Murder in the Museum (Fethering Mysteries) (21 page)

But Carole was too traumatized to cope with duplicity. She could only tell the unspun truth. And, after all, she was giving information which the police would be getting soon enough from some other source. What did it matter?

The male detective indicated the end of the interview by saying, ‘Thank you very much, Mrs Seddon. You’ve been most helpful, and we much appreciate your frankness, at a time which must be very difficult for you. I’m afraid, inevitably, as our investigations continue, we will need to talk to you further, and I apologize for that now. Given the circumstances of the Emergency Trustees’ Meeting you’ve just described, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you to avoid discussion of this evening’s events with any member of the press. All media contact will be handled by the police.’

‘Of course.’

‘Finally, Mrs Seddon, there’s one thing I do have to ask you. Though we await forensic confirmation, it would appear that what you witnessed tonight was a violent crime against Mrs Cartwright. Can you think of anyone who might possibly have had a motive to kill the lady?’

Given the direct question, some of Carole’s customary circumspection returned. ‘Sheila Cartwright had a very strong personality. She had her own ways of doing things, particularly so far as Bracketts was concerned. She seemed to regard this place as her personal fiefdom. As a result, she did tend to put a lot of backs up. But whether annoyance at Sheila’s manner would be a sufficient reason for someone actually to kill her –’ Carole shrugged ‘– I have no idea.’

‘No. Well, thank you very much indeed, Mrs Seddon.’

‘Now do you think you feel all right to drive yourself home?’ asked the WPC solicitously.

‘Yes. I was very shaken, but I feel a lot better now.’

‘We could easily make arrangements for . . .’

‘No. No, thank you, I’ll be fine.’

As the detective led her to the door, Carole could feel in his body language the urgency to be rid of her and move on to the next interview, but that didn’t stop her from asking, ‘Would you imagine there’s a connection between Sheila Cartwright’s death and the discovery of the body in the kitchen garden?’

He smiled indulgently. ‘Mrs Seddon, even if I knew the answer to that question, you know I wouldn’t tell you. We are very early into the investigation of tonight’s tragic event. Far too early to be making the kind of connections you suggest.’

‘Yes. Yes, of course,’ said Carole, as she left the Administrative Office.

But there was no doubt in her own mind that there was a connection between the two deaths.

In the short time she had been talking to the police, the area around the kitchen garden gates had been transformed. Floodlights, a battery of vehicles and equipment now surrounded the scene. And a white, tent-like structure had already been erected over the dead body of Sheila Cartwright.

A polite policeman in a bright yellow waterproof escorted her to the car park. This was only partly, she knew, from solicitude. His main purpose was to make sure that she did actually leave the premises.

Carole Seddon was a habitually cautious driver, but that night the white Renault went even slower than usual on its way back to Fethering. The trembling had left her body, but still threatened to flicker back into action at any moment.

Very cautiously, she reversed into the garage at High Tor. Then, as she crossed to her front door, she looked across at Woodside Cottage. She desperately needed to talk to Jude, to share the shock of the evening, and to feel the healing calmness of her neighbour’s reaction.

The lights were still on, both downstairs and upstairs. Carole hesitated for a moment.

Then she heard the distinctive sound of coughing from the front bedroom.

Grimly, Carole Seddon put her key in the lock of High Tor.

‘God, why didn’t you come round last night?’

‘Well, I . . .’

‘You must’ve seen the lights on. Laurence and I were talking till really late.’

Carole couldn’t think of anything to say. Jude had come bustling round from Woodside Cottage as soon as she’d seen her neighbour bringing Gulliver back from his early morning walk and, hearing of Sheila Cartwright’s murder, couldn’t believe that she hadn’t been told about it the night before.

‘I . . . I suppose I felt a bit shaken,’ said Carole inadequately.

‘All the more reason to come and see me. I would have poured white wine into you until you calmed down.’

‘Yes. I know, but . . . Well, anyway, I felt I needed to be on my own.’ There was no way she was going to reveal the real reason why she hadn’t gone to see Jude, the threat to their intimacy posed by the presence of Laurence Hawker . . . even the danger that a late-night ring on the doorbell might
interrupt something intimate
. The thought of breaking in on some act of passion between her neighbour and her
boyfriend
. . . If ‘boyfriend’ was the word . . . The man seemed to have moved pretty fully into Woodside Cottage, so the assumption was reasonable that . . .

Not for the first time, Carole wished she had more certainty about what was happening in Jude’s life. Carole Seddon liked everything around her to be cut and dried, whereas everything that concerned her neighbour seemed in some mystical way joined-up and . . . whatever the opposite of ‘dried’ was . . . ‘Steamy’ perhaps . . . ?

In the intuitive way that could sometimes be almost irritating, Jude sensed the way Carole’s mind was moving. ‘Laurence is not around today,’ she said, with a friendly grin.

‘Really?’ Carole made it sound as if, though there might be many things on her mind at that moment, they did certainly not include Laurence Hawker. But then she let down the front of insouciance by asking, ‘Where is he?’

‘He’s away for the weekend. Got a cab about half an hour ago. He’s staying with a girlfriend.’

Once again, so far as Carole was concerned, this was inadequate information. If Laurence was staying with a girlfriend, then presumably that meant that Jude wasn’t his girlfriend. And if Jude wasn’t his girlfriend, then why had she let him move into Woodside Cottage? Or was he a man who cultivated a great number of girlfriends? And if that were the case, and if Jude was part of that harem, how on earth did she tolerate the situation with such apparent equanimity? It was very frustrating not to have things defined.

But all Carole actually said was ‘Oh?’

And even if she’d wanted to say more, she wouldn’t have been able to, because Jude hurried on, ‘Right, let me get us some coffee, and you give me your full murder witness routine, just like you did it for the police.’

