by Simon Brett
‘We caught an early ferry to Dieppe, stopped for a menu gastronomique in Rouen and were ensconced in the Hotel Cimarosa in good time for our seven o’clock doubles. A close affair (on handicap) with The Old One and The Fat One finally overcoming The Thin One and The Fair One 6–4/5-6/6-3. And still time for an excellent dinner at a little bistro The Fair One knew from a time when she had been a Paris resident. No problem sleeping like tops that night!
‘However, the next day all did not go according to plan as it should have done, due to crossed wires or some kind of communication snafu. After a good lunchtime menu gastronomique at a brasserie The Fair One knew, she, as ladies will, said that she needed to do a bit of shopping. After all, if you’re a lady you don’t come to the home of haute couture without checking out the wares on offer, do you? And since we were all gentleman one of our number suggested he should accompany her as a bodyguard to protect her from any surviving element of sans-culottism on the rues de Paris. Well, this where the wires got crossed, as we discovered the next morning. While I was sure we’d agreed to another seven o’clock doubles that evening, somehow The Fair One and her escort got the idea that they were meant to be dining a deux, so we ended up playing a singles that evening (at level), which I won 6–5/4-6/6-2 (and got three in the winning gallery!).
‘All confusions cleared up in the morning when we set off back in the Road-Eater to Blighty, stopping only for a menu gastronomique in an excellent restaurant in Beauvais. The pig’s trotters were especially good and an excellent 1955 Chateau Palmer was imbibed.
‘So, another jolly jaunt jaunted. Spouses reunited, God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world! Merci beaucoup, gay Paree.’
Jude flicked through the rest of Courts in the Act, but there appeared to be no further references to Reggie Playfair. Was it conceivable that he and The Fair One had not played their evening doubles all that time ago because they were starting an affair, possibly even in bed together at the time of the court booking? Oenone Playfair, she remembered, suspected that her husband’s illicit relationship had started in Paris.
So who, then, was The Fair One? Well, there weren’t many candidates. It had to be Jonquil Targett. Piers had said she had been blonde before she was blonded. Also that she used to play a lot of real tennis. And he’d suspected that she and Reggie might have had a relationship. What was more, from what he’d said of her character, she was the kind of woman who’d glory in starting an affair with another man under her husband’s nose.
Jude felt she had to contact Jonquil, but she didn’t know how to go about it. On the one occasion the woman had contacted she had done so using Piers’ iPhone. So her number wouldn’t be on Jude’s mobile. And Piers was so protective — or afraid — of his estranged wife that he wasn’t likely to give his current lover a contact for her.
Then Jude had a brainwave. Of course, the last message on Reggie Playfair’s phone had been from Jonquil setting up their encounter in Lockleigh House tennis court. And before Piers had interrupted her in the small hours of the Wednesday night, Jude had written down the number from which the fatal text had been sent.
Jude rootled about in the untidy pile of papers on her sitting-room floor, and triumphantly produced the Allinstore receipt on the back of which she had scribbled.
No procrastination now. Jude knew that her restlessness had two causes. One, frustration at not being able to find out the exact circumstances of Reggie Playfair’s death. And two, uncertainty about Piers Targett’s honesty. Ringing Jonquil promised to bring a resolution in both cases.
She keyed in the number and got a recorded voice. The speaker did not identify herself, but asked the caller to leave a message.
Jude didn’t leave one. She was too shocked to work out what might be the right thing to say. Because, though she recognized the recorded voice, it wasn’t Jonquil Targett’s.
TWENTY-NINE
Carole Seddon did not allow herself to feel overwhelmed by the nature of her task. She was so excited by the progress she was making in her search for Marina Holland that she would not allow in any negative thoughts. She was trying to track down a young man called Vladimir Gretchenko, who had possibly lived in Brighton eight years previously. He could now be anywhere in the entire world. He might not even still be alive. And the idea that he was still in touch with Marina Holland — if indeed he ever had been in touch with Marina Holland — might well be fanciful.
