There was a momentary pause and for the first time an expression of sadness touched her face. For the loss of her daughter? For the break-up of her marriage? For both? They were not to know. The emotion was wiped away. She became brisk again.
‘Now, let me ask you a question. What are you doing about this?’ Her tone brooked no nonsense.
‘Pursuing investigations. We don’t yet know why your daughter died but we think we know where. Not by the lake where she was found, some distance off near some woods.’
‘What about the weapon? Have you found it?’
‘Not yet,’ he admitted.
‘So, why aren’t you out there looking for it? Why are you sitting here drinking tea and-’ Chantal sniffed the air delicately – ‘eating fried food? The smell of the English breakfast is unmistakable. Why are you eating it at four o’clock in the afternoon? I never understand the English.’
She picked up her cup and sipped, grimaced and put the cup down again. ‘Or their terrible coffee.’ She studied her surroundings. ‘I think I will phone Jeremy and accept his kind offer to stay at Overvale, after all.’
‘I would like,’ said Meredith as they left the Crown, ‘to be a fly on the wall when Chantal arrives at Overvale with her luggage and tells them she’s changed her mind about staying there.’
‘I, on the other hand, wouldn’t,’ Markby returned with feeling. ‘That woman is a loose cannon. The less I see of her the better! Campbell can deal with her.’ He frowned. ‘You know, Chantal made a shrewd remark about her former husband. She said he parcelled up bad news and let it out bit by bit. He does that with all information.’
‘Boardroom skills,’ said Meredith. ‘Keep something up your sleeve. Fox the opposition.’
‘The trouble is, the police are not the opposition. We are supposed to be on his side … and he’s supposed to be on ours! But it makes me think that if Jenner really has something he doesn’t want us to know, it’ll be the very devil prising it out of him.’ Markby heaved a sigh. ‘Where are we going now?’
‘It’s getting a bit late. Why don’t we walk on down to the Watersmeet estate and take another look at Rusticity?’
They began to walk through the centre of the town towards the outskirts. ‘What about the poison pen letters?’ Meredith asked. ‘Has any progress been made with those?’
‘No. That’s getting more complicated by the hour,’ he grumbled. ‘For someone who has no enemies – according to Toby -Alison Jenner appears to be unpopular with quite a few people.’
The trading estate was jammed with cars and visitors. Families struggled through the throng with wailing infants in buggies. Customers from the garden centre staggered back to their vehicles laden with greenery. One optimist was balancing a stepladder over his shoulder and carried a giant tin of paint in his other hand.
‘It’s still the Easter break,’ Meredith said, ‘and the great British public does what it likes best – shopping for DIY or home improvements.’
‘This is horrible,’ he replied in awe. ‘Thank goodness we didn’t bring the car. We’d never have got in – or out again.’
Rusticity, like the other outlets, was packed. Nevertheless they were spotted and hailed by Ted who appeared from behind a gaggle of elderly ladies. His snub-nosed face bore a broad grin. He looked as if he was having the time of his life.
‘Hello, there, Miss Mitchell! Got Mr Markby with you today, I see?’ There was something incredibly suggestive in the way he said this.
‘Yes, we’ve come to take another look at the table and chairs.’
‘Help yourself,’ said Ted. ‘Let me know if you want any information. I’m back there in the office.’ He pointed towards the building behind them. ‘See you later.’ With this, he vanished into the throng but not before directing a final grotesque wink of complicity at Meredith from what Ted supposed to be behind Markby’s back.
‘What’s the matter with him?’ asked the bemused Markby, who had turned round just in time to catch the tail end of the wink. ‘Why is he grimacing like that?’
‘He saw me at the Feathers with Toby. He thinks I’m two-timing you. So does Dolores.’
‘Hussy!’ he declared dramatically.
‘Will you ever forgive me?’ Meredith placed a hand on her bosom. ‘I hope Ted isn’t going to behave like that every time I see him. I shall buy my garden chairs elsewhere!’
One of the elderly ladies cannoned into Markby with her walking stick.
‘Let’s go home,’ Markby pleaded.‘We can come and look at his chairs another time.’
They went home.
