The Strangling on the Stage (8 page)

‘B
ut what I still don't know,' she said to Carole, ‘is why he really wanted to meet up with me.'

‘I thought it was your feminine charms,' came the frosty response. ‘I thought you'd “made a great impression” on him.'

‘No, that was just flannel. That's how he talks to all women. He's one of those men who never stops trying it on.'

‘I believe you. He actually had the nerve to ask me in the Cricketers “where I'd been hiding all his life”.'

Jude had to suppress a giggle at the way Carole put the words in quotes. After Ritchie had left, she had phoned her neighbour to come down and join her at the Crown and Anchor for a drink. And that drink, she knew, might well lead to having supper in the pub. She hadn't put the idea forward yet, but she knew it would be greeted by a considerable barrage of disapproval before Carole finally agreed to eat out.

‘It still seems odd, though, that he actually wanted to meet me.'

‘Not so very odd. You said he's one of those men who never stops trying it on. And if he comes on like that to every woman he meets, maybe he does get the odd one who actually responds.'

‘Possibly. He's an attractive man.'

‘Huh,' said Carole Seddon as only Carole Seddon could. ‘Well, was there anything else he talked about, apart from just chatting you up?'

‘He talked a bit about how he is the star of all the local amdrams and they're all falling over themselves to get him to play the leads in their productions. And he talked about
The Devil's Disciple
.'

‘Anything else?'

‘Well, he did ask about Hester …'

‘What about her?'

‘He asked if she had been “all right” last night. Which I found rather odd.'

‘Why? Obviously he was worried that he'd upset her.'

‘But when had he upset her?'

‘Just before she went out to the car park.'

‘Really?'

‘Oh, you probably couldn't see from where you were at the bar.'

‘No, I just saw her being cold-shouldered by Neville Prideaux.'

‘Well, I saw Ritchie Good stop Hester on the way to the door. He didn't say much, but whatever it was it seemed to upset her. She broke away from him and rushed out of the pub.'

‘Oh, really?' said Jude.

And suddenly there were two men whose behaviour towards her might have made Hester Winstone feel suicidal.

Nothing more was heard from anyone to do with SADOS for the next week. Jude was unsurprised to have no call from Storm Lavelle. She knew of old that, once her friend became involved in rehearsals for a play, she hardly noticed what might be happening in the rest of the world. It was only after the performances had finished that Storm would be back on the Woodside Cottage treatment table, bemoaning all the shortcomings of her life.

Jude was also unsurprised to hear nothing more from Ritchie Good. She had had no expectation of hearing back from him again, but his silence once again made her question why he had contacted her so urgently in the first place. If his motive was purely sexual, then perhaps her combative banter had scared him. What he'd thought might be another easy conquest had turned out to be a trickier proposition, so maybe he'd just backed off. But Jude still couldn't help thinking that the important part of their conversation had been his anxiety about Hester Winstone.

Her investigative antennae were alerted by the situation, but she knew there was no case to explore. Hester Winstone, a woman possibly unhappy in her marriage, had made a very unconvincing suicide attempt. It had really been the classic cry for help. Jude doubted whether, after the shock of the first incision, Hester would have had the nerve to make another cut. So there was really nothing to investigate.

For the rest of the week Jude got on with her business of healing, while Carole continued her business of disapproving of most things. And presumably in Saint Mary's Hall in Smalting, on the Tuesday, the Thursday and the Sunday, rehearsals for
The Devil's Disciple
continued in the usual way.

On the following Monday morning Carole came to Woodside Cottage for coffee. By arrangement, of course. Carole was not the kind of person who ever ‘dropped in' for coffee – or indeed for anything else. ‘Dropping in' on people was the kind of habit that Carole Seddon associated, disparagingly, with ‘the North'. Except at times of great urgency, even though she only lived next door, she would never have appeared on Jude's doorstep without having made a preparatory phone call. So the arrangement to meet for coffee that Monday had been made some days before. Carole had an appointment at Fethering Surgery for a blood pressure test – ‘just a routine thing, not serious – just something that came up at one of those Well Woman appointments they insist on dragging you along to.'

