Guns in the Gallery

by Simon Brett

  Even as she had the thought, though, Carole did also feel a degree of relief. Much as she loved Gaby and Lily, she did find the presence of other people in her house a considerable strain. Any people. The long habit of living on her own meant that she always had to make an effort with other people present, she couldn’t be unaware of them and just carry on with her life. In fact, she’d always had the instinct for privacy. She hadn’t even felt relaxed with her husband in the house. Maybe that was one of the many factors that had led to their divorce.

  ‘The point is,’ Gaby explained, ‘that when I had this idea I was with a friend, who’s got a little boy roughly Lily’s age. And her husband’s going to be away the same time as Stephen, so we made this plan for the four of us to come down together, and I know you haven’t really got room for all of us in High Tor.’

  ‘Well . . .’ said Carole, relief flooding through her. ‘I could move things around and make space for you.’ She knew she didn’t sound convincing.

  ‘No, no, I wouldn’t hear of it,’ Gaby bubbled on. ‘But if we were staying nearby, then we could not get in each other’s way . . . you know, meet up with you some days, other days just do our own thing . . .’

  ‘It does sound rather a good idea,’ Carole conceded. Yes, wonderful. Gaby and Lily near enough for her to see them, but without the obligation of feeling responsible for their well-being every minute. ‘So where were you thinking of staying?’

  ‘Well, that’s the point,’ said Gaby. ‘We don’t know. But we thought, with you down there, you know, able to apply a little local knowledge to the problem, well, you might be able to recommend somewhere.’

  Carole was hit by a brainwave. ‘Gaby,’ she said, ‘what would you think of the idea of staying in a yurt?’

  Of course Walden had its own website. Any project the Whittakers got involved in was organized to a very high spec. There were beautiful professionally taken photographs of the glamping site, even a video tour of the interiors of the yurts. Chervil’s ‘Deeply Felt’ pun was much in evidence. And there was, of course, a ‘Contact Us’ page.

  Carole no longer really thought about it, but using her laptop had in some ways changed her attitude to communication. Whereas she would have regarded telephoning someone at the weekend on a matter of business as a major social gaffe, emailing seemed perfectly legitimate. So she had no qualms about making contact through the Walden website.

  Her emailed enquiry about prices and availability arose partly from her search for accommodation for Gaby and Lily, but she wasn’t convinced that Walden would be the right place for them. She felt sure it would be very expensive, for a start. Though, when she came to think of it, her son and daughter-in-law never seemed to lack for money. She had no idea what Stephen earned doing whatever it was he did with money and computers, but she thought his pay packet must be substantial. There certainly hadn’t been any talk of Gaby needing to return to her job as a theatrical agent in the immediate future.

  But of course Carole’s email to Walden had another purpose. It was a legitimate way of making contact with the Whittakers. Jude had brought Carole up to date on her conversation with Carmen Hodgkinson and, despite the Inspector’s conclusion, they both still thought there was something strange about the death of Fennel Whittaker. Something that required further investigation.

  She was surprised to get a call back only moments after she had sent her email. The voice at the other end of the phone was unmistakably that of Chervil Whittaker. ‘Hello, is that Carole Seddon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The girl identified herself. ‘Have we met? Your name sounds familiar.’

  ‘We did meet. I came to Butterwyke House with my friend Jude last Saturday. You showed us round Walden.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course, I’m so sorry. I should have remembered.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you were sufficiently impressed by the site to be making further enquiries. Your email said you were thinking of the week after the Bank Holiday at the end of May . . .’

  Chervil was all businesswoman, keen to make a booking. She wasn’t about to mention that there had been a death at Walden.

  But Carole decided that she would. ‘Look, I heard about what happened to your sister. I just wanted to say that I’m very sorry.’

  ‘Thank you.’ The words were deliberately bleached of emotion. ‘Now at Walden we have yurts of various sizes. How many people are you looking to accommodate?’

