by Simon Brett
‘Who else might have written it? Chervil?’ The tone in his voice was almost one of petulance now. Apparently the thought had never crossed Ned Whittaker’s mind that his daughter might have been murdered. And Jude felt glad she’d refrained from planting it there.
‘No. I meant the writing, the phrasing – did that read like Fennel’s?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was it similar to the note she left the last time . . . the time Chervil found her in the flat in Pimlico?’
Ned Whittaker looked her straight in the eyes and replied, ‘On the previous occasion Fennel didn’t leave a note.’
‘Ah. Right.’
He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes even pinker. ‘I’ve thought about her so much over the last few days. Wishing things could have been different, wishing I could have done something . . . you know. I wish there was someone I could blame apart from myself.’
‘I suppose you could blame Fennel.’
‘Yes, at times I’ve felt furious with her. Furious at her selfishness. She knew how much pain it would cause me, and yet she just went ahead and did it.’
‘Hm.’ Jude tried to keep all intonation out of the monosyllable.
‘At times I’ve always wished that Fennel had been murdered.’
‘Oh?’ This was a new tack, which took Jude by surprise. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘Well, then I would have someone to blame, wouldn’t I? The bastard who did it. And I could turn some of my hatred away from myself.’
‘Perhaps.’ Since he’d raised the subject, Jude went on, ‘You’ve no reason to believe Fennel was murdered, have you?’
‘No logical reason, no. Just, as I say, it might make me feel better about myself.’
‘Hm.’
‘Why, is there gossip about Fethering that she might have been murdered?’
‘No. Very few people in Fethering even know she’s dead yet. There’s been nothing in the press.’
‘And that’s the way it’s going to stay,’ said Ned Whittaker with considerable vehemence. ‘One thing I’ve learnt over the years is how to keep the press out of my life. I’ve got quite good at that, from harsh experience.’ After a silence, he continued in a softer tone, ‘Do you imagine, when people know about her death, that some people will think it was murder?’
Jude shrugged. ‘Being the kind of village it is, Fethering’s a hotbed of gossip and half-baked conspiracy theories. I’m sure someone who’s watched too many episodes of Midsomer Murders will already be putting the final touches to their crackpot solution.’
Ned Whittaker sighed. ‘And in the meantime, Fennel’s dead.’
He looked so abject that she couldn’t help saying, ‘I know this is hell for you, but it will get better.’
‘How?’ he asked in a dull voice. ‘She’s not going to come back to life, is she?’
‘No. If you’d like, I could give you a massage, relax you a bit.’
‘Thanks, Jude, but no. I don’t think anything’s ever going to relax me again.’
‘How’s Sheena? Presumably she’s taking this pretty badly too.’
He let out a bitter bark of laughter. ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? I can’t believe the way she’s reacting. You’re married to someone for nearly thirty years, you think you know them inside out, then something like this happens and you realize you don’t know them at all. Sheena’s main emotion at the moment seems to be relief. She says we’ve had the threat of Fennel doing something like this hanging over us for so long that now it’s finally happened, at last we can get on with our own lives.’
There was an infinity of pain in Ned Whittaker’s hollow eyes as he looked at Jude and said, ‘Sheena seems almost to be pleased that Fennel’s dead.’
FOURTEEN
That Monday morning, Carole Seddon’s Labrador, Gulliver, was in bad odour. Literally. As usual, he and his mistress had left High Tor at seven for their customary early morning walk, but as soon as they’d reached Fethering Beach the dog had found a particularly noxious pile of tar-covered seaweed in which he had immediately rolled. And the manner in which he rolled in it suggested that his actions were entirely deliberate, almost as if he were cocking a snook at his owner’s obsessive standards of hygiene. This was most unlike his usual equable demeanour, and earned him a severe reprimand.
Some dog-owners might have completed their walk before embarking on the decontamination process, but not Carole Seddon. A chastened Gulliver was immediately dragged back to High Tor where an elaborate cleansing routine began. Carole had a book which told her the methods for removing various clogging agents from dog’s coats: ice cubes for gum, a sewer’s seam ripper for burrs, soapy water for emulsion paint and, for oil-based paint and tar, vegetable oil.
