by Simon Brett
Jude saw the Inspector’s gaze move towards the kitchen. She turned. Detective Sergeant Knight standing in the open doorway. Between finger and thumb of his gloved right hand he held the neck of a bottle.
‘I found this, Inspector. It’s walnut oil.’
THIRTEEN
‘It’s the huile de noix I bought when I was in Périgord last summer,’ said Jude. ‘I’d forgotten I’d got it.’
‘“Forgotten I’d got it”?’ Detective Inspector Rollins echoed sceptically.
‘Yes, I was doing a week’s Mindfulness Workshop.’ Rollins’s expression suggested that Mindfulness Workshops weren’t high on her list of priorities. ‘There were a lot of other healers of various disciplines there, and there was one who was raving on about the health benefits of huile de noix. I mean, it’s full of Omega-3 fatty acids, supposed to be good for lowering blood pressure and reversing the hardening of blood vessels. Some people also use it in the treatment of eczema.’
Detective Sergeant Knight looked down at the bottle he was holding. ‘This is only about half full. Some of it’s been used.’
‘I wanted to test whether it did have any beneficial effects, so I tried it out on some of my clients. I’m always open to testing different kinds of therapy.’
‘Good,’ said Detective Inspector Rollins drily.
From somewhere the Sergeant had produced an evidence bag, into which he placed the bottle of oil.
His superior rose from her seat. ‘I don’t think we need trouble you any further this evening, Jude.’ And though she didn’t actually emphasize the words ‘this evening’, the implication was clear that there would be further ‘troubling’ at some future date. ‘But I would just like to reiterate that your continuing to contact people who might have relevant information about Burton St Clair’s death will not help your cause.’
‘“Cause”,’ Jude repeated. ‘Are you sure you don’t mean “case”?’
‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’
‘What I am saying, Inspector, is that you seem to be building up such a strong case against me as the murderer of Burton St Clair, I’m surprised you don’t arrest me right now and get it over with.’
‘We don’t have enough evidence to make any arrest at this point,’ Rollins replied primly. ‘Good night. We can see ourselves out.’
Carole Seddon was not used to hearing her doorbell ring after eight o’clock at night. In common with most of the residents of Fethering, unless she had planned to go out for an evening or, much more rarely, invited someone to visit her, the drawbridge of High Tor was firmly up as soon as Gulliver had had his final walk.
So that Friday evening she approached the front door with some trepidation. The sensor light over the porch had come on, but she had no idea who her visitor was. She unlocked the door, but kept the chain in place, and squinted through the narrow aperture. ‘Who is it?’ she asked, in a voice which sounded much bolder than she felt.
‘It’s me, Jude, for heaven’s sake!’
Even though they were neighbours, such unannounced visitations between them were rare. As she unhooked the chain, Carole asked, ‘Can I get you a cup of coffee?’
‘No,’ said Jude. ‘Open a bottle of wine.’
They drank in the kitchen, as usual. Carole’s front room was rarely used. Though it contained its share of padded upholstery, there was an antiseptic chill about the place. The kitchen, though kept as scrupulously clean as an operating theatre, did at least have the Aga to generate some level of cosiness. In front of it, Gulliver sighed and grunted, deep into some dream of chasing seagulls on Fethering Beach.
‘So,’ said Carole, when they were settled with their glasses of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, ‘you seriously think you are the police’s prime suspect?’
‘Increasingly, that’s the way it looks.’
‘Walnut oil seems a strange thing to have in one’s kitchen.’
‘Carole, for heaven’s sake! You remember when I went on that course last summer …’
‘Oh yes, the mindlessness thing …’ This was as near as Carole Seddon ever got to making a joke. She was always having a go at her neighbour’s beliefs in alternative medicine, and it was not the first time she had made this particular gibe.
‘Mindfulness, as you know full well,’ said Jude wearily. ‘Anyway, that was in Périgord, which is the walnut centre of the universe. Every shop sells the stuff, and it does have medicinal properties, so I thought I’d try it.’
