The Shooting in the Shop (15 page)

‘No.’ Again Jude could hear a slight wobble in
Lola’s voice.

‘So you weren’t in Fethering at all on that
Sunday?’

‘I’ve told you – no.’ The answer was almost
snappish, but maybe Lola was being extra-vehement
to hide her emotional lapse.

Well, thought Jude, somebody’s lying. Kath is
positive she saw Ricky with Lola in his Mercedes 4×4
near Fethering Yacht Club at around eight o’clock on
the Sunday evening. Lola denies being there.

And, in spite of the woman’s loopiness, Kath’s was
the version of events Jude was inclined to believe.

Television schedules are over-stuffed at Christmas.
The best offerings – and here ‘best’ is very definitely
a relative word – are reserved for the main days of
celebration – Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve. And
the less important parts of the holiday are padded
with all kinds of rubbish, particularly lots of superannuated
movies.

And so it was that that Saturday evening Carole
found herself watching a black and white film,
starring Flora Le Bonnier. Entitled
Her Wicked Heart
,
it was a typical Gainsborough production, a melodrama
set in a vaguely eighteenth-century period
with lots of cloaks, knee-breeches and buckles (and
quite a lot of swash to go with all the buckling). Flora played Lady Mary Constant and it was her wicked
heart that featured in the title. Disappointed by her
loveless marriage to the dissolute Sir Jolyon Bastable,
she develops a secret life as Black William, a highwayman.
In this guise, while holding up his coach, she
meets and falls in love with the handsome but penniless
aristocrat Lord Henry Deville. Their budding
romance is impeded by two obstacles – one, Lord
Henry believes her to be a man and, once that situation
is clarified, two, she is still married to Sir Jolyon.
Only when her husband dies in a fortuitous duel, can
Lady Mary and Lord Henry be together. They ride off
into a greyish English sunset, determined to ‘rid this
country of the scourge of highwaymen’.

Carole thought the whole thing was tosh, but
quite watchable tosh. What struck her most, though,
was the beauty of Flora Le Bonnier, which glowed
through the dusty monochrome print. Probably in her
early twenties when the film was shot, she had the
kind of natural good looks which would have made
men do stupid things, like giving up families and
careers just to be near her. Carole Seddon, whose
looks were never going to cause comparable upheavals,
could still appreciate such beauty when she
saw it. And she could still wonder how it must feel for
someone like that to see the depredations of age on
her face and figure. In the film Flora’s hands were
particularly beautiful, slender and expressive, unlike
the ugly claws they had become. Though Flora Le
Bonnier remained a fine-looking woman and looked good for her age, she had declined considerably since
her glory days.

And although Carole knew there was no genetic
link between the two women, she kept being struck
by the actress’s likeness to her dead granddaughter.
Polly’s face had more character than sheer beauty,
but the two shared an expression of unshakeable
determination. And when in the film Lady Mary
faced some reverse, the set of her mouth was exactly
the same as her granddaughter’s look of dogged
resentment.

The effect this perception had on Carole was,
almost for the first time, to make her confront the
reality of Polly Le Bonnier’s death. She felt restless
and, after she’d completed her bedtime routine,
unready for sleep. So, as happened increasingly, she
found herself sitting down in front of her laptop.

She started, as so many researchers do these days,
with Wikipedia. The entry for Flora Le Bonnier was,
like most Wikipedia entries, incomplete and full of
unsupported detail. There was an exhaustive listing
of the film and television productions in which she
had appeared, but very little personal history. Flora
Le Bonnier’s rule about not speaking directly to the
press appeared to have paid off.

The only parts of the entry that alerted Carole
were the following sentences: ‘Flora Le Bonnier was
adopted as a baby by George Melton, a solicitor, and
his wife Hilda, but subsequent research revealed her
to be a descendant of the long-established Le Bonnier
family which became extinct with the death in action of Graham Le Bonnier in the Western Desert in 1941.
The accuracy of this link to the aristocracy has been
questioned in various press reports.’

And then, just when she got to the interesting bit,
there were two words in brackets, printed in blue:
‘[citation needed]’.

