Fethering 08 (2007) - Death under the Dryer

by Simon Brett

  “Well, I can’t—”

  Jude’s brown eyes sprang open. “The woman! The other woman in Connie’s Clip Joint when you had your hair cut. The very dramatic one.”

  “Oh, her. Her name was Sheena. That’s all I know about her.”

  “But there was something you told me she said.”

  “I can’t remember. She was behaving so hysterically, she said all kinds of things.”

  “No, there was one thing…Something about Kyra deserving her fate…?”

  Carole’s memory cleared, and the words came back to her, exactly as she had heard them that morning. “Yes. “Though the poor girl may have deserved something, she didn’t deserve this!”

  “Well, wouldn’t that suggest to you that this Sheena knew something about Kyra or her background?”

  “Yes. Yes, it would.”

  “In that case,” said Jude, “I think we ought to see if we can get in touch with Sheena.”

  “And how do you propose to do that?”

  “I’ll ring Connie back. She’ll have a number.”

  “Hello?”

  §

  “Hello.” The voice was so tense with emotion that at first she didn’t recognize it. “It’s Stephen.”

  “Stephen. What on earth’s the matter?”

  “It’s Gaby. She’s been taken into hospital.”

  “What—something wrong with the baby?”

  “With the baby, with her, I don’t know.” He sounded totally distracted, so unlike himself, not the buttoned-up distant personality he had presented to the world ever since his mother could remember.

  “Calm down, Stephen. Tell me what happened.”

  “It was in the middle of the night. I don’t know, one-thirty, two…? Gaby woke up, feeling pain in her stomach. And, you know, we thought maybe the baby was starting, because it’s due in less than four weeks and I suppose it could be premature…” He still didn’t sound in control of his speech. “So we rang the hospital and I suggested I should drive her round, but they said, no, they’d send an ambulance…and then Gaby was bleeding a bit…and they took her in…and she’s on a drip and…I don’t know. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to Gaby.”

  “Stephen…Is the baby moving all right?”

  “What? Oh, yes, yes, apparently so.” In his anxiety about his wife, their unborn baby was an irrelevance. “Or at least the doctor said it was OK.”

  “What else did the doctor say?”

  “The one I saw said Gaby’d be fine. But that they wanted to keep her in for observation.”

  “Well, if that’s what he said, I’m sure that’s what he meant.”

  “But suppose he only said it to keep me calm? I mean, she’s been bleeding and I don’t know what—”

  “Stephen…That kind of thing can happen. There are very few completely straightforward pregnancies. I had a similar scare when I was expecting you.”

  “Did you?” He was shocked, partly by the information itself and partly by the fact that he and his mother were talking about such a subject.

  “Yes, David and I were scared witless, just as you are now. It was a couple of months before you were born. I was kept in overnight, then sent home and told to take things easy. I did just that and, as you know, everything was fine. As I’m sure it will be with Gaby.”

  “Yes.” He didn’t sound convinced, but he must have relaxed a bit, because he now became aware of the kind of conversation he was participating in. “I’m sorry to worry you, Mother.” Not that relaxed, thought Carole wryly. Not relaxed enough for a ‘Mum’. He went on, “I just couldn’t think of anyone else to talk to.”

  Carole liked that a lot more.

  “I mean, Gaby’s mother…well, I don’t think she’s strong enough to cope.”

  Even better. “No, probably not. Have you talked to your father?”

  Stephen seemed amazed by the suggestion. “What would be the point of talking to him? He wouldn’t know what to do. It’d just make him flap.”

  He was right. Just the sort of news to send David into a tailspin of panic. Carole couldn’t deny herself a little glow from the fact that she had been Stephen’s first port of call in the crisis. Emboldened, she said firmly, “Stephen, Gaby’s going to be absolutely fine. So’s your baby.”

