Death and the Decorator

THREE

‘She was definitely murdered,’ Barney Poulton pontificated. ‘If the police were to do a really thorough search of the South Downs, I guarantee they’d find Anita Garner’s bones. In a shallow grave. That is, if the foxes hadn’t got to it. Then the bones might be more scattered.’

Carole and Jude exchanged looks. Barney Poulton, that day dressed in a navy guernsey sweater above burgundy corduroys, was almost a fixture in the Crown and Anchor these days. Summer visitors, encountering him for the first time in the bar, took him for a genuine local, ‘the eyes and ears of the village’, the source of endless recollection and regional lore. Many drinks were bought for him on the premise of his authenticity. He was the self-appointed Sage of Fethering.

So convincingly did he fill the role that newcomers would assume him to be village born and bred, and rarely to have stirred outside his birthplace.

They couldn’t have been more wrong. As Carole and Jude knew well, Barney Poulton had retired to Fethering relatively recently, having spent his working life commuting daily from Walton-on-Thames to a solicitor’s practice in London. But that didn’t stop him from expounding on every local issue.

He did this, much to the annoyance of Ted Crisp, the bearded, unkempt and unreconstructed landlord of the Crown and Anchor, who, at the pub’s quiet times, provided the only audience for Barney’s endless ruminations. Boring local regulars are among the enduring hazards of running a pub. Sometimes Ted wished he’d followed the example of a publican friend of his who’d put up over his end of the bar a notice reading: ‘NO SYMPATHY CORNER’.

Fortunately, that early evening, Ted did not have to face the monologue alone. Apart from Carole and Jude, there were a few other regulars in the bar, all of whom, in the Fethering way, the two women knew by name, though they’d never spent much time with them. They were people who, on encounter in the village, would have received a ‘Fethering nod’ from Carole and a beaming vocal greeting from Jude.

But there was an elderly couple in the pub that evening whom Jude knew a bit better. They were sitting in one of the alcoves, finishing an early fish-and-chips supper, each making a modest half of bitter last the meal. Leslie and Vi Benyon, both in their eighties. Vi had the comfortable contours of a cottage loaf. Leslie, by contrast, was stick thin. In fact, they reminded Jude of a long-remembered illustration from a childhood book of nursery rhymes. Jack Spratt and his wife; he eating no fat, she no lean.

She had met them when their grown-up daughter had contacted her about her father’s insomnia. Leslie was one of those clients with whom Jude reckoned she was never going to make any headway. He could have matched Carole for scepticism about the whole business of healing. Paying for a healer’s services made as much sense to him as ‘backing a three-legged horse in the Derby’.

But his daughter, who had herself benefited from Jude’s ministrations for a problem of low self-esteem, managed to persuade him to have one session, which she would pay for. The deal was that, if he didn’t think it’d done any good, they’d give up the idea. If he felt any benefit at all, his daughter would pay for a second appointment.

When he first arrived in the sitting room of Woodside Cottage, Leslie Benyon’s whole body expressed distrust and disbelief. It was almost like a smell rising off him. He stated stoutly that he refused to take any clothes off (Jude hadn’t asked him to) and was deeply reluctant to lie on her treatment bed.

So she, knowing well that different clients required different approaches, stopped persuading him to do anything, sat him in an armchair and offered him a cup of tea. She was a good listener and expert at drawing out secrets. This was not a skill that she had worked on. Jude was just genuinely interested in other people.

Leslie Benyon, it turned out, had been a military man, and it soon became clear to her that events he had witnessed in Northern Ireland had destroyed his mental equilibrium. He had a soldier’s reticence, a gruff unwillingness to burden others with his troubles. ‘I couldn’t talk to Vi about it. Nothing that happened out there was her fault, after all, was it?’

No healing took place at that encounter. Jude’s hands did not venture near any part of his body. But she was extremely gratified when, a week later, Leslie’s daughter rang to say he wanted to take up her offer of a second paid-for session.