Carole sat in front of her laptop in its permanent position in her spare room. She started by googling ‘Vladimir Gretchenko’. To her surprise, a couple of entries came up, but they didn’t seem very helpful. For one thing, the details were in Russian. And then again the means of contact was through Facebook.
Was Carole Seddon about to abandon the principles of a lifetime and register with a social network?
Not quite yet. She found that, without actually signing up to anything, she could access a page that offered to ‘Find people with your last name on Facebook.’
The Vladimir Gretchenko whose photo appeared there was bespectacled and grey-haired. Far too old to have been a boy in a Brighton Russian Club eight years before.
So Carole Seddon concluded with some relief — though possibly not accuracy — that Facebook and Twitter would not be of any use to her investigation.
On the other hand, there was always good old directory enquiries, now of course a completely online service. She accessed 192.com.
The free people search came up with nothing in Brighton for ‘Vladimir Gretchenko’. Now too caught up in her quest to exercise her usual parsimony, Carole paid for an advanced search. But that again produced no results.
Since she had bought six credits she next searched for Vladimir Gretchenko in East Sussex. Nothing. West Sussex — the same result.
She tried Hampshire, by now so hyper that she was prepared to go through every county in the British Isles. And maybe then she’d embark on the ones in Russia (assuming, that is, Russia had counties).
But Hampshire proved fruitful. There was a Vladimir Gretchenko listed in Southampton.
Rather than claret-soaked, Jude now thought of Wally Edgington-Bewley’s voice as marinated in 1955 Chateau Palmer as he expressed his delight at hearing from her.
‘I was just ringing to say how much I enjoyed Courts in the Act.’
He was obviously chuffed to bits by her reaction, but his British instinct for self-depreciation came to the fore. ‘Oh, it’s a load of tosh, really. A poor thing, but mine own. I am quite pleased with the title, though, I must confess — a little bit clever, don’t you think?’
‘Very,’ Jude lied.
‘I just thought it’d be rather jolly to have a record of all that stuff, you know. It has been a kind of lifelong obsession for me. I mean, I’ve really no pretensions to being a writer.’
Jude was far too gracious to agree with this last statement. ‘I really enjoyed it,’ she said. ‘I was particularly interested in your visit to Paris.’
‘Ah, la belle Rue Lauriston, mais oui. Well, of course you would be interested in that, because your Piers was on the jaunt with us.’
‘“The Thin One”?’
‘Exactly. Bit rotten of me to call the other young reprobate “The Fat One”, but Reggie took it in good part. Always did have a bit of a pot, though. Still, he never minded a joke against himself, Reggie. . poor old bugger.’
‘And then of course there was “The Fair One”. .’
‘Yes, always nice to have a filly on board for one of those jaunts. Raises the tone, don’t you know — not to mention the level of the conversation. The chatter of chaps on their own always has a tendency to sink to the lowest common denominator, eh? Doesn’t take long to get back to prep school smut.’
Jude knew she would have to be circumspect in any enquiries she made about Jonquil Targett’s role in the ‘jaunt’, so she started, ‘It must have been nice for her to have her husband there too.’
‘What?’ Wally Edgington-Bewley sounded bewilder
ed. ‘Her husband wasn’t in Paris. He was off on one of his foreign postings. Felicity had just settled one of their children into boarding school and she had a few days free. That’s why she was able to come with us.’
After the shock it had just received, Jude’s brain was reeling, realigning its assumptions, recasting The Fair One not as Jonquil Targett, but as Felicity Budgen.
She managed to come up with a formula of words that didn’t make her sound too stupid. ‘Yes, of course, I’m sorry, I get confused with all the relationships. You know, it’s only been a few weeks since I met anyone at Lockleigh House tennis court.’
‘Of course, of course.’ Wally Edgington-Bewley didn’t seem to have any problem accepting her explanation.
‘I was rather amused,’ Jude went on, ‘by the confusion that happened your last night in Paris on that jaunt.’
‘What was that?’ asked Wally. ‘Sorry, a while since I wrote the book and the memory’s not what it was.’