  ‘It’s not for me, actually. It’s for my daughter-in-law and I’m really just checking prices.’

  ‘Well, at the end of May you should really be into our High Summer rates, but I’d be prepared to make a deal for you on . . .’

  Chervil Whittaker went through a very detailed list of prices and terms of business and concluded by saying that she would also put the information in an email. ‘But I’d advise you to move quickly. That Bank Holiday week is already getting quite booked up.’

  ‘I’ll get back to my daughter-in-law this evening,’ Carole lied. The next day would be quite soon enough.

  ‘Anyway, I’ll give you my mobile number,’ said Chervil. ‘Quicker to get me direct than through the website.’

  Carole made a note of the number before saying, ‘Presumably you had to delay Walden’s official opening.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I thought you were opening this weekend and obviously with what happened to your sister . . .’

  ‘This weekend was only going to be a dry run with some friends testing out the facilities,’ said Chervil Whittaker, in direct contravention to what she had told Carole and Jude when they visited Walden. ‘My plan was always to have the official launch next weekend.’ And she said it with such conviction that most people would have believed her.

  ‘Presumably the site will be fully accessible then . . .?’ asked Carole.

  ‘Of course it will be. I’m sorry, what do you mean?’

  ‘I was just meaning that by next weekend the police will presumably have finished their investigations at Walden.’

  ‘They’ve indicated that they will have done, yes. And, incidentally, for obvious reasons we’re trying to keep the news of my sister’s suicide out of the papers. So if the subject does come up, I’d be grateful if you could keep quiet about what you know.’

  Good luck, thought Carole, if you think you can keep that sort of thing quiet in a place like Fethering. But then again the Whittakers weren’t very well known in the village. It was possible that very few local people did actually know what had happened. Whether the media blackout could be continued once the inquest had opened was another matter. But then again the inquest might not happen for a few months and memories could be very short.

  ‘My sister,’ Chervil Whittaker continued with some asperity, ‘may have done her best to upstage the opening of my project, but I can assure you I am not going to let her succeed. Walden will open next weekend and none of the visitors will ever know that a selfish suicide had taken place there.’

  The girl’s words were unequivocal. She still saw Fennel’s death as another in a series of attention-seeking actions. And in her voice was a note of satisfaction from the knowledge that it would be the last one.

  If, thought Carole, Fennel’s death had been murder, then the person with least motive for committing it would be her sister Chervil. Public knowledge of a crime at her precious Walden would be the last thing she wanted.

  THIRTEEN

  The call came through to Woodside Cottage on the dot of nine thirty on the Monday morning. Jude, who had been going through some yoga exercises, answered and found a very distraught-sounding Ned Whittaker at the end of the line.

  Would it be all right if he came to see her? He wanted to talk about Fennel’s state of mind in the weeks running up to her death. He respected Jude’s strictures about client confidentiality, but surely the situation was different once the client in question was dead?

  Jude had a couple of people b
ooked in for healing sessions in the afternoon, but she told Ned she was free all morning and he was welcome to come to Woodside Cottage as soon as he liked. He must have left Butterwyke House almost immediately, because within twenty-five minutes there was a knock at her front door.

  Ned Whittaker still looked boyish, but there was a greyness about his face which seemed to contradict that impression. Behind the rimless glasses his eyes were red and hollow. He didn’t look as if he’d had any sleep since the news of his daughter’s death.

  There was a jumpiness about him too, he was more uneasy than ever. ‘I’m sorry to trouble you, Jude,’ he said, ‘but I feel I have to find out everything I can, try to make some sense of what’s happened.’

  ‘Yes, I fully understand. Would you like some coffee?’

  ‘Thank you. Black. I seem to have lived on black coffee for the last few days.’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’ As she settled him on one of the draped armchairs in her sitting room, Jude could not help being reminded that it was a week to the day since Fennel had been there. The recollection brought a pang of loss to her and a determination, like Ned’s, to find out the truth about what had happened to the girl.