And, after some months of healing (which he was then happy to pay for himself), Leslie’s sleep patterns returned to a kind of normal.

That evening in the Crown and Anchor, Jude did not expect more than ‘a Fethering nod’ from him. In the presence of his wife, Leslie was still embarrassed about the dealings he had had with her. Or perhaps the fact that he’d needed to have dealings with her. With Vi, he needed to maintain his strong, silent persona.

This was no hardship to his wife. It was probably the way their marriage had worked from the start – he the quiet observant one, she the talker. And Vi was certainly garrulous. Which, from the point of view of Carole and Jude’s fact-finding mission, was rather convenient. Because the conversation in the Crown and Anchor was about Anita Garner.

How that had happened was just another of those Fethering mysteries. Neither Carole nor Jude had mentioned the woman’s name. The discovery of the handbag at Footscrow House was, so far as they knew, only known to the two of them, Pete the decorator and the police at Fethering and Fedborough. And yet, within hours, Anita Garner was once again being discussed in the Crown and Anchor. Carole and Jude no longer allowed themselves to wonder at the speed and efficiency of the Fethering bush telegraph.

‘There was a lot of talk when that Anita disappeared,’ Vi Benyon remarked to fill the momentary silence while Barney Poulton was preparing his next baseless conjecture.

Jude was quick enough to detect the slight shake of the head that Leslie directed towards his wife, but Vi, either not seeing or ignoring the admonition, went on, ‘Fiasco House was a care home back then … not, from all accounts, a very good one. Anita Garner worked there.’

‘Did you know her?’ asked Jude.

‘Ooh, known her from way back. She went through school with our boy Kent. A bunch of them was always going around together, them and Glen Porter and a few others. Well, they was mates at the primary, but when they all go to the comprehensive, suddenly the boys didn’t want to be seen around girls.’ She chuckled. ‘And, a few years later, they want to be all over them, you know, like young people do.

‘Anyway, Kent never had a lot to do with Anita after school, but he knew her. He was as surprised as anyone when she disappeared. Lots of talk there was round Fethering back then about what might have happened to her.’

‘Yes, well, Vi, I don’t think we need to revive any of that again now, do we?’ said Leslie Benyon.

But his wife was not to be put off her stride. ‘Didn’t last much longer as a care home after that,’ she went on. ‘There was talk locally about things having gone seriously wrong there. Old people being maltreated, you know.’

‘Was there an official inquiry?’ asked Carole, who liked everything to be official.

‘Don’t know about that,’ Vi replied. ‘But, as I say, a lot of talk locally.’

‘Was the talk,’ asked Jude, ‘about Anita Garner being involved in the maltreatment of patients?’

‘No, no. Not that. Suggestion was more that she might have seen some bad stuff going on and reported it … you know, like a … what’s the word?’

‘“Whistle-blower”?’ Jude suggested.

‘That’s it, yes. “Whistle-blower”.’ She repeated the word, savouring it. ‘There was people round Fethering at the time reckoned that was what happened.’

‘There was people round Fethering at the time,’ said Leslie Benyon harshly, ‘who reckoned all kinds of other things happened, and all. And none of it was ever any more than gossip. As it always is round here.’

But if he thought that would finally silence his wife, he was wrong. Much to the satisfaction of Carole and Jude, Vi continued, ‘I think what I just said was a lot more believable than most of the other stuff there was around back then. All that business about Anita having had affairs with people. The nonsense they talked. She was a quiet, well-behaved girl from a good Catholic family. But, the way people went on about it, you’d have thought she’d had it off with everyone in Fethering who wore trousers.’

Leslie Benyon stirred himself as if about to rise from their alcove, but Jude managed to get her question in quick enough. ‘Do you know of anyone who Anita actually did have a relationship with?’

‘Not for certain, no,’ the old woman replied. ‘Well, Glen Porter said he’d had a thing with her, but then he claimed back then he’d been inside every pair of knickers in Fethering.’