Carole's health had in fact been remarkably good throughout her life, and retirement from the Home Office had not changed that. She ate sensibly and fairly frugally (except when coerced by Jude into the Crown and Anchor). She drank little (except when coerced by Jude into the Crown and Anchor). And long walks on Fethering Beach with her Labrador Gulliver ensured that she got plenty of exercise and sea air.

But if Carole Seddon were ever to have anything wrong with her, she would certainly not tell anyone. She had a strong animus against people ‘who're always going on about their health' or ‘imagine that you're interested in their latest operation'. Carole had been brought up not to ‘maunder on' about that kind of stuff. Her ideal relationship with the medical profession would be never to have anything to do with any of them. (In fact, at times her ideal relationship with all of mankind would be never to have anything to do with any of them.)

She was not a stupid woman, however, recognizing that growing older one should keep an eye on one's health. So if at a Well Woman appointment she was told she needed to go back to the surgery for a blood pressure test, back to the surgery she would go.

But that didn't stop her from moaning about the experience afterwards. ‘You'd think they'd get some system of dealing with appointments in that place,' she said as Jude presented her with a cup of coffee in the jumbled sitting room of Woodside Cottage. ‘I'd have been here half an hour ago if those doctors just got vaguely organized. I mean they have all this technology, checking in on a screen when you arrive at the surgery, appointments being flashed up in red lights on another screen, but none of that changes their basic inefficiency. I can't remember a time when I've actually got into an appointment there at the time scheduled.'

‘Well, what did the doctor say?'

‘Oh, I wasn't even seeing a doctor. Just one of the nurses for the blood pressure test. Nothing important.'

‘Are you sure?' asked Jude.

‘Yes,' Carole replied, ever more determined not to be one of those people ‘who're always going on about their health', and firmly moving the conversation in another direction. ‘I noticed as I was walking past Allinstore –' she referred to Fethering's only – and uniquely inefficient – supermarket – ‘that they're advertising a new delicatessen counter. If that's as successful as all their other modernization efforts—'

Having dealt with the NHS, Carole's move into a rant about Allinstore was only prevented by the ringing of Woodside Cottage's doorbell. Jude went through to the hall. Carole heard the door being opened and the sound of a masculine voice, but her finely tuned gossip antennae were not up to hearing what was being said. Jude returned to the sitting room with a chubby, balding man, probably round the sixty mark, wearing a blazer with burgundy corduroy trousers and carrying a bottle of champagne. The colour of his face was not a bad match with the trousers.

‘Carole, I'd like you to meet Mike Winstone.' In response to her neighbour's puzzled expression, she added the gloss, ‘Hester's husband.'

‘Oh, hello, how nice to meet you.'

‘The pleasure's mutual,' he said in a hearty public school accent. ‘And it seems I should be offering you thanks too.'

‘What for?'

‘I gather you also helped Jude out when Hester threw her little wobbly.'

‘Oh. Yes.'

‘Sorry about that.' He guffawed. ‘Can't be keeping an eye on the better half all the time, can I?'

‘Particularly not from New Zealand,' said Jude with some edge.

‘What? No, right. She told you I was off, playing cricket, did she?'

‘Yes.'

‘Ridiculous at my age, isn't it? Just this bunch of old overgrown schoolboys. Call ourselves the Subversives. Old fogeys now, but we have dreams – still waiting for that call from the England selectors, eh?' This again was apparently worthy of a guffaw.

‘As you see,' Jude intervened, ‘we're having coffee. Would you like a cup or …?'

‘Bought you some champers by way of thank-you.' He waved the bottle. ‘Still cold, fresh out the fridge. Why don't we crack that open?'

‘Well, it's a bit early …' Carole began, but she was overruled by Jude saying:

‘What a good idea. I'll get some glasses.'

Left alone together, Mike Winstone favoured Carole with a bonhomous beam. ‘You interested in cricket, are you?'