Cowed by his mistress’s disapproval, Gulliver submitted without argument to his ritual humiliation. He was made to stand on a rubber sheet on the kitchen floor, as maize oil was rubbed into the tarry knots of his coat. The dissolving lumps of blackness were then wiped off with kitchen roll and smaller droplets combed out. Finally Gulliver was bathed from top to toe with his usual Groomers shampoo, meticulously dried, combed and brushed. The whole process took a surprisingly long time but at the end – thanks in part to the maize oil – his pale biscuit-coloured coat had an unrivalled glossy sheen.
But his docile endurance of these attentions did not seem to have improved the mood of Gulliver’s owner. Carole Seddon’s morning routine had been thrown out and she knew from experience that the day ahead might never recover from such disruption. The rubber sheet had not collected all of the dropped hairs and other mess, which necessitated a complete cleaning of the kitchen floor. Then Carole realized she was hungry and assembled a boiled egg and toast for her breakfast. This again annoyed her. She didn’t like having breakfast before her walk on Fethering Beach; she liked having it after.
The result of all this delay was that Carole Seddon and Gulliver didn’t make their second attempt at leaving High Tor until nearly half-past nine. To emphasize the fact that he still hadn’t been fully forgiven, she kept the dog on the lead for the outward part of the walk, but she relented and let him run free along the beach on the way back. Gulliver rewarded her by behaving immaculately. He seemed consciously to avoid the messiest piles of weed revealed by the low tide, and even to the rich gift of a large rotting fish he gave no more than a cursory sniff. He was working hard to curry the reinstated favour of his mistress.
And he did look so beautiful, with the May sunshine catching lights in his gleaming coat, that by the time they had reached the parade of shops that backed on to the beach, Gulliver had been completely forgiven.
As Carole stopped to reattach his lead, she noticed that there was a large removal van outside the Cornelian Gallery. Was it possible that Bonita Green was moving out? Fortunately the route back to High Tor went directly past the gallery, so Carole was able to observe without appearing to snoop.
As she got closer it was clear that what was being removed into the van was not Bonita Green’s goods and chattels, but Denzil Willoughby’s artworks. The invitations to the Private View had made it clear that the exhibition was scheduled to continue for the next four weeks. Clearly the change of plan which Bonita Green had announced at the Private View was being put into practice. She’d told her son she wanted Denzil Willoughby’s exhibits out on the Saturday and two days later she was getting her wish.
By serendipity, just as Carole and Gulliver were passing the gallery door, Bonita came out to supervise the loading of the final pieces. Now that they’d been properly introduced, she merited much more than a ‘Fethering nod’, and Carole was by her standards almost effusive as she greeted Bonita and thanked her for the Private View.
The gallery-owner harrumphed. ‘Not a huge success, so far as I was concerned.’ She gestured to the van. ‘As you see, there goes the last contact between Denzil Willoughby and the Cornelian Gallery.’
‘Mm, I suppose the scene there did rather put a damper on the e
vening . . . I mean, with all those accusations flying back and forth.’
‘What accusations?’ the gallery-owner asked sharply.
‘What Fennel Whittaker said.’
‘Oh, of course. Yes.’ The removals van started up and moved slowly on the road towards London. ‘Good riddance!’ said Bonita Green with some venom. Then a shrewd look came into her black-rimmed brown eyes. ‘I’m dying for a cup of coffee. You wouldn’t care to join me, would you, Carole?’
There were two places for coffee in Fethering – it was reckoned too small to have succumbed to the invasion of a Starbucks or a Costa – but Bonita did not lead the way toward the Seaview Café on the beach. Instead she moved instinctively towards Polly’s Cake Shop, only a few doors along from the Cornelian Gallery, and the manner of her greeting there left no doubt that she was an extremely regular customer.
The waitress knew Bonita’s order would be a large Americano without milk, and Carole asked for ‘just an ordinary filter coffee, black’. Bonita, confessing that she hadn’t had any breakfast, also ordered a pain au chocolat. Carole, who had long nurtured an atavistic taboo against eating between meals, said that she had had breakfast.
