Death and the Decorator

EIGHTEEN

As Sunday turned into Monday, Carole’s frustration mounted. She didn’t stay permanently behind the curtains of her sitting room waiting for her neighbour to return, but she did peer through them quite often. When she passed by, taking Gulliver for his Sunday afternoon walk, there was no sign of life from Woodside Cottage. Nor was there the following morning when woman and dog once again set off for Fethering Beach. Nor when they came back.

Carole’s desperation to reveal to her collaborator how she’d solved both cases grew more intense. But there was no way she would give in and ring Jude’s mobile. She had her pride. She never wanted to sound needy.

And she understood the basic principle that revelations are all the more effective when delayed. It was annoying, though.

It was too late when Jude got back from Liverpool to get from Euston to Victoria to catch the last Fethering train from Victoria. So, she rang a former lover who had a flat in Covent Garden and asked if he could give her a bed for the night.

He could. And, in fact, generously he let her share his. Old habits died hard, so, for old times’ sake … Very pleasant it was too.

And it distracted her a little from the challenge which the Monday held for her.

She left Covent Garden early and was on a Fethering-bound train by eight o’clock.

Footscrow House. She had to make a start at Footscrow House. She remembered Pete the decorator saying he’d be working back there after he’d finished her sitting room. And, sure enough, she recognized his van parked in front of the building.

The front door was open and there were fewer building workers and decorators around than there had been on the day of the handbag’s discovery. She heard movement from upstairs and went up to find Pete once again working in the room, one end of which had been the staff bedroom when Footscrow House was a care home. He was sanding down the window frames, preparing them for repainting.

He turned at the sound of Jude entering the room. Toothy grin once again. ‘You haven’t come to complain, have you? Not happy with the job I done at Woodside Cottage?’

‘No. Very happy with that, Pete. Not so happy with other things.’

‘Oh?’

‘Were you sailing at the weekend?’

‘No, bit too nippy for me. Went into the yacht club Saturday lunchtime for a drink, like I usually do.’

‘Yes. Much talk about old Harry Lasalle, was there?’

‘Not a lot. Only the old members really knew him, and there’s been a whole lot of new people come in. Blokes who’re doing more “working from home”. Adjusting their “work/life balance”, that’s what they keep talking about. Seem to have more time for sailing, anyway.’

‘Lucky them.’

‘Yeah.’

Jude looked round the opened-out room. ‘Pete, can you think back to when you were decorating here, when Harry Lasalle was winding down the care home business?’

‘Oh, right. Time of Anita Garner’s disappearance – back to that, are we?’

‘If you don’t mind …?’

‘No skin off my nose.’

‘And that bit, over by the alcove, that was a separate bedroom? The staff bedroom?’

‘Yes. We’ve been through this before, haven’t we, Jude?’

‘We have, but there are still details I’m trying to work out. I’ve now heard a suggestion that Anita Garner slept in that staff bedroom the night before she disappeared.’

‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ said Pete. ‘Weekend, wasn’t it? I wouldn’t have been here.’

‘It wasn’t the weekend. It was a Tuesday.’

‘Oh?’

‘Do you know if Harry Lasalle was here then?’

‘No idea.’ He sounded defensive now. ‘Could have been, I guess. He was the boss. He owned the place.’

‘Who else might have been around?’

‘I don’t know. Residents, visitors, nursing staff … Usual people you’d get in a care home.’

‘Hm. I just wondered—?’

But, before she could ask her next question, Jude was interrupted.

‘You!’ said a voice from the doorway. ‘I thought I’d told you to stop meddling.’

Roland Lasalle. A very angry-looking Roland Lasalle, short and bustling. He turned to Pete. ‘And you, you lazy bugger! Chatting her up again when you should be working.’

‘Listen, Roland, I—’

‘Shut up! Get out! I need to talk to this bloody mischief-maker.’ Cowed, Pete made for the door. ‘And shut it behind you!’

Jude and Roland Lasalle looked at each other, each assessing their options.

He spoke first. ‘So, I dare say you feel very pleased with yourself.’

‘Why should I?’

‘Well, you’ve solved the mystery, haven’t you?’

She had, of course, but how could he know that? Unless he’d been in touch with the woman who had been Anita Garner in Liverpool.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘My mother went to Fedborough Police Station yesterday evening and confessed to having killed my father.’

‘Oh?’ Jude looked blank.

‘Don’t pretend you don’t know! It was your bloody next-door neighbour spreading rumours in the Crown and Anchor that made her realize the game was up.’