‘Hm. Still seems a strange thing to have in one’s kitchen.’
‘Well, it was there, and I’d used some a few months back for a client with serious eczema.’
‘And did it work?’
‘No, it didn’t seem to improve her condition.’
Carole sniffed, as only she could sniff. ‘There are, of course, treatments for eczema available in conventional medicine.’
‘I know that,’ said Jude, unwilling to re-engage with Carole’s scepticism about her profession. ‘But listen, the most important thing is that Detective Inspector Rollins has warned me off doing any further investigation of the case.’
‘Well, you can see her point,’ said Carole, going all stuffy and Home Office.
‘But the situation’s changed. The case needs investigating more than ever – simply to prove that I didn’t murder Al.’
‘Why are you telling me all this?’ asked Carole, deliberately obtuse.
‘Because if I’m not being allowed to find evidence which proves that I didn’t commit the murder, someone else is going to have to find it!’
There was a silence. Then, as if she’d just been jolted awake, Carole said, ‘Oh, you mean me?’
‘Yes, of course I mean you!’
Carole was secretly delighted. One of her favourite dreams was coming true. The idea that Jude, habitually so serene and in control, should be asking for her help was a very attractive proposition. But it wasn’t in Carole’s nature to express her delight outwardly.
‘Oh,’ she said, as if dubious. ‘Well, you’ll have to give me all the background …’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘… but then I might be prepared to bring my mind to bear upon the problem.’
‘If you would,’ Jude pleaded.
Carole glowed inwardly. Always worried about being marginalized in the investigations she and Jude had undertaken, here she was being offered the starring role. But she didn’t want to show how much the situation appealed to her, so all she said was a gruff, ‘All right, I’ll give it a go.’
‘Thank you so much. And, Carole, as I mentioned, I’ve been talking to Oliver Parsons about the case. He was there on Tuesday night, and he has lots of good ideas. I’ll give you his mobile number.’
‘Do, by all means.’ Not that Carole had any intention of ever ringing it. The only person she conducted investigations with was Jude. And since Jude was going to be unavailable for this one, Carole Seddon was determined to solve it on her own.
FOURTEEN
A few years before, Carole would have known nothing of what went on in Fethering Library. But, thanks to the enrolment of her granddaughter, it had become a familiar venue for her. And Carole herself had become a sufficiently familiar face for her to be greeted by name when she arrived there the following day.
The greeter that Saturday morning was Eveline Ollerenshaw, who was standing by the issue desk, performing some vague function Di Thompson had invented to give her the illusion of usefulness. (Evvie didn’t actually check the books out; that was now done automatically.)
‘Carole, how nice to see you. Not got Lily with you then?’
‘Not today.’
‘Because you often bring her on Saturdays. For all the children’s activities.’ The noise level in the library indicated that those activities had already started.
‘Yes, I sometimes do. But she’s with her parents in London today.’
‘Nice for you to have her sometimes, though, isn’t it?’
‘Oh,
yes.’
‘And of course she’s got a little sister now, hasn’t she? Remind me what her name is?’
‘Chloe.’
‘Lovely names, both of them. Of course, I didn’t have kiddies myself. Gerald and I had hoped that one day … but it just didn’t happen. I suppose—’
Carole was not in the mood for one of Evvie’s monologues. ‘Is Di about?’ she asked crisply.
‘Oh, she was over by the …’ The old woman looked across the library and, just at that moment, Di Thompson emerged from the staff room, pushing a trolley. Carole made a fairly polite escape from Eveline Ollerenshaw, and greeted the librarian.
‘Haven’t seen you for a while, Carole,’ said Di Thompson. Her dark hair looked even shorter in the daylight. On the sloping shelves of her trolley, rows of books stood up like bricks on a builder’s hod. She started to check through them as she too observed, ‘No Lily?’