Her recollections of the game came from the very few occasions when she'd watched her son Stephen play while he was at school. Those games only lasted a couple of hours, but they'd still seemed interminable. What watching a full five-day Test Match must be like was too appalling for Carole to contemplate. Thank goodness Stephen had never shown any real aptitude for the game – or indeed for any others – and devoted himself increasingly to his studies.

‘No, I'm afraid not,' she replied.

‘You're missing a lot, you know, Carole. Very fine game, subtle mix of the very simple and the really quite complex. Lot of women getting interested in it now too, you know, and I must say some of them don't half play a good game.'

Jude returned with the glasses before Carole was required to amplify her views on cricket. Which was probably just as well.

Mike Winstone expertly removed the foil, wire and cork from the champagne, then filled the three glasses. Passing two to what he referred to as ‘the ladies', he raised his own. ‘As I say, thanks very much for helping out “her indoors” in her moment of need.'

‘Our pleasure,' said Carole.

‘So she told you all about it?' asked Jude, a little puzzled because Hester Winstone had so firmly assured her that she wouldn't let her husband know about the suicide attempt. He was, she'd said, ‘no good with that sort of stuff'.

‘Oh yes,' Mike replied confidently. ‘No secrets between Hest and me. Got to tell the truth when you're incarcerated in a marriage – worse luck.' He guffawed again.

‘So did she tell you as soon as you got back?'

‘Well, we were having a chinwag about everything we'd both been up to while I'd been in the Antipodes and then I notice this dressing on Hest's wrist and I said, “What've you been up to, darling – trying to top yourself?”' This was deemed to merit another huge guffaw.

‘And she told you?' asked an incredulous Jude.

‘Yes. And I said, “Good heavens, Hest – what a muppet you are!” Because, you know, she's always been scatty, but cutting her wrist when she was opening a tin of dog food … well, doesn't that just take the biscuit – or should I say “dog biscuit”?' Another rather fine joke, so far as Mike Winstone was concerned.

Jude nodded agreement, at the same time desperately trying to think how to find out the details of the story Hester had told her husband.

Fortunately Mike provided the information himself. ‘Anyway, when she told me about cutting herself, of course, I realized it tied in with what happened last Sunday – not yesterday, Sunday before.'

‘Ye-es,' said Jude tentatively.

‘You see, I'd rung Hest on the landline that evening. Good time from the Antipodes – I'm just getting up about the time she's thinking of bed, but I didn't get any reply. Which I thought at the time was a bit odd … until Hest explained that she was here with you.'

‘Hm.' Jude still wanted a bit more than that … which Mike again supplied.

‘She told me all about what happened in the car park …'

‘Really?'

‘Yes … how she'd nipped out early on the Sunday evening to do a bit of shopping …'

‘Right.'

‘At Sainsbury's.'

‘Of course,' said Jude, waiting to see where Hester's fabrication would take them next.

‘And how she came over all funny in the car park and fainted or something, and you wondered what had happened.'

You never said a truer word, thought Jude.

‘Anyway, I'm so glad you were there. Well, you too, Carole.' He raised his glass again to both of them. ‘Very kind of you to take her in, Jude.'

‘No problem.' She still hadn't got the complete picture, but Hester Winstone's version of events was becoming clearer.

‘Better you than some officious member of the Sainsbury's staff who'd probably have called an ambulance and started God knows what kind of palaver. Poor old thing. Hest must've lost a lot more blood than she thought.'

‘Oh?'

‘From the cut. For her to have keeled over like that.'

‘Ah yes.'

‘I've never known her to faint in the … what? Twenty-five years odd we've been married. Still, it's probably partly her age.'

‘Are you talking about the menopause?' asked Carole who, in her view, hadn't said anything for far too long.

‘Well, erm …' Mike Winstone coloured. He was clearly not at ease in discussing what he would no doubt have referred to as ‘ladies' things'. ‘Well, Hest is getting rather scattier than usual.' He raised his glass to them for an unnecessary third time. ‘Anyway, this is just to say: thanks enormously.'