  What she spoke was what she felt. Though by nature perpetually prone to self-doubt and suspicion, Carole Seddon had never had any misgivings about the safe arrival of her forthcoming grandchild. She had no medical knowledge, she wasn’t privy to Gaby’s current state of health; she just knew the birth would be all right. The only anxieties she had were about her ability to form a bond with the imminent arrival.

  “Would you mind telling her that, Mother?”

  “What, telling Gaby?”

  “Yes. She’s so scared. I’ve never seen her looking so scared…even when, you know, she was worried that someone was trying to murder her. If you could just have a word…?”

  “Of course. Can I ring her?”

  “No, no mobiles allowed in the hospital. I’m out in the car park talking to you now. Gaby’s not allowed out of bed at the moment, but I think they bring a phone trolley round to the wards or something, so she could ring you. Are you going to be about later?”

  “I’ll have to take Gulliver out for another walk at some point, but basically I’m here.”

  “Oh, great. I’ll get Gaby to call you. I just hope she’s…” Once again he sounded lost, like one of those rare moments when he came home from school having got into trouble for transgressing some rule he did not understand.

  “Stephen, Gaby and the baby will both be fine.”

  “Right. Thank you, Mum.”

  He’d never know how much that last word had meant to her.

  §

  Gaby rang just before lunch. Carole was very calm and reassuring, and in fact the mother-to-be was also more relaxed. Her panic of the early hours had receded. The bleeding had stopped and she drew comfort from being surrounded by experts in pregnancy and childbirth. Gaby had sent Stephen home to catch up on some sleep, and she thought she’d probably doze through the afternoon herself. She was definitely going to be kept in overnight, but she’d know more after her consultant had done his rounds in the morning.

  Carole was surprised how easily she found herself sharing her own comparable experience with Gaby. She’d never really talked about such things, except to a doctor. Carole Seddon had never been part of a group of female friends who discussed their entire gynaecological history. Finding herself talking to her daughter-in-law about these things, building on the bond of their mutual gender, was a novel experience, but a rewarding one. When she put down the phone at the end of their conversation, she felt she had really been of use to Gaby.

  And she tried to keep at bay the insidious thoughts that maybe her uncharacteristic confidence was misplaced, that there really was something wrong with the pregnancy.

  She contemplated steeling herself to ring David. He was secure in his little flat in Swiss Cottage; maybe he ought to be informed of the family crisis. Oh dear, that would mean talking to him, something she had pretty thoroughly avoided since they’d both put on such a good show of being civilized to each other at the wedding. It would also mean looking up his telephone number. Her photographic memory for figures blanked out that particular piece of information. Still, she supposed she should ring him.

  But then she thought: why? As Stephen had said, hearing the news about Gaby’s scare would just make him flap. David had always been prone to flapping. When her son needed a rock in his life, it was his mother he turned to, not his father. The knowledge gave Carole a surge of guilty pleasure.

  FOURTEEN

  Jude was a shrewd judge of character and, even though they hadn’t met, Carole’s description had made her certain Sheena was the kind of woman who would seize any opportunity to talk about herself. So it proved. In response to a phone call from a complete stranger who wanted to talk about what she’d seen at Connie’s
Clip Joint, Sheena was more than ready to fix a meeting. “Soon as you like. Friend was going to come down and see me today, but he’s cried off. Apparently has to spend the weekend with his wife. What a feeble excuse. Bloody men, eh?”

  So a rendezvous at the Crown and Anchor when it opened at noon was easily arranged.

  Sheena must have been there waiting before Ted Crisp unlocked the doors, because she was well into a large gin and tonic when Jude arrived only a couple of minutes after twelve. “Oh, I should have got you a drink, Sheena. I set this up.”

  “Don’t worry, darling. You can get the next one. What’re you having?”

  Sheena managed to get Ted’s attention away from the customer whom he was asking which fingers hairdressers use to hold their scissors, and bought a large Chilean Chardonnay for her interrogator. Jude had instantly recognized the woman from Carole’s description. As when she’d made her entrance that morning at Connie’s Clip Joint, Sheena was wearing dark glasses and had her hair swathed in a scarf. She was maintaining that illusion of unobtrusiveness so often affected by people who like to be the centre of attraction. Her silk top and linen suit were expensive, showing just enough fussy decoration to be designer garments.