‘Not with me today.’
‘Ah. Well, as you see, she’s missing the usual Saturday morning chaos.’ Di gestured across to the children’s section, from where enough noise emanated to destroy forever that cartoon image of librarians always having fingers to their lips and saying, ‘Ssh.’ Children of all sizes, monitored by parents lying uncomfortably on the floor or perched on tiny chairs, scampered about. One or two sat unmoving, immersed in their storybooks. Others were being encouraged by a couple of twenty year olds to make face masks out of paper plates. The white surfaces were decorated with scribbles in coloured crayon, stickers and bits of post-Christmas tinsel attached by glue-stick.
‘They seem to be having fun,’ Carole observed.
‘Oh yes. Do you mean the kids or the grown-ups?’
‘Both.’
They looked across. The twenty year olds had both donned masks and were improvising some kind of slapstick routine which their junior audience was finding hysterical.
Carole grinned. ‘Were such activities part of the job description when those two applied to become librarians?’
‘They’re not librarians. Sadly, I haven’t got enough staff to do that kind of thing. We can just about manage running the children’s story-time sessions on Wednesdays, but otherwise we have to rely on volunteers – God bless them.’
‘Ah.’
‘People like Evvie.’
Di Thompson didn’t put any critical intonation into her words, but Carole knew exactly what was meant. ‘Ah,’ she said.
The librarian pointed back to the children’s area. ‘Those two deserve some kind of sainthood, or a medal at the very least. Both primary school teachers. Not content with spending their working weeks corralling the little bastards, they actually volunteer to come here and do more of the same on their Saturday mornings.’
‘You’re lucky to have them.’
‘You can say that again.’ All the time she was talking, the librarian was working, picking up books from the trolley, checking them through and, according to their condition, placing them on one or other of the lower shelves. ‘Without my volunteers and my part-timers,’ she went on, ‘this place’d close even sooner than it will do anyway.’
‘Is it going to close?’ asked Carole.
Di Thompson shrugged. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me. Government cuts are hitting all the local amenities. And libraries are currently in a pretty vulnerable state. Borrowings down, people find it so easy to read e-books or order real books on Amazon. Then kids spend all their time playing computer games rather than reading, people who used to rely on the library for computer services seem mostly now to have their own laptops or tablets. The reference information we used to provide is all available at the touch of a button from Wikipedia … I could go on. The effects of all that are already being felt – even here in West Sussex. In other parts of the country there are a lot of libraries reducing their opening hours, stopping their mobile library services, some closing down completely. And a few continuing as community libraries, all run by volunteers. It’s not a great time for us.’
‘But libraries are part of our heritage,’ said Carole piously. ‘There are people whose entire education has come from their public library. Surely they can’t be allowed just to disappear? Somebody must do something about it.’
‘What, though? And, more importantly, who? Who’s going to do something about it?’ Di Thompson looked Carole straight in the eye. ‘It’s the old “use it or lose it” syndrome. And I often wonder whether the people who do say how terrible it is, who write letters to the papers saying we mustn’t lose our libraries, saying that an efficient library service is an essential part of a civilized society – do they actually use their local branch as much as they should?’
Carole looked away. She didn’t know whether Di was actually getting at her or not, but she still felt guilty.
‘We keep trying to drum up more interest in this place, but it’s an uphill struggle. Special events, all that …’
‘Library talks?’ Carole suggested, seeing a way of getting to the subject she really wanted to talk about.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Di. ‘They can be quite popular, but the trouble is, it’s always the same people who attend. The Fethering stalwarts, mostly female, mostly over seventy. Very loyal, but as they die off, who’s going to replace them? What I do these days is rather similar to being a vicar, watching my congregation slowly slipping away to nothing.’ As she spoke, her hands were still busily sorting the books.
Carole decided to take the direct approach. ‘And does a library talk attract more interest if the evening ends in a murder?’