‘Did you know that girl well, Bonita?’ she asked, ‘the one who threw the scene on Friday?’
‘No. First time I’d met her. She’s the sister of Giles’s current girlfriend.’ The way she said the last two words did not suggest she was a great enthusiast of Chervil Whittaker, nor indeed that she expected the relationship to last very long. Carole also noticed her use of the present tense when referring to Fennel. So perhaps she didn’t yet know about the girl’s death. If that were the case, Carole had no intentions of being the person who told her the news.
‘Could you make head or tail of what the girl actually said?’ asked Bonita.
‘Not really. Clearly she had had a relationship with the artist, Denzil Willoughby, and it had ended badly.’
‘Yes. I pieced that much together.’
Carole was wary of admitting she knew more about Fennel and her family background. She’d bide her time until she found out how much Bonita Green knew. After all, it was the gallery-owner who had initiated their meeting. She was the one who’d suggested coffee, so maybe she had some agenda of her own. Carole was content to play a waiting game.
‘I think,’ Bonita went on, ‘that Denzil is one of those artists who regards mistreating women as part of the job description.’
‘He certainly gave that impression.’
‘No lack of them around in the art world,’ said the gallery-owner with a harshness that could have been born of personal experience. ‘Though it’s rather a pity in Denzil’s case because when I first knew him, he was quite a sweet boy.’
‘I didn’t realize you’d known him a long time.’
‘My husband and I knew his parents. Denzil and my son Giles have been friends since school. They were at Lancing together.’ Now Carole understood the all-purpose accent Denzil Willoughby had used to disguise his upper-class vowels. ‘Thick as thieves, they were. Shared everything. Even girlfriends, I think, at one stage. And when they went their separate ways, Giles to Leeds to read Economics and Management, Denzil to St Martin’s – that’s St Martin’s College of Art – they still stayed in touch.
‘Even at school, though,’ Bonita went on, ‘Denzil did have an amazing talent for art.’
‘What, you mean proper art?’ Carole couldn’t help asking. ‘Painting things that looked like things?’
The other woman smiled. ‘What a perfect definition. There were teachers I had when I was at the Slade who would have appreciated that description of “proper art”, Carole. But oh yes, Denzil could do it all. Still could, I’m sure, be producing conventional landscapes and portraits – and very good ones too – if he hadn’t been sidetracked by the siren call of “conceptual art”.’
Carole’s surprise must have shown, because Bonita went on, with a little smile, ‘I see. You thought that Denzil stuck photographs of black teenagers on guns because he wasn’t capable of doing the “proper” stuff.’
‘I had rather assumed that, yes.’
‘Maybe he’s found there’s more money in his new kind of work.’
‘Do you mean people would actually pay the prices that he was asking for that rubbish?’
Bonita Green pursed her lips in mock-affront. ‘Ooh, be wary of using that word when you’re discussing art, Carole. One day’s “rubbish” can so easily become the next day’s record-breaker at auction. Look at what’s happened to Andy Warhol’s prices since he died.’
‘But come on, you can’t have rated Denzil Willoughby’s stuff that highly. You’ve just cut short his exhibition and taken it all out of your gallery.’
‘Yes, I have. But my reasons for that were probably based more on emotion and business sense than on artistic judgement.’
‘Oh?’ said Carole, waiting to be told more.
‘Look, as you’d probably gathered, mounting an exhibition of Denzil Willoughby’s work in the Cornelian Gallery was not my idea. It was my son Giles’s initiative, and I had misgivings about it right from the start. But Giles had lost his job, he wanted to have some input into the business, and I thought I should give him the chance. He kept telling me I was far too conservative in the way I ran the gallery, and of course he was right. So I thought, let Giles have his head, what harm can it do?
‘Sadly, as I realized the moment the Private View started, the answer to that question was that it could do quite a lot of harm. Harm to my business . . . and harm to my relationship with my son.’ The emotion prompted by that second thought stopped her short.
‘I’m very sorry,’ said Carole, hoping that the flood of confidence had not been permanently stemmed.