Cherry Basset had been told by her mother that she’d been named after Mrs Basset’s grandmother. Cherry didn’t think that a good enough reason. She was sixteen and, at that age, anything one’s parents think is nice is automatically the pits. Cherry’s father had played no part in deciding on his daughter’s name. Six weeks before she was born, he had announced one evening that he was going down to the corner shop for a packet of smokes, left the house and never returned.
Mrs Basset had taken his departure philosophically. ‘He never could take responsibility, your dad,’ as she’d later explained to his abandoned daughter.
In due course, Mr Basset’s place in the household was taken by someone called Uncle Gary, although as far as Cherry had ever been able to ascertain he wasn’t any kind of relative. She described him to anyone who asked as ‘Mum’s friend’. Uncle Gary had been there so long now that everyone took it for granted he was part of the menage. From time to time Mrs Basset would confide to a neighbour, ‘If I knew where my husband was, I could get a divorce, and Gary and me could make it legal.’
But Mr Basset had not divulged his whereabouts. Mrs Basset hadn’t looked for him, perhaps disinclined to find him. As for Uncle Gary, he hadn’t shown any interest in ‘making it legal’, so things just went on as they were.
None of this worried Cherry much. True, there had been that incident about a year earlier when Uncle Gary, ever one for the inappropriate squeeze in a dark corner or a doorway, had made a suggestion, immediately rejected with contempt by Cherry.
‘No, I won’t, you dirty old man! What do you think I am? And if I was going to do it, I wouldn’t do it with a bald-headed old geezer like you!’
After this Uncle Gary wisely kept his hands and his suggestions to himself. Mrs Basset knew nothing of this episode and Cherry had almost forgotten it. Her one concern was the burden she laboured under – her name. But recently she’d made a decision. She had learned from perusing the front pages of the tabloid press that the name of the wife of the current prime minister was Cherie. It should be said that Cherry wasn’t a great reader of the newspapers or, indeed, of anything else. But she worked in a local newsagent’s and so saw the press, or at least the front pages, in the line of business. She had been struck by the similarity of spelling to her own name and remarked upon it to her employer. He had reliably informed her that ‘cherie’ meant ‘darling’ in French. Cherry found that really cool and decided to modify her own name forthwith. It had to be better to have the same name as a prime minister’s wife than that of a flavour of yoghurt.
‘Why not call me “apple” or “pear”?’ she demanded of Darren Stebbings.
Darren was Cherry’s boyfriend. They had been drawn together by a shared sense of injustice, Cherry at her name and Darren at his father’s lack of understanding for his son’s ambitions.
‘Me mum’s not so bad,’ said Darren, ignoring Cherry’s question which was, after all, unanswerable. ‘She doesn’t understand but she doesn’t grumble. It’s Dad. It’s like talking to a blooming brick wall.’
‘My mum don’t understand. I told her, I said, I want to spell it C-H-E-R-I-E. She said, why can’t you spell it like you’ve always done?’
‘He took it off me,’ said Darren passionately. ‘Just like that. He had no right!’
The burning resentment and heartfelt injustice permeated through Cherry-Cherie’s self-absorption. ‘He too
k what?’
‘My camera! I’ve been telling you. Haven’t you been listening?’
‘Yeah …’ said Cherry-Cherie doubtfully. ‘Your dad took it?’
‘No! That bloody copper! He had no right. It took me a year to earn the money for that camera, working Saturdays down at the Watersmeet estate, carrying stuff out to people’s cars.’
‘Well, you can do that again, earn some more,’ said Cherry-Cherie with simple logic.
‘He said he’d give it back, but you can’t trust coppers. I’m not carrying stuff out to cars for another year. I don’t have to, I reckon.’ A look of cunning crossed Darren’s face.
Cherry-Cherie was intrigued. ‘Go on.’
‘They’re not as clever as they reckon.They’re like all old people. They don’t know nothing about modern technology.’
‘What do you mean?’ Cherry-Cherie frowned and chewed the end of one lock of dishevelled blond hair.
‘I reckon,’ said Darren, ‘I’ve got a way of making some money real quick. Just you wait and see.’
His companion, her interest already waning, said, ‘All right, then. I will.’