Di Thompson let out a small, sharp laugh. ‘Well, it would appear to, yes. Certainly had more people joining the library this week than we have had for some time. I think that’s maybe something to do with them wanting to visit the scene of the crime.’
‘And was this the scene of the crime?’ asked Carole.
It had been a half-hearted attempt to see whether Di might reveal that she knew more detail about Burton St Clair’s death than the rest of Fethering. As such, it failed. The librarian replied, ‘The scene of the crime was actually in the car park. I’m surprised you hadn’t heard that.’
Carole covered up. ‘Oh, there’s been so much gossip in Fethering during the last week, it’s hard to pick out the truth from the speculation.’
‘Tell me about it.’ Di Thompson let out a jaded sigh. ‘I’ve heard more theories about whodunit than you’d find in the entire crime section.’
‘Any convincing ones?’ asked Carole hopefully.
‘No. Each one sillier than the next.’ The librarian gave her a sharp look. ‘Why, are you about to inflict yet another one on me?’
Carole had been offered an opening, and she knew she had to use it with caution. ‘Well, I was talking about it with Jude, my neighbour, you know, who was here on Tuesday night …’
‘I know Jude.’
‘… and the police had spoken to her …’
‘Detective Inspector Rollins and her sidekick?’
‘Yes.’
‘I have sympathy for her. They’ve taken up a lot of my time this week.’ She gestured to her trolley. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t be sorting out this lot on a Saturday.’
‘Jude said the police told her Burton St Clair was killed by anaphylactic shock after eating something containing walnuts, to which he was allergic.’
Di Thompson looked at her with new respect, realizing she was dealing with a Fethering resident who actually knew some of the facts in the case. Which was quite a novelty. ‘Yes, that’s what they told me. And I had to close the library on Thursday while they searched the place. Kept the staff room shut up yesterday too. Which was very inconvenient, because they gave me so little notice about it.’
‘Presumably,’ said Carole, hoping to channel the librarian’s resentment of the police towards further revelations, ‘they checked the staff room where the wine had been kept for drinks after Burton St Clair’s talk?’
‘Yes. Looking for traces of walnuts, I suppose.’
&nbs
p; ‘And did they find any?’
That was greeted by a cynical laugh. ‘Well, if they did, they weren’t going to tell me about it, were they?’
‘Of course not.’ Carole knew all too well how reticent the police could be when it came to sharing their findings with amateurs. ‘You were actually there when the bottle was broken?’
‘Yes.’
‘From what Jude said, you’d poured a glass for Burton St Clair from the last remaining bottle in the staff room?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And then when Steve Chasen went to pour a glass for himself, you reached out to stop him and that’s how the bottle got knocked over?’
‘Yes. Vix Winter, my junior librarian, was there too.’
Carole looked around the room. ‘Is she here today?’
‘No. She should be.’ There was a lot of resentment in Di’s voice. ‘She called in sick.’
‘Are you suggesting she’s not sick?’
‘I just think, for a girl of her age, she suffers from a remarkable amount of illness.’
‘Right.’ That, clearly, was an ongoing staffing problem which did not concern Carole. ‘So, going back to the bottle getting smashed, it could be any one of the three of you who knocked it over?’
‘I suppose so. But it wasn’t deliberate. It was an accident.’
‘But if it had been deliberate, any one of you could have ensured that it fell on to the floor?’
‘Perhaps, but why would we want to?’
‘To destroy the evidence that chopped walnut had been infiltrated into the bottle?’
‘Oh, I see, right. Well, I can assure you, Carole, I haven’t been infiltrating chopped walnut anywhere.’
‘I wasn’t suggesting you had been.’
‘No? You are aware, aren’t you, that you and Jude have got a bit of a reputation around Fethering for seeing yourselves as amateur sleuths?’
‘Have we?’ asked Carole innocently.
‘Very definitely. Why else do you think I’m answering your questions?’