  When she placed his coffee on the table between them, Ned Whittaker tried to take a sip, but his hand was shaking so much that he put the mug back down. ‘Jude, I know Fennel was coming to see you . . .’

  ‘There was no secret about it.’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean that. And it was depression she was seeing you about?’

  ‘Yes. Though the depression was just one manifestation of a great number of symptoms. When I treat a client, I treat the whole client.’

  He nodded. ‘When we last met . . . well, that is to say not when we met at Butterwyke House after . . .’ He couldn’t shape the words. ‘When we met at the Private View, I told you that over the years we’d tried all kinds of treatments for Fennel. Most of them started promisingly, but then . . . If it was medication, she’d forget to take it – or perhaps deliberately not take it. What I’m saying is that we had tried everything.’

  ‘I’m sure you did all that anyone could have done. You shouldn’t be blaming yourself, Ned.’

  He smiled grimly. ‘Easy enough to say, Jude, but when your oldest child, a girl you’ve adored for . . . when she . . . it’s inevitable that I blame myself. I keep trying to work out where I went wrong, what I did that precipitated . . . what happened.’

  ‘That’s a natural human reaction. But what you have to remind yourself, Ned, is that Fennel was suffering from a very serious illness – the fact that it was a mental illness doesn’t make it any less real than heart disease or cancer. As I say, you did everything any parent could have done – more than most would have done – to help her cope with that illness. But sadly all your efforts failed.’

  Jude was not ready, at this stage, to express any doubts she harboured about the authenticity of Fennel’s suicide. Though the idea of murder might have energized Ned Whittaker, reduced his feeling of guilt, maybe even given him a quest to identify the perpetrator, it would have been irresponsible of Jude to set that particular hare running.

  ‘Where do you stand,’ he asked, ‘on the causes of depression? Do you think it’s kind of genetic?’

  ‘I think it can be. Some medical authorities divide depression into two categories: reactive and endogenous. Reactive depression is triggered by some life event; the break-up of a relationship, the death of a loved one. Endogenous depression doesn’t seem to have such a readily identifiable cause. The sufferer is just born with it.’

  ‘And that’s what Fennel had?’

  ‘Definitely.’ Jude posed her next sentence with some delicacy. ‘It is frequently thought that endogenous depression is hereditary.’

  Ned Whittaker looked at her blankly for a moment, then caught on. ‘Ah, you’re asking if I’ve ever suffered from depression . . .?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’d say the answer is a definite no. I’ve felt terrible at times – God, I can’t imagine ever feeling worse than I do at the moment – but I don’t think it’s depression. Fennel used to tell me how she felt at times, and I’ve read descriptions of depression, both in medical works and novels . . . I mean, Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye is reckoned to be a good description of a depressive, but I’ve never had feelings like that. When things go wrong for me, I don’t get mad, I want to get even.’

  ‘Which is perhaps why you’re feeling so bad at the moment. Because there’s no one you can get even with?’

  Ned Whittaker nodded thoughtfully. ‘You could be right, Jude.’

  ‘Anyway, that’s your side of the family. You don’t have a genetic disposition towards depression.’

  Once again he seemed rather slow to pick up the implication of her words, but this time Jude suspected the slowness might be calculated. ‘Oh, you mean Sheena. You’re asking if there’s a predisposition towards depression in her family?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He shook his head firmly. ‘No, definitely not. With Sheena what you see is what you get. She’s very upfront. No murky hidden depths there.’

  His answer seemed a little too emphatic, but Jude didn’t pick up on it. There’d be time enough to find out more about Sheena Whittaker, and at the moment her main priority was to give Ned any support that she could offer to alleviate his current misery.

  In the circumstances, Jude didn’t have any inhibitions about divulging what Fennel had confided to her in the course of their sessions. A lot of what she reported – the circling, ingrowing sense of inadequacy – was familiar to the girl’s father. But he hadn’t realized how much guilt Fennel had felt; guilt for taking up too much of her parents’ attention, guilt for ruining their lives.