‘Oh, there was that business of you expecting to play a doubles and the other two not turning up and you ending up having a singles.’
‘Oh yes, of course, remember now,’ he said, and there was a new caution in his voice.
‘Did you ever get an explanation for what happened?’
‘Just crossed wires, you know. Cock-up on the communication front.’
‘And did you hear what they actually did that evening?’
‘No,’ said Wally Edgington-Bewley firmly. ‘Listen, Jude, I’ve never married myself, but one thing I’ve learned over a great many years is never to meddle in the marriages of others.’
Obviously he did know something. But equally obviously he was not going to say any more on the subject. Accepting this, Jude just showered him with more much-appreciated compliments on Courts in the Act and their conversation ended.
Then she redialled the number from which the last text message on Reggie Playfair’s phone had been sent. And this time Felicity Budgen answered.
Carole dithered. She made herself a cup of tea. She tried to get her mind engaged in The Times crossword. She even contemplated taking Gulliver out for another walk.
But she knew she was fooling herself. She was going to give in sooner or later. And she did — sooner. Nothing — not wild horses nor her own perverse personality — could have stopped Carole Seddon from dialling that Southampton number.
A young female voice answered.
‘Hello,’ said Carole, thinking on her feet. ‘Is that Marina Gretchenko?’
‘Yes,’ said the girl.
THIRTY
The Budgens’ house, called The Old Manor and situated just North of Fedborough, was even more luxuriously appointed than the Playfairs’. Felicity told Jude that they had bought it before her husband’s final ambassadorial posting with a view to spending their retirement there. Its splendour suggested there must have been family money around as well as a Foreign Office income and pension.
When Jude had got through on the phone and said what she wanted to discuss, Felicity Budgen had not hesitated about asking her over. ‘Don’s out playing golf. By the time he’s had a couple at the nineteenth hole, he won’t be back till eight at the earliest.’
This was yet another part of the investigation in which Jude could not involve Carole. She felt bad about it, but there was no way she could introduce a stranger into the kind of conversation she was shortly to have.
Though she had expected Lady Budgen to be at best glacially polite, the woman’s manner came across as warmer than that. But presumably that, too, was part of her diplomatic training. If you spend your entire life expressing interest in things that are not intrinsically interesting, you must get very good at faking quite a range of emotions.
Jude was ushered into a sitting room twice the size of the one at Winnows, which had received the same level of attention from interior designers. She accepted the offer of coffee. Felicity said she would get it herself. ‘I’ve given Inez the afternoon off.’
While her hostess was in the kitchen, Jude took in the room. On the mantelpiece stood an array of photographs of Sir Donald in the company of Her Majesty the Queen, as well as a lot of other recognizable foreign dignitaries. The display on the piano featured pictures of three unfeasibly good-looking children at various stages of development, usually on yachts or ponies.
Jude didn’t exactly feel nervous, but she felt tense. There had been a strange quality in Felicity Budgen’s manner both on the phone and now at the Old Manor House. A kind of resignation, as if she had been long expecting an encounter of this kind. As soon as Jude had mentioned ‘what happened in Paris’, Felicity seemed to recognize that the moment had come.
She brought the coffee on a lace-covered silver tray and poured it. There was not the slightest tremor in her hand as she did so. Then when they had both taken elegant sips, she said, ‘Who told you about Paris?’
‘I read about it in Wally Edgington-Bewley’s book.’
‘Ah.’ Lady Budgen let out a light laugh. ‘I had completely forgotten the mention of it in there. I remembered when he first published the book, we were a bit worried. But gradually, as nobody said anything, we realized that we couldn’t be safer.’
‘Oh?’
‘Well, although almost everyone at the club bought a copy from Wally, none of them did more than look at the photographs. I’m sure there’s not a person in the world who’s actually read Courts in the Act.’
‘Well, I read enough to be intrigued. . particularly in the light of Reggie Playfair’s death.’
‘Yes.’ Felicity Budgen looked elegantly thoughtful. ‘Reggie Playfair’s death has been a game-changer in many ways.’