Chapter Ten
Now that she had her end-of-terrace cottage in Station Road on the market, Meredith’s housekeeping skills were being sorely tested. She had taken to watching those TV programmes which advised would-be house-sellers of the things possible buyers looked out for and the things they particularly didn’t like. Tidiness was very much liked. Fresh flowers in the house were strongly recommended, along with bowls of fruit in the kitchen. Tidiness, she had realized, was very much a question of habit. Keeping the fruit bowl filled was more of a problem. As soon as she’d got a display worthy of a still life, she ate it. The flowers Alan had given her on Easter Sunday still stood resplendent on a table by the window, the early sunlight falling on yellow and pink roses, red-tipped apricot-coloured carnations and purple iris. She checked they still had sufficient water this morning and that it hadn’t gone green, and looked round the room with the mild surprise of one who couldn’t quite believe she had managed this unusually high standard of Home Management.
The first person through the door this morning, however, was Jess Campbell who turned up promptly at ten. Meredith made them both coffee and they retired to the shining and neat sitting room and settled down.
‘This is a nice place,’ said Jess, looking round her.
‘I think so. It’s got two bedrooms. Originally it had three but one had to be converted into a bathroom. When the house was built, bathrooms didn’t exist. I suppose they sat in a tub of water in front of the fire downstairs. There’s not much garden but that’s suited me. I don’t have time to garden. I had a new kitchen put in and a new bathroom when I bought it, and I also had that porch built on the front. I think it ought to suit a young couple without children or a single person, like me. I know that years ago people raised large families in houses like this, but times have changed, I recognize that. You won’t know the old Bamford vicarage in the middle of town, the one Alan and I are buying?’
Jess shook her head.
‘It must be three times the size of this, and it does worry me a little, I admit, that we might have gone over the top. It’s in a rundown state; everything needs doing up and will take us ages. But Alan and I both liked the place. Alan particularly likes the garden. That’s in a state, too, but he’s keen to get going at recreating it. Where are you living?’
Jess told her. ‘I’m only renting, of course. I’d like to buy. The rented flat is pretty grotty.’ She sighed. ‘Oh, well, I suppose I ought to get on with what I came here for. The superintendent suggested I talk to you. He said you were observant.’
‘Did he?’ Meredith sounded surprised ‘I’m interested in people. Perhaps that makes me look at them and listen to them.’
Jess had taken a small tape recorder from her capacious beige leather bag and put it on the coffee table among the cups. ‘You don’t mind if I record our talk? Or I can take handwritten notes, if you prefer. I’d prefer the tape because it saves me time in the long run.’
‘I don’t mind the tape.’ Meredith watched as Jess set it running and spoke the date and time into it. Against the background of its soft whirr Meredith went on, ‘Alan did say you wanted to ask about Fiona Jenner. But I only met her once and in the rather artificial circumstances of a lunch party. It was rather an odd gathering, not a proper social one. More like a working lunch. We were there to hear about the poison pen letters Alison Jenner had been receiving. Fiona said little, but as we were leaving she was waiting for us by the gates and flagged down our car. She seemed keen to ask what Alan was going to do about it. I got the impression there was some resentment towards Alison and possibly also towards her father. I might have got a better impression of Fiona if I’d talked to her just one-to-one on general subjects, got to learn her views, her likes and dislikes. But she wanted to talk to Alan, not to me, and the conversation centred round Alison and Jeremy Jenner. Earlier at the house, as I said, she took little part in things. I took a good look at her when I met her, because we hadn’t been told she’d be there, but I was really concentrating on Alison.’
‘And what was your impression of Mrs Jenner?’
‘She was very nervous. That’s understandable. She seemed a nice person and deeply grateful to her husband because he’d never referred to the trial during their marriage. I thought, well, he wouldn’t, would he? He was the last person who’d want it made public knowledge. He had been a public figure himself in the business world. He’s retired now but I dare say his name is still widely known and respected. I can’t say I really took a shine to him. I thought him pompous and a snob. But he was worried about his wife, so …’ Meredith shrugged. ‘Perhaps he was just being protective.’
‘Did Fiona have nothing to say at all?’