This time Leslie really had had enough. Rising briskly, he announced, ‘Time we were off, Vi.’

She didn’t argue. With muttered goodbyes, the couple left the Crown and Anchor.

Jude looked up at Ted Crisp behind the bar. ‘Glen Porter? You know him?’

‘Know who is. Not a regular. He’s one of the bunch who do their drinking at Fethering Yacht Club. Rarely comes in here.’

‘Oh, I know him.’ The speaker was, inevitably, Barney Poulton. He, of course, knew everything about Fethering, far more than the people who’d lived in the village twenty times longer than he had. ‘We play golf together.’

Jude caught a perfect snapshot of Ted’s reaction to this. Behind its shaggy hair and beard, his expression summed up a whole catalogue of thought. The first was: Of course, you bloody would know Glen Porter. Then: And I know you play golf – you bloody go on about it enough. Finally, a plea: So, why don’t you hang around the golf club bar – which is, after all, the natural habitat for bores – boring everyone to tears in there, rather than in my bloody pub?

‘What does Glen Porter do?’ asked Carole. ‘I haven’t heard of him.’ Which, in Fethering, was unusual.

‘He doesn’t do anything,’ Barney replied. ‘Lucky bugger. Hasn’t done anything for decades. Still way below retirement age.’

‘He inherited money, didn’t he?’ said Ted.

But Barney Poulton didn’t want outside contributors to his narrative. As if the landlord hadn’t spoken, he went on, ‘Glen had a very rich uncle, called Reefer Townsend. Don’t know how he got the name. He was a widower … we must be talking thirty years ago now … and his son was lined up to inherit everything. Son suddenly dies – and Glen cops the lot.’

‘How did the son die?’ asked Carole, antennae instantly aflicker.

‘Don’t know that,’ Barney was forced to admit, a little miffed at having his image of omniscience dented. ‘Anyway, since school Glen had been doing odd jobs locally, behind bars, stacking shelves, portering in hospitals and care homes, nothing permanent. Suddenly, out of the blue, he inherits Reefer Townsend’s big house up on the Downs beyond Fedborough, beach hut here in Fethering, and enough in investments to ensure he never has to work again. All he has to do for the rest of his life is to splash the cash, live the life of a playboy. Very nice, thank you.’

‘Strange, that I’ve never even heard the name,’ Carole persisted. ‘Has he moved away from the area?’

‘No, still keeps the house – and the beach hut. Travels a lot, though … South Africa … Caribbean … Mexico … you name it. All right for some, eh?’

Barney Poulton looked at his watch. ‘Anyway, I can’t sit here gossiping all day.’

Jude caught another snapshot of Ted Crisp’s face, which read: Well, you bloody seem to be able to.

‘Must get back home,’ Barney went on as he rose from his bar stool. ‘Don’t want a rocket from Her Indoors, do I?’

Ted Crisp’s face expressed the fervent wish that Her Indoors would provide a constant supply of rockets – ideally armed with nuclear warheads – or anything else that would keep her husband out of the Crown and Anchor.

But he didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. Carole and Jude intuited what he was feeling.

‘Incidentally, Ted,’ asked Jude, once the unwelcome regular had departed, ‘have you come across a guy called Roland Lasalle?’

‘Sure have. He’s a waste of space if ever there was one.’

‘Oh?’ Both women had great faith in Ted’s judgement when it came to the locals.

‘Roland’ – he put a snide, upper-class accent on the word – ‘is the prime example of First Generation Posh.’ They waited for elaboration. ‘His parents are Harry and Veronica Lasalle. He’s a local builder, Harry. Good at his job but, know what I mean, no pretensions. Made pots of money over the years and he – or I think probably more she – invested a lot of it into private education for her precious Roland. Almost did too good a job, Veronica. Turned the boy into someone so posh he hardly acknowledges his own parents.’

The description fitted the bad-tempered man Jude had heard being so offensive to Pete. If ever she’d met someone with a sense of entitlement, he’d fitted the bill.