This was news to Jude. Clearly, Carole had been conducting her own investigation, but it was no time to be distracted by the details of that. ‘Roland,’ she went on, ‘this space must be very familiar to you.’

‘What do you mean? Of course I know Footscrow House. I got involved in a lot of my father’s doomed projects here. And now that I’m in sole charge, I’m going to be involved in one that will actually work, will actually make some money. No more Fiasco House. Footscrow House’s holiday flatlets are going to be a little gold mine for me. Not so little, actually.’

‘I wasn’t talking about the building as a whole. I was talking about this specific room.’

‘Oh?’

‘Or, more particularly, that bit of the room over there. Where there used to be a wall which was one side of the care home staff bedroom.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m talking, Roland, about a night, some thirty years ago, when you broke into that room and raped Anita Garner.’

‘That’s ridiculous!’

‘No, it isn’t. It’s what happened. And, after Anita ran out of the room, you noticed she’d left her handbag. So you prised the covering of that alcove open and hid the handbag there. Where it stayed until a couple of weeks ago.’

‘You have no proof of any of this.’

‘Oh no? Would you believe that yesterday I was talking to Anita Garner?’

‘No, I wouldn’t. And, if she’s still alive – which I very much doubt – she’d never testify against me.’ Jude was rather afraid that might be true. ‘Not, of course, that I did anything wrong. Rape? Do I look like a rapist? Why would I have to resort to rape when I can get any woman I want?’

Jude wasn’t about to argue over the rationale of the rapist. She knew it rarely had much to do with sex. It was all about power.

‘And your parents covered up for you, didn’t they, Roland? Or rather, your mother did. She always protected you. Couldn’t let anything nasty happen to her precious Roly, however badly he behaved. But she didn’t mind suspicion building up against her husband – in fact, she probably encouraged it – so long as no one questioned the integrity of her Mummy’s Boy.’

‘Stop it! This is all nonsense!’ Roland Lasalle was definitely losing his cool.

And Jude was having difficulty controlling her anger. To her mind, rape was one of the most despicable of crimes. And when she thought of the consequences of Roland’s actions on the life of Anita Garner, her fury knew no bounds.

‘I bet your mother’s protecting you again right now. The whole Anita Garner story was being resurrected – that was unfortunate, wasn’t it? If the police got involved, they could soon prove that your father had nothing to do with the girl’s disappearance. But that might lead them to start questioning you.’

‘They’d have no reason to.’

‘No? And, once the police started questioning you about Anita Garner, they might also get interested in how your father died.’

‘What on earth has that to do with anything? The police already have a solution to the crime. They’ve heard my mother’s confession.’

‘But suppose your mother didn’t do it? Suppose you actually—?’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! I’m not going to listen to any more of this slanderous nonsense! I’ll have you know what you’re saying is actionable, and I command the services of some of the best – and most expensive – lawyers in the country.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Jude gleefully. ‘Do let’s bring in the lawyers. Then the police will really have to investigate more rigorously.’

‘Let them investigate!’ said Roland recklessly. ‘They’ll be wasting their time. There is no proof that I ever did anything wrong.’

‘Oh, but there is.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Not on your father’s murder, perhaps … though I’m sure detailed police work could find some. But on the rape of Anita Garner, there’s very definite proof.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Have you heard of DNA testing?’

‘Of course I have.’

‘Well, Roland, you have left your mark in an indelible way. When you raped Anita Garner, you got her pregnant. Yes, you didn’t know you had a son, did you?’ It was Francis’s red hair and prominent underbite, the physical likeness he bore to his father, plain to see in the photograph in Mary White’s flat, that had explained things for Jude.

‘You’re lying!’

‘No, I’m not. Your son is in a seminary in Birmingham, training to be a Catholic priest. So, he’s another inconvenience, but not one you can get out of your life very easily. And your mother can’t do it either.’

‘I could kill him,’ said Roland Lasalle with icy precision. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’

Jude saw it all. ‘You killed Harry, didn’t you? You killed your father. Your mother knew what you’d done. So, she once again tried to protect you by confessing to the murder.’

‘She did it,’ said Roland coldly. ‘She knew what had happened between me and Anita.’

‘The rape?’

‘It wouldn’t have been rape if the bloody girl had cooperated. I was only after a bit of fun. But then she resisted and that made me mad. Just as it would have made any other red-blooded man mad. So, I had to teach Anita Garner a lesson. It was her own bloody fault!’

‘Her own fault, just for being a woman?’