‘Hasn’t Alan told you? She asked him about identifying the typeface the letters were printed in.’ Meredith hesitated. ‘I did suggest to him afterwards that Fiona might have written the letters, or at least knew who did.’
Jess smiled. ‘Yes, he did say that. What made you think so? Just because you sensed something you called resentment on Fiona’s part towards her father and stepmother?’
‘To tell you the truth,’ Meredith confessed. ‘I was casting about for a suspect. The weak point of my theory is that Alison didn’t tell Fiona about the trial until after she’d received several letters. The person who wrote the letters knew about the trial and that seems to rule Fiona out. When I said I sensed some resentment, I must stress there wasn’t any overt antagonism between Fiona and her stepmother, not in front of strangers, anyway. That’s what I mean about a lunch party being an artificial sort of stage for people to play out roles on. Good host, good hostess, polite daughter … well, she wasn’t that polite. She suggested that, back in the days of the investigation into Freda’s death, the Cornish police had been keen to stitch Alison up, to use Fiona’s phrase for it. She was a bit spiky, perhaps even a little arrogant in her manner. I did wonder about the circumstances in which Jeremy and Fiona’s mother had parted company. By the way, have you met Chantal Plassy?’
‘Fiona’s mother? Not yet. I hope to interview her later today. I believe she’s planning to stay at Overvale House.’
‘She was going to stay at the Crown.’ Meredith grimaced. ‘But when she saw it, she changed her mind.’ She contemplated the little black tape recorder whirring away among the coffee cups, soaking up her words and recording them for posterity. ‘I feel as though I’m gossiping about people whose hospitality I enjoyed, whatever the circumstances. It’s embarrassing.’
Jess Campbell was a police officer and she had learned to control any embarrassment she might feel. But she said sympathetically, ‘I understand. It’s not nice. But I wasn’t at that party and you were. I know the superintendent was there, but women notice different things to men. Was resentment of Alison for ousting her own mother the only reason you thought Fiona might have had for writing the
letters?’
‘Well, no, I wondered if there might be a money angle. But since then I’ve learned that Fiona was wealthy in her own right. Money probably wouldn’t have been a motive. In fact, my suspicion of Fiona was unfair. I didn’t have any reason to suspect her. I’ve no reason to suppose she could have known about the trial earlier. I was …’ She wriggled awkwardly in her chair. ‘Alan would say I was playing detective. But it wasn’t a game and I was out of order.’
There was a pause. The tape recorder whirred on. Without warning, Jess changed the subject. ‘You know Toby Smythe well, I understand.’
Meredith blinked and bridled. ‘Yes, I’ve known him a long time. If you think Toby had a hand in writing the letters, you’re barking up the wrong tree! He’s got no reason to do anything like that. He likes Alison. He’s a nice guy.’ She glimpsed the barely perceptible twitch of Jess’s mouth. ‘I know he went up to London to Fiona’s flat. He shouldn’t have done that. He did it to oblige Jeremy. He’s sorry.’
‘Oh?’ Jess’s finely drawn dark eyebrows were raised again. ‘He’s spoken to you about it?’
‘He rang me last night.’ A long and agonized phone call it had been, and somewhat rambling. Meredith had suspected Toby had had a couple of drinks. She had advised him to make an early night of it.
Jess Campbell, Meredith decided, was an attractive woman despite a tense professional manner, not exactly inquisitorial, but dauntingly on the ball. She was of athletic build and her dark red hair was cropped short, though not as severely as Chantal’s. She wore no jewellery. Her grey trousers and jacket were smart, if unexceptional, but teamed with a very nice turquoise silk shirt. Her feet were shod in medium-high-heeled black ankle boots. Her fingernails were carefully manicured. She’s struck a good balance in her appearance, thought Meredith with respect, knowing how hard this was to do in the workplace. No woman wants to look dowdy. But no woman wants to look like a bimbo, either. This is a big case for her, she thought in sympathy. I know what it’s like. If a woman slips up in doing the job, there’s always someone to suggest a man might have done it better. Even now, even after all these years of change in the workplace. It’s human nature that doesn’t change. She’s new here, too. Everyone will be watching her, listening to every word, noting every gesture, forming an opinion of her.
Ann Granger Page 18