‘Well, you know the old saying: You can polish a …’ Ted had been planning a stronger word but checked himself to come up with a more acceptable alternative – ‘piece of dirt, but that doesn’t stop it from being a piece of dirt.’

‘And is Roland Lasalle,’ asked Jude, ‘involved in what’s currently going on down at Footscrow House?’

‘“Involved”? You could say that. Only his project, isn’t it? Dad’s a builder, but Roland’ – the same dismissive intonation – ‘can’t get his fingers dirty with cement and sawdust, can he? Not with his university degree and architectural qualification. No, Roland Lasalle’s a property developer now, isn’t he? Hoping to clean up when the holiday flatlets are finished. Mind you, if this caper follows the pattern of everything else that’s happened to Fiasco House …’ Ted Crisp didn’t need to complete the sentence.

‘Is it his own money he’s putting into the project?’ asked Carole, always shrewder than her neighbour on questions like that.

The landlord shrugged. ‘Who knows? Bit of his own, maybe. I’d’ve thought he’d got backers, though – sure to have. His old man might be involved. Harry’s not short of a few bob. If Roland had asked Veronica to twist his arm, the old boy wouldn’t have said no.’

‘Sounds like she wears the trousers in that household,’ Carole observed.

‘And how! Poor Harry has to get permission before he can …’ another hastily decorous substitution – ‘go to the toilet.’

‘Well, I had my first encounter with Roland Lasalle recently,’ said Jude.

‘Oh, yes?’

‘Down at Footscrow House …’

‘Yeah?’

‘… where he was bawling out Pete the decorator.’

‘Bawling out Pete?’ The landlord looked as affronted as if he himself had been bawled out. ‘But no one has a bad word to say about Pete.’

‘Roland Lasalle did.’

‘Typical.’ Ted swept a hand up through his matted hair. ‘Proves my point, I’d say.’

Carole was curious. ‘You say his father’s a builder?’

‘Was a builder. Pretty well retired now, I think. His back’s knackered.’

‘Would he be involved in the current work on Footscrow House?’

‘Bound to be. Probably not hands-on, but his company will be in on it. Lasalle Build and Design. Harry’s had a hand in virtually every other renovation of Fiasco House.’

‘Then I wonder if, back when it was a care home—?’

But Carole’s incipient investigation was cut short by the arrival in the bar of a newcomer, who came straight towards the two women.

‘Brandie!’ Jude announced.

‘You said you might be in here later.’

‘Which, as you see, I am.’ Jude gestured towards her neighbour. ‘This is my friend, Carole. Brandie.’

‘Brandie?’ The echo contained Carole’s disbelief that the word could actually be a name.

‘Drinks,’ said Jude hastily. ‘Sauvignon Blanc right for you, Brandie?’

‘Fab.’

Ignoring Carole’s wince, Jude said, ‘I’ll get us refills too,’ and made for the bar before her neighbour could remonstrate that she didn’t need any more. Or that she only wanted a small one.

While Jude went to order, Brandie turned to Carole. ‘Have you been a friend of Jude’s for a long time?’

‘Long enough.’ She meant it as a casual reply, not realizing that the words could sound as though she did not wish the relationship to continue. Throughout her life, Carole had had a propensity for unwittingly making remarks like that, which made her appear more combative than she really was (though, it has to be said, she was already quite combative).

‘Oh. And are you part of the healing community?’

Had she been searching for two words to antagonize her listener, Brandie could not have made a more accurate selection. Healing? Well, Carole’s views on that were very clear. And she had frequently expressed her distrust of any phrase that began with the word ‘community’.

‘No, I am not,’ she replied icily. ‘Friendship does not imply a shared belief in mumbo-jumbo.’

As she returned with the drinks, Jude was aware of the silence, not to say ‘froideur’. Oh dear, she thought. As she could have anticipated, Carole and Brandie was never going to be a marriage made in heaven, was it?