of those villages which has kept its…Englishness.”
“I’m sorry? What do you mean?”
“Well, I mean, most of the people…Not to put to fine a point on it, you don’t see too many coloured faces in Fethering…and you don’t hear too many Eastern European accents when you’re shopping in Allinstore.” The guffaw which followed this, not to mention the sentiments expressed, made him sound exactly like his father.
Jude didn’t approve of what Hamish had said, but made no comment and let him continue. “So, as I say, very much sought-after. And you’d be surprised how many wealthy city folk are looking for that ideal of a country retreat. Woodside Cottage would tick all the boxes for them. So far as I can tell, the structure’s very sound, though…” A blush spread across his face and down to his thick neck “…not everyone might share your taste in decor. Some of the windows are getting a bit shabby, and the exterior paintwork needs to be done. So I think any potential purchaser would be looking to spend a bit of money on the place. Or you could have some of the work done yourself before you put the place on the market. Mind you, having a house redecorated with a view to selling doesn’t always work, either. In a lot of cases, the new owners are going to want to redo everything, anyway.”