  At the end of Jude’s long narrative, Ned Whittaker still looked shrunken and feeble in his chair, but he did seem calmer. ‘So do you reckon – in spite of the fact that Fennel’s depression was endogenous – there was some big shock that prompted her into actually taking action? You know, as opposed to talking about it, as she had done for years?’

  Jude repeated Detective Inspector Hodgkinson’s observation about depressives frequently committing suicide at the moment when their mood was improving and he seemed to take that on board.

  ‘What about the scene she threw at the Cornelian Gallery, though?’ asked Ned. ‘Do you reckon that was what triggered it?’

  ‘I suppose it’s possible.’ But Jude then told him how positive the outburst seemed to have made Fennel, almost as if the denunciation of Denzil Willoughby was something essential to her, a task that had to be ticked off a list.

  ‘But maybe,’ suggested Ned, ‘that was also part of her preparations for the suicide . . . you know, she wanted all the loose ends of her life neatly tied up?’

  Jude conceded that that was a possibility. ‘What I really want to know, though, Ned, is what happened the first time . . . you know, in the flat in Pimlico . . .?’

  He went even paler and trembled. He still hadn’t touched the mug of coffee, which must have long since gone cold. ‘That was terrible. I’d always known that Fennel had problems. I suppose I put a lot of it down to growing up, though . . . you know, the difficulties of adolescence, of coming to terms with leaving childhood and becoming an adult. I suppose I kidded myself that it was just a phase she was going through. But what happened in the flat in Pimlico . . . that told me how serious the illness Fennel was suffering from was. It was a horrible shock.’

  ‘Was there something that precipitated it that time? Some emotional trauma?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m pretty certain once again there was a man involved. And not a very suitable man. I’m afraid Fennel has – used to have, I should say – a rather kamikaze track record with relationships. According to Chervil, while she was at St Martin’s her sister had been seeing some fellow art student, who messed her around a lot. I’m afraid both my girls have to be careful when it comes to men. Once it’s discovered how well off Sheena a
nd I are, they tend to attract a lot of spongers.’

  ‘Is that true of Chervil too?’

  ‘It has happened.’

  ‘And what about her current beau, Giles Green?’

  ‘Sheena and I have only met him a couple of times. He seems pleasant enough. Quite a bit older than Chervil, which may not be a bad thing.’

  ‘And you don’t think he’s after her money?’

  ‘Why?’ Ned Whittaker was instantly alert. ‘Do you know something about him?’

  ‘No. Very little. I’d maybe met him once or twice in the gallery, and then at the Private View. All I know is that he’s recently lost a rather lucrative job in the City.’

  ‘Hm . . .’ The millionaire looked exhausted, as if he couldn’t cope with anything else. His grief over the loss of one daughter was such that he couldn’t begin worrying about the love life of the other.

  ‘You haven’t heard, I suppose,’ said Jude, changing direction, ‘whether the police have found Fennel’s mobile yet?’

  He shook his head wearily. ‘No. If they have, they haven’t told me. Why, is it significant?’

  ‘It might be. It’d offer a record of the calls she’d made and received on Friday evening. I mean, I know she sent a text to Chervil, and I’m pretty sure she received one later in the evening. Knowing the contents of that one could be important.’

  ‘You mean it might contain something that’d pushed her over the edge?’

  ‘Possible.’

  ‘Hm.’

  ‘Ned, presumably you saw the note that Fennel had left in the yurt?’ He nodded. ‘You didn’t notice anything strange about it?’

  He was silent for a moment, as if thrown by the question. Then he replied bitterly, ‘Well, I suppose I thought it was strange that my beautiful daughter would want to kill herself.’

  ‘No, I meant strange about the actual note. For instance, there’s no question that Fennel wrote it?’