  “There you are, darling. Cheers!”

  It was still warm enough to sit outside—and that might have been a justification for the dark glasses—but Sheena had selected one of the pub’s shady individual booths. Again the attempt at self-effacement had the reverse effect, exacerbated by the loud husky whisper in which she insisted on talking. Any casting director looking for someone to play a spy would have rejected her as too obvious.

  “Jude, I’m so glad you got in touch. Because I must confess I’m still traumatized by what I saw that morning at Connie’s. I keep wanting to talk about it, but holding back. You know, a shock on that scale is not something you can talk about to just anyone.”

  But evidently—and fortunately for Jude—something she could talk about to an unknown woman who’d rung her up out of the blue that morning.

  “I mean, let me tell you, mine has been a life not without incident. I’ve had a few shocks in my time—particularly where men have been concerned—but nothing like this. Actually to have been present at a murder scene—it’s the last thing in the world I would have wanted to happen to me.” Even though the opposite was clearly the case, this was spoken with great vehemence. “And the thought that the perpetrator of this awful crime is still at large…well, it’s too, too ghastly even to think about. I mean, when I wake up in the middle of the night, I am positively terrified. I am currently living on my own and I get these appalling fantasies. Suppose the murderer wants to silence all the people who were witnesses to his crime…?”

  She left a pause for this awful thought to sink in, thus giving Jude the opportunity to interject, “But you weren’t strictly a witness to the crime, were you?”

  “I was a witness to the effects of the crime. I saw the poor girl with that flex around her neck. I tell you, the image of her face is one that I will keep with me to my dying day.”

  She attempted to punctuate this line with a dramatic swallow from her gin and tonic glass, but found it to be empty. Jude went up to the bar for refills. Ted Crisp was betting another customer a fiver that he couldn’t say which fingers hairdressers held their scissors in.

  When she returned with the drinks, further discussion of Kyra Bartos’s murder was delayed by Sheena saying, “I see you don’t wear a wedding ring, Jude. Have you had trouble with men?”

  “Yes, sometimes,” came the even reply. “I have also had more pleasure with men than with anything else in my life.”

  “Oh yes, me too,” Sheena hastened to assure her.

  “I have known the heights of sexual ecstasy…many, many times. But I have also known the hideous free-fall from that ecstasy…the moments of betrayal…the moment when one realizes one has just been too trusting…that one has once again listened to too many lies. It’s heartbreaking, but it’s the fate which we women are born to.”

  This did not coincide exactly with Jude’s view of relationships with men, but she didn’t want to break the growing mood of complicity, so let it pass with a casual “Mmm.”

  Which Sheena, of course, took as agreement. “Have you ever been married?”

  “Yes,” Jude replied, rightly confident that she would not be asked for any more details. Very few people knew about her marriages—or indeed her divorces. Jude’s soothing company drew confidences from people about their own lives rather than questions about hers. Which suited her well. And so it proved in the current situation. It was her own experiences Sheena wanted to discuss, not anyone else’s.

  “Oh, I was married. For twelve years. I thought we loved each other. I thought he loved me. But suddenly, after twelve years, he said he wanted it to end. Now why would he do that?”

  ‘Emotional exhaustion’ was the answer that offered itself to Jude, but she kept it to herself. Anyway, the question turned out to have been only a rhetorical flourish. “I’ll tell you why he did that. Because he had another woman. For seven of the twelve years we had been together, he had been seeing another woman.

  “A stupid girl at his office, hardly out of her teens. She couldn’t offer any of the things I could offer him.”

  Like bent ears, thought Jude.

  “And he’s now gone and married her—and serve him bloody well right.”

  “You don’t know whether they’re happy together?”

  Sheena let out a derisive laugh. “I can hardly think they would be. The girl’s total number of brain cells is in single figures.”