‘Was it in Paris that the relationship started?’
‘Mm. The attraction had always been there, we admitted that to ourselves afterwards. But we never saw each other alone. Always a spouse on the scene. And of course we were preoccupied with our own lives, and in my case with the children. Anyway, I was abroad most of the time, supporting Donald as he climbed the greasy pole of the Foreign Office.’
‘Until Paris.’
‘Yes.’ She sighed. ‘I had come over to settle our youngest into Eton, you know, his first term. I’d done that with all of them when they’d started boarding school. Donald thought I was mollycoddling them. He kept saying that he’d just been sent off to board from India by his parents from the age of seven, and it’d never done him any harm.’
‘And do you agree with that?’
Felicity Budgen smiled. ‘How very perceptive of you, Jude. Donald always said that boarding school had made him the man he was. . and I’m rather afraid that may have been true.’ Not wishing to dwell on what was tantamount to a criticism of her husband, she went on, ‘Anyway, I was in a rather vulnerable state at that time, round the Paris trip. . you know, my age for one thing. Feeling that I was entering a distinctly less glamorous stage of my life. Also I tended to stay with my mother when I was in England, and that was never easy. She didn’t belong to the generation who thought you should bolster your children’s confidence. Rather the reverse.
‘And with the youngest child off at school. . was there any role left for me in life? Except for being frightfully loyal to Donald and smiling at a lot of people for whom I had no feelings at all? Many women perhaps would have been very happy with that situation. Maybe I should have been. But I can’t pretend. I wasn’t.’
‘And then you have the offer of a jaunt to Paris in Wally Edgington-Bewley’s Road-Eater?’
‘Yes. And the dates just worked for me. And we’d both be there without our spouses. I think we both knew something was going to happen. There was a degree of calculation on both sides.’
‘So his offer to accompany you shopping was pre-planned?’
‘We hadn’t actually talked about it, but we knew it was going to happen.’
‘Did you go back to the Cimarosa Hotel?’
‘God, no. He always had more style than that. He booked us into the Georges V.’
‘And the affair continued after Paris?’
‘Yes. When I was in England. Which wasn’t very often.’
‘And when you were back in England the two of you met at the Lockleigh House tennis court?’
Felicity Budgen arched a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. ‘You have been doing your research. Yes, we tried hotels at first. But then I nearly bumped into a colleague of Donald’s at The Dorchester and I realized it was just too risky. The one thing I could not allow to happen was for Donald to find out. My husband is an incredibly straight, uncomplicated man, who thinks the world is equally straight and uncomplicated. If he found out that his wife was having an affair, well, it would destroy him.
‘So my lover and I were like two randy adolescents, desperate to find somewhere we could be alone together. And his place was out of the question because of his wife. So yes. . we ended up with squalid encounters in the club room of Lockleigh House tennis court.’
‘You won’t have been the last couple to do that,’ Jude observed.
‘Oh?’
‘Apparently Ned Jackson has been known to take his conquests there.’
As soon as she’d said it, she realized she shouldn’t have done. She was, after all, speaking to the wife of the Lockleigh House club chairman. And she knew from George Hazlitt that Felicity Budgen had a particular concern for the welfare of Tonya Grace. All in all, what Jude had just said was very stupid. Angry though she was at Ned Jackson’s treatment of Tonya Grace, she didn’t actually want to be the cause of his losing his job.
But fortunately Felicity Budgen seemed too caught up in a reverie of the past to have registered what she said. ‘Yes, I suppose to an outsider our encounters would have appeared squalid. Squalid, but marvellous.’
‘And,’ asked Jude, ‘was it for another squalid but marvellous encounter that you asked Reggie to meet you at the court in the early hours of the Wednesday before last?’
For the first time in their encounter Felicity Budgen’s perfect demeanour cracked. Her jaw dropped and she looked totally flabbergasted as she said, ‘Reggie? What’s he got to do with it? It wasn’t Reggie I went off with in Paris. It was Piers.’