‘I’ll get coffee for guests in my own house, thank you.’ The instinctive spiky response was out before Carole could stop it.

But Jude just smiled. ‘All right. Sorry.
You
make the coffee. But may I come into the kitchen and listen to you while the kettle boils?’ she added humbly.

Carole knew she was being sent up. Her insistence on the principles that a hostess made the coffee in her own house, and that the coffee, once made, should be consumed in the sitting room rather than the kitchen was, she knew, old-fashioned and even ridiculous at the beginning of the twenty-first century. But that was the way Carole had been brought up, and this particular leopard was not about to change any more spots than were absolutely necessary. At times the way she was infuriated her, but that was the way she was.

While Carole moved the kettle between sink and Aga, Gulliver greeted Jude as if he had never seen such a wonderful human being since he left the rest of the litter in his mother’s basket.

Then, perching on the edge of the table (why couldn’t she use a chair?), Jude said, ‘So . . . tell me exactly what happened.’

Carole had become so absorbed in her retelling of the previous evening’s events that she didn’t notice that they’d both ended up sitting at the kitchen table with their coffees.

At the end of the account, Jude let out a long ‘Well . . .’, then went on, ‘Are you sure you’re all right? It must have been a terrible shock.’

‘Well, yes, it was. But I’m fine now. Actually slept very well last night.’

‘Emotionally drained.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Still, it’s a nice little murder mystery, isn’t it, Carole? A victim with lots of enemies, and most of them conveniently gathered in the place where she was killed.’

‘I suppose so.’

Jude rubbed her plump hands together gleefully. ‘Who’ve we got then?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Suspects.’

‘Ah.’

‘From what you say, the two who Sheila Cartwright really humiliated at the meeting were Gina Locke and Graham Chadleigh-Bewes. Both very definitely on the scene at the relevant time. And you said you’d actually seen Graham with the murder weapon?’

‘If it
was
the murder weapon . . .’

‘Oh, come on. A handy World War One service revolver. How many more guns are there going to be around a place like Bracketts?’

‘All right,’ Carole conceded. ‘But Gina would have known of its existence. As would old Belinda.’

‘Ooh yes, don’t forget the old lady.’

‘Though I’m not sure what motive Belinda Chadleigh would have had to kill Sheila Cartwright. She seemed very much to approve of everything Sheila had done around Bracketts.’

‘
Until
,’ Jude suggested, with a gleam of mischief in her big brown eyes, ‘Sheila committed the unforgivable sin of upsetting the old lady’s beloved nephew.’

‘Maybe. I don’t think it’s very likely.’

‘Oh, come on, Carole, at this stage we’re not concerned with what’s
likely
. Just let’s allow our ideas to
run
for a bit.’

‘All right.’ But Carole didn’t really sound as though she approved of the proposal.

‘And what about your ex-librarian?’

‘George Ferris?’

‘Yes. Was he still around when Sheila Cartwright was shot?’

‘I don’t know. He went off towards the car park, but I didn’t actually see him leave.’

‘So he definitely stays on our list of suspects.’

‘Why?’

‘Not being seen to leave is, by definition, a suspicious action. So – hooray – four lovely juicy suspects!’

Carole’s pale eyes were not quite so disapproving as she looked at her neighbour and said primly, ‘I don’t think you’re taking this completely seriously, Jude.’

‘I wondered if we could talk.’ Gina Locke’s voice sounded cool and authoritative. The call had come through early on the Saturday afternoon.

‘Yes, of course,’ Carole had replied. ‘How can I help?’

‘Be easier if we could meet up . . . if that’s all right with you?’

‘Fine. When?’

‘Sooner the better. I don’t mind coming down to Fethering. Or we could meet somewhere for a drink or . . .?’

‘There’s a nice pub near the seafront here. Called the Crown and Anchor. Meet there about six-thirty?’

She got a frisson from making the arrangements. The Carole Seddon of a few years before would never have fixed to meet someone in a pub, and certainly not in a pub with whose landlord she
had a history
.

‘Yes, I heard about that business up at Bracketts. Couldn’t avoid it. Regulars at lunchtime weren’t talking about anything else.’

Carole had deliberately arrived at the Crown and Anchor early for her appointment with Gina Locke. Deliberately so that she could have a word with Ted Crisp.

Though their brief relationship – Carole still had difficulty allowing herself to use the word ‘affair’ – hadn’t worked out, she was glad still to be in contact with Ted. Now the embarrassment of splitting-up was over, she could once again find reassurance in his shaggy presence. He was once again all that he should ever have been – a good friend (and Carole never admitted to herself how influential Jude had been in restoring that state of affairs).

But looking at him that Saturday evening, Carole did find slightly incongruous the idea that he’d ever been more to her than a good friend. Having sweated through a busy Saturday lunchtime at the end of the tourist season, Ted’s hair and beard looked like flake tobacco, while there were white tide-marks round the armpits of his T-shirt. Thank God at least he wasn’t wearing the shorts . . .

No, Ted Crisp would never really have fitted into the clinical neatness of High Tor. Or the matching neatness of Carole Seddon’s life.

‘What,’ she asked, as she sipped her white wine, ‘are your lunchtime regulars saying about the murder at Bracketts?’

‘How’d you mean?’ He’d taken advantage of the lull to pull himself a half of lager and was actually sitting at the table with her.

‘Well, I’m sure the Fethering gossips have already worked out whodunnit.’

‘Plenty of theories, yes. But Bracketts is a bit far away. No one knows any of the people involved.’

‘You know one,’ said Carole, with the nearest her thin face could get to a mischievous expression.

‘Do I?’

‘I’m a Trustee of Bracketts.’