  “There’s no logic to who gets on with who.”

  “There certainly isn’t. Otherwise he’d still be with me. God, the adjustments I’ve had to make in my lifestyle since the divorce!”

  “Were you left very hard up?”

  “Well, I got a house down here, but it’s not nearly as big as the house we used to live in. Where Miss Pinhead is currently doing her impression of the Lady of the Manor.”

  “But have you had to work hard to make ends meet?”

  “No, not work as such. But my house has only got four bedrooms, hers has got six. I’m not nearly as well off as she is.”

  Jude’s sympathy for the divorcee’s plight was waning. From what she said—and from the clothes she was wearing—she hadn’t done at all badly out of the settlement. Her feelings might not yet have healed, but in material terms she was OK.

  Time to move the conversation on. “Going back to that morning in Connie’s Clip Joint—”, Fat chance of getting Sheena off her favourite subject, though. “Since the divorce,” she went on, “I’ve had many attempts to find love again, but they’ve all ended in disappointment. Men are such bastards, why do we love them so much?”

  Jude didn’t offer an opinion. She reckoned she’d have to ride out the tide of anti-men hatred before she got back to investigation.

  “I mean, this man I was meant to be seeing this weekend…usual thing. We meet, it’s all magical. The sex is just stunning. He’s never met anyone like me. And then it slips out that he’s married. OK, I’ve been there before. But his marriage is a sham, he hasn’t made love to his wife for years. And everything’s so wonderful with me, he never wants to see his wife again. And I say, OK, divorce is a possibility, you know. People do it. I’m living proof that people do it. And he says, yes, great, he’ll talk to his wife. But time passes and he hasn’t got round to talking to her. And then I discover they’ve got children. And, of course, he doesn’t want to hurt his precious children. So I say, well, look, you’ve got to make some choices here, and he says yes he will, because he adores me and he’s never known sex could be like that. And still he doesn’t do anything. But this week he promises he’s going to talk to his wife, and does he? Does he hell? No, instead the bastard rings me and says he still loves me and he can’t wait to be with me, but this weekend, no, sorry he can’t make it. His wife’s ill and he’s got to stay at home with
her and look after the children. Huh!”

  Jude hoped the pause for breath would be an opportunity to get back to the murder, but Sheena hadn’t finished yet. “And how does that leave me? Washed up on the shore once again, like some piece of rubbish that’s past its sell-by date, He was younger than me, of course. Men of my own age just don’t seem able to keep up with me. And I suppose he was immature. Didn’t know when he was well off. Thought opportunities of being with a woman like me would keep cropping up for him. Huh, he’ll find out. Serves him bloody well right.” Her hand moved instinctively up to the scarf covering her head. “I’ll go to Theo tomorrow. Get a completely new style. I can’t stand the sight of myself in the mirror with this one.”

  Jude did the sum. Another restyling so soon after the previous one. If Sheena used a visit to Connie’s Clip Joint to resolve all her emotional crises, it could be an expensive business. Mind you, Jude thought, I’m a fine one to be criticizing, me with my two haircuts in five days. But mine, she reassured herself, were in the cause of investigation.

  Still, Sheena had at least brought the subject back to the murder scene. Better grab hold of that before she flitted off again. “The morning Kyra Bartos’s body was found…” Jude began firmly.

  “Yes. Oh, it was terrible! I was just sitting there having my hair done when—”

  “I do know everything that happened. My friend Carole told me.”

  “Carole?” What Jude had said on the phone that morning, her minimal justification for getting in touch, had already been forgotten. Sheena didn’t care about the reason people wanted to talk to her, so long as they did want to talk to her.

  “Yes, I’ve heard all the circumstances of what was actually seen, but I was interested in something you said at the time.”

  “How do you know what I said. You weren’t there.”

  “No, but as I explained, my friend Carole was there and she told me everything that happened.”

  “And she actually remembered everything I said?” Sheena was quite impressed.