The following morning, Sunday, Carole dropped
in at Woodside Cottage on her way back from
Gulliver’s walk and told Jude of her online findings.
They agreed that Flora Le Bonnier’s background
deserved further investigation.

‘Needless to say, when I googled her name there
were thousands of references. I suppose I’ll have to
work through all of them.’

‘If you’ve got the energy, Carole. It may not be
that important, anyway. I mean, does it matter these
days whether people have an aristocratic background
or not?’

‘It matters to Flora Le Bonnier.’

After Carole had left, Jude was not really surprised to
have a call from Piers Duncton asking if he could
come and see her. Ever since Lola had said he was
back in Fedborough, she’d been expecting to hear
from him. She hadn’t yet decided on his motives, but
she knew the young writer was as keen as Carole
and she were to find out the exact circumstances of
Polly Le Bonnier’s death.

‘Did you manage to have any kind of Christmas?’
she asked, once she’d got him settled in the folds of
an armchair and supplied him with a cup of black
coffee and an ashtray for the cigarette he kept taking
nervously in and out of his mouth.

‘It wasn’t the most relaxed couple of days I’ve
ever spent. My parents are a bit formal at the best of
times, and so they wanted all the Christmas rituals
observed, even though I was feeling shitty because of
what happened to Polly.’

‘Did they ask you about it?’

‘No. In some ways I was grateful that they didn’t.
I suppose that made it easier for me to control my
emotions. But at the same time I kept wishing that
they would say something, acknowledge her death.
I mean, they’d known her for over ten years. But I
suppose everyone finds their own way of coping with
tragedy.’

‘And what’s your way of coping with it?’

‘Finding out what really happened, how Polly
actually died. I’m determined to do that. I’ve told . . .’
he baulked at giving the name ‘. . . this other girl I’m
seeing that we’re not going to meet up again until
I’ve got to the truth.’

Jude recognized the strategy. Piers was assuaging
his guilt by punishing himself. He wanted to close the
chapter of life with his previous girlfriend before
focusing all his attention on the new one.

‘Incidentally,’ she asked, ‘did your parents approve
of Polly?’

‘I think they liked her OK. They’ve always been
terrible snobs, so they approved of the Le Bonnier
connection. But I think they’d probably have preferred
her to be a corporate lawyer rather than an
actor. Mind you, they’d have preferred me to be a
corporate lawyer rather than a writer.’

‘And Lola and Polly got on?’ It was the question
Jude didn’t want to ask. She liked the owner of Gallimaufry
and didn’t want to think ill of her. But the fact
remained that Ricky and his wife had both been seen
in Fethering on the night of the fire. Lola was in the
frame as a suspect.

‘Yes, they always did. Polly and I were an item
before I met Lola.’

‘I know that. The reason for my question was that
Lola told me . . . you and she . . . at the Edinburgh Festival . . .’

He blushed. ‘Polly never knew about that, so
there was never any awkwardness between the two
of them.’

‘Good. And what about you and Lola now?’

The blush spread as far as his prominent ears. ‘To
resort to a cliché, we’re just good friends. Nothing
more.’ Jude’s quizzical look demanded amplification.
‘Look, she’s one of my closest woman friends. I can
talk to Lola about stuff I wouldn’t dare raise with
anyone else, and maybe it’s because we were once
lovers that we’re so relaxed with each other. But I
promise you there is nothing more to our relationship
than that. Lola is absolutely devoted to Ricky. He’s
the love of her life. She wouldn’t even consider going
to bed with anyone else.’

‘And do you reckon that Ricky is equally faithful?’

Piers looked awkward as he answered. ‘I’m
honestly not sure. I mean, I know he had a reputation
as a womanizer in the past, but I think marrying
Lola has settled him down a lot. Whether a leopard
can totally change its spots, though . . . I really don’t
know.’

‘But if you were to hear that Ricky had had an
affair, you wouldn’t be that surprised?’

Uncomfortably, he confirmed that he wouldn’t.

‘And you haven’t heard any rumours connecting
him to anyone in particular?’

‘No, and I’m not likely to. Look, I live in London.
I don’t know anything about the rumour-mill of Fethering.’