‘No. Oh, you wouldn’t understand.’

‘Wouldn’t I?’ asked Jude. ‘Your father found out what you’d done, didn’t he?’

‘It was only because the bloody girl screamed. He heard her when he was doing his rounds that night. He was on his way up to investigate when the girl rushed past him on the stairs. He chased after to try and stop her. I saw the handbag and hid it, so nobody would know Anita had been there.

‘I met my mother on the landing. She worked out what had happened. If there was ever any investigation, she said we should put the blame on my father.’

‘But why?’

‘Because I had my whole future ahead of me and he was just a washed-up has-been. Anyway, there never was any investigation, not into my having sex with the girl.’

‘You raping the girl, you mean,’ said Jude implacably.

Roland Lasalle shrugged. ‘Whatever.’

‘But there was intensive investigation into her disappearance, wasn’t there?’

‘So I heard. I was spending most of my time in London by then. I wasn’t involved.’

‘But your father was. He had to put up with all the rumours … about him having had an affair with Anita Garner, about him having murdered her. He was the one who suffered.’

‘It blew over,’ said Roland dismissively.

‘It took a long time to blow over.’

‘But it was the right thing to do. Mummy worked it out. She said that allegations like that could have ruined my career. It was better that people suspected Daddy than me.’ He spoke like a petulant child.

‘But didn’t you feel any guilt?’

‘Guilt? Why should I feel guilt? Because some girl made a fuss about me wanting to have sex with her?’

Jude looked at Roland Lasalle in disbelief. How could anyone be so obtuse, so unaware of the consequences of his actions? Though maybe, if someone had been brought up by a besotted mother, who let him do anything he wanted, who told him everything he did was right … Yes, it figured.

She spoke, guided by intuition but knowing she was right. ‘You thought it was all over, didn’t you? But then, the accidental discovery of the handbag you’d hidden and probably forgotten about … that brought all the rumours back to life again. And put the pressure back on your father. And this time he wasn’t so keen to help you out, to protect you, was he?

‘You’d aced him out of this development project, hadn’t you? The conversion of Footscrow House to holiday flatlets. You didn’t want Lasalle Build and Design involved here, did you? And suddenly your father thought, “Then why should I play ball? Why should I relive all those allegations about me and Anita Garner? If I’m questioned again, why don’t I tell the police that my disloyal son was the one who raped the girl?”

‘So, when he actually told you what he’d decided, you knew you had to keep him quiet.’ There was a silence. ‘Am I right, Roland?’

‘If you were right,’ he responded coolly, ‘you’d have a hell of a job proving it.’

‘I’ve told you. The proof exists … currently living in a seminary in Birmingham.’

Various emotions were reflected in Roland Lasalle’s face. Then fury took over. ‘So, what if I did kill my father?’ he demanded, bullying. ‘How do you feel, being alone in a room with a murderer? Safe? Huh?’

He leapt at her, his hands suddenly constricting the soft flesh of her neck, his body clamped to hers in a parody of an embrace.

There was not enough air in her lungs for a scream but – thank God – some sound must have escaped through her gasping mouth. Thank God, because Pete, waiting on the landing, rushed back into the room and, with a couple of sharp punches, flattened Roland Lasalle to the floor.

He hadn’t been a very good criminal. Once the police started investigating Veronica Lasalle’s confession, they found all kinds of anomalies. And her account of having let herself into Fethering Yacht Club to sabotage Harry’s Dream was quickly disproved by a check on the footage of the CCTV cameras that covered the hardstanding in front of the club.

While the recording showed no sign of Veronica Lasalle, it did of course show her son entering the yacht club and setting up the carbon monoxide booby trap on the boat. Not a very good criminal. His boarding-up of Anita Garner’s handbag thirty years earlier hadn’t been a masterstroke either.

Roland Lasalle was duly charged with the murder of his father.

His other crime, the rape of Anita Garner, never came to court. Though evidence of his guilt existed, in the form of Francis White, the incident was not relevant to the police’s murder enquiries. Anita Garner’s disappearance remained unexplained, though still occasionally pontificated upon by Barney Poulton in the Crown and Anchor. He still supported the view that Anita Garner’s remains would in time be found in a shallow grave on the South Downs. As he would explain at great length to anyone who came into the bar.

The lack of investigation into the rape was welcomed by Mary White in Liverpool. Her life continued as she wanted it to, busy with her charitable work for the cathedral and looking forward to the day when she would see her precious son, Francis, ordained as a Catholic priest.