Bonita Green was silent for a little longer, but then mercifully continued. ‘Giles and I had rather a major row on Saturday. I’m afraid it had been brewing for some time.’
‘Was it disagreement over the Denzil Willoughby exhibition? You said you wanted him to get it out of the gallery.’
‘That was part of the problem, yes. And Giles insisting that we had the Private View on a Friday, when he knows that Friday’s my day off. And then he said it’d be fine for me not to be there during the day on Friday, but of course things got out of hand and I had to change my plans and . . . Anyway, all kinds of resentments came to the surface on Saturday. He had a terrible hangover which didn’t improve his mood – I think he’d been drinking with Denzil most of the night – and . . . Anyway, some things were said that probably shouldn’t have been said.
‘Finally I told him I was going to send Denzil’s work back where it came from, and Giles said, if that was the case, then he was going to move out. I can’t pretend to be sorry that he’s moved out. That flat over the gallery is pretty cramped for two of us. But I hope the row hasn’t done permanent damage to our relationship. Giles is really all I’ve got now.’
‘I thought I’d heard from someone that you had two children.’
‘Yes, I have a daughter. But she’s a lot older than him. And I never see her.’ The subject was dismissed with flat, unemotional efficiency.
‘And their father . . .?’ asked Carole tentatively.
That question was given the same short shrift. ‘My husband died when we were on a holiday in Greece. He drowned. It’s a very long time ago. The children were very small.’ Whether or not she still felt any pain over her loss, she was certainly not about to show it to a virtual stranger.
‘So you brought them up on your own?’
‘Yes.’ Again no volunteering of further information. That was all Carole was going to get.
Time for a change of subject. ‘You say Giles has moved out. Where’s he gone to? Back to his wife?’ Carole wasn’t expecting an answer in the affirmative, but she saw another way of finding out a little more about the Green family.
‘Oh, I wish he had. I’m sure he will eventually. Nikki’s right for him, in a way that none of his replacements
for her have been. This latest, Chervil –’ she loaded the name with contempt – ‘he’ll be bored with her pretty soon.’
‘I couldn’t help noticing on Friday,’ Carole observed, ‘that Nikki seemed completely at her ease, unworried by the fact that Chervil was all over her husband.’
‘Well, that’s just a mark of what a very sensible girl she is. Nikki knows that Giles will come back to her eventually, so she’s not going to get jealous of some little chit like that.’
It was an unusual word for Bonita to use, an echo of an earlier age.
‘Presumably you know,’ said Carole, ‘that the Whittakers are extremely wealthy?’
‘I had heard that. So what?’
‘Well, just that . . . if Giles is without a job . . . maybe part of Chervil’s appeal might lie in . . .?’
‘Oh, I see what you mean. Only after her money. In the same way that her sister accused Denzil of being. Hm . . . I don’t think Giles’s mind works like that, but I suppose it might be possible.’
‘Does Denzil have a private income?’
‘What on earth makes you think that?’
‘Well, he was at Lancing and—’
‘Carole, not everyone who goes to public school has a private income.’
‘No, but—’
‘As a matter of fact, Denzil Willoughby’s parents do have money. His father’s very well-heeled, but I think he may well have got bored with bankrolling his son.’
‘So Denzil Willoughby might well have been after Fennel Whittaker for her money?’
‘Possible. As I say, I haven’t really seen much of him since he was a schoolboy. He was a nice enough lad then . . . but people change.’
‘Where does he live? Where are his masterpieces being taken back to?’
‘He’s apparently got a large warehouse in Brixton which he uses as a studio, or “workshop”, I think he prefers to call it. I think Giles said he lives there too.’
‘And you don’t know any more about his relationship with Fennel Whittaker, do you, Bonita?’
‘I was unaware that he had a relationship with Fennel Whittaker. First thing I knew about it was when she suddenly lashed out at him on Friday.’ Carole felt again the shrewd beam of the brown eyes. ‘Why, do you know any more?’ A shake of the head from Carole. ‘Did you know what the girl was talking about when she spoke of “someone who causes the death of another person”?’