‘Of course you don’t.’ Deftly Jude redirected the
conversation. ‘You know the book Polly was writing,
the one she mentioned to Carole?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Well, I just wondered if you knew where it was.’

‘Where physically, you mean?’

‘Physically, geographically, whatever. Do you
have a manuscript of it yourself?’

Piers shook his head. ‘I don’t know that she ever
even printed it out. I’ve never seen a hard copy. The
bits of it I read I read straight off her laptop.’

‘And where is her laptop? In your place in
London?’

‘No. Polly never went anywhere without her
laptop. She had it with her when she came down
here. It’s quite a small one, she put it in her leather
rucksack. So I suppose it must have still been with
her . . . in Gallimaufry . . . when she . . .’ With an effort
of will he regained control of himself. ‘I asked Lola
about it. The police told her they’d found the remains
of a laptop in the shop. Totally destroyed by the fire.
There’s no chance of retrieving any information
from it.’

‘And that laptop would have contained the only
copy of her book that Polly had?’

‘I assume so. Certainly she didn’t have another
computer. I suppose she might have done a printout
or backed up the book on to a flash drive or something,
but she never mentioned that to me.’

‘Just a minute . . . Polly told Carole that she’d
shown some of the book to an agent.’

‘Serena Fincham, right.’

‘Well, she must have had a hard copy to send her,
mustn’t she?’

‘No. She emailed it.’

‘So, so far as you know, there’s not a single copy
of Polly’s book anywhere in the world?’

‘No. I’m afraid it died with her.’

Was Jude being hypersensitive to detect an undercurrent
of relief in his words? But then a new thought
came into her head. ‘What about Polly’s mobile? Do
you know if the police found that?’

‘Lola didn’t mention it. But I assume that would
have been destroyed in the blaze too.’

‘She would have had it with her?’

‘Oh God, yes. Never went anywhere without her
mobile. She kept it in one of those phone sock things.
Hideous fluorescent pink.’

Remembering this personal detail about the dead
girl once again threatened his fragile emotional
equilibrium, so Jude moved quickly on. ‘Piers, when
we last spoke, just before Christmas, you had just
heard about Polly’s death . . .’

‘Yes, that’s why I came down here to Fethering.’

‘But then you hadn’t heard how she died. At that
time, presumably, you thought she’d been killed by
the fire in Gallimaufry. Of course, we now know she
had been shot.’

He shook his head, as though trying to dispel the
image her words had created. ‘Which really means we
can rule out an accidental death. We are talking about
either suicide or murder. Piers, you probably knew
Polly as well as anyone did. Would you say she was
capable of killing herself?’

There was a long silence before he replied. ‘I just
don’t know. You can be very close to someone, think
you’re sharing every thought, every emotion, and
then something happens which makes you realize
you never knew them at all. And that’s a bit how I’ve
been feeling since Polly . . . since she died. That there
are whole areas of her personality that I never knew
at all.’

Jude remembered Lola using almost exactly the
same words about Ricky. Was it just coincidence, or
could it mean that she and Piers had discussed the
situation? She listened carefully as the young writer
continued, ‘I know Polly hadn’t been happy in recent
months . . . well, for years, possibly. I think she’d
expected that finding acting work would prove easier
than it did. Maybe she thought her famous surname –
even though she’d only got it through her mother’s
remarriage – would give her an entrée to the West
End, but it certainly didn’t. And I guess there were
other things that might have been upsetting her.’

‘Like her relationship with you?’

‘Well . . .’

‘Piers, you told Carole and me last time we met
that you were just about to break off with Polly, as
soon as Christmas and the New Year were out of the
way. She must’ve had an inkling that something was
in the air. Weren’t there any rows or disagreements
between you?’

‘A few, yes.’

‘About what?’

‘Mostly about the fact that we were doing less
things together. My work was taking me away a lot of
the time, so Polly was having to spend more and more
evenings in the flat on her own. She didn’t like that,
so sometimes when I got back late we’d have fights –
particularly if I’d been drinking, and, given the nature
of the work in which I’m involved, I usually had been
drinking. Television’s a very sociable business,’ he
pleaded in mitigation.