Death on the Downs

Thirty-Seven

Carole Seddon tried to be calm, but the thoughts bubbling up in her mind threatened her self-image as a sensible woman. The idea had already taken root in her mind before Brian Helling’s phone call had encouraged its growth and now it was running wild, spreading out more and more shoots of suspicion and implication.

She still needed more facts, though, facts that might corroborate her conjectures and fill in details of the evolving scenario. And she needed to get those facts from someone who knew Weldisham well, who had known it before Pauline Helling had taken up residence in Heron Cottage.

She came back to the three boys who’d been at school together. Lennie Baylis, Harry Grant and Brian Helling. The first two had actually lived in the village, and Brian’s mother had worked there as a cleaner. Each one of them, she felt certain, knew something that would be relevant to her enquiries.

But Carole had no means of recontacting Brian Helling. She guessed he’d been calling from a mobile, but when she tried 1471 she was told, “The caller withheld their number.”

Lennie Baylis was the obvious person with whom to discuss the case. He kept encouraging her to do just that, but that very eagerness disqualified him as the perfect confidant. Carole still reckoned the sergeant had a personal as well as a professional agenda and, though she wouldn’t go as far as considering him a suspect, she wanted to define his connection with the bones she’d found before volunteering more of her suspicions to him.

So that left Harry Grant. Or indeed Harry Grant’s wife…Suddenly Carole had a vivid image of the nervous, overdressed woman she’d met at the Forbeses’ dinner party. Though Jenny Grant represented a paler carbon than Pauline Helling, she was still unmistakably stamped with the same facial characteristics. The beaky nose dominated her thin pale face.

Carole remembered Harry saying that his wife had been related to Graham Forbes’s first wife. Perhaps Jenny too had been in the family photograph on the wall of Heron Cottage. She could be a close relative, a first cousin even, of Pauline Helling. Jenny Grant might be able to reveal everything Carole wanted to know about the old woman and her son.

There was only one ‘H. Grant’ in the local phone book. The address was nearer Fethering than Weldisham. Jenny Grant answered the phone. She sounded unsurprised by Carole’s call, and not particularly interested. Yes, it was a tragedy about Pauline. And yes, if Carole wanted to come round and talk to her about the old woman, that was fine. Jenny’s voice was flat, containing no curiosity as to why. In one way, that was good for Carole. Explanations might prove difficult. But, on the other hand, there was something spooky about Jenny Grant’s complete lack of interest.

The house was exactly what a successful property developer would have built for himself. Every feature was immaculately finished, but there were a few too many of them. Did the building need both a turret and a bell-tower? Did every upstairs window need a balcony? Wouldn’t the front garden have looked better paved with one kind of stone rather than four? And did the Tudor beams over the double garage match the panels of neat flint facing either side of the front door? Come to that, wouldn’t the heavy oak front door itself have looked sufficiently monastic without the semicircle of stained glass above it?

Carole anticipated much toing and froing with the Village Committee of Weldisham over the architectural details of Harry Grant’s barn conversion.

Jenny Grant was dressed rather like her house. She clearly frequented one of those boutiques which doesn’t like plain colours or plain surfaces. Her black skirt was decorated with random pieces of shiny leather and gold buttons; her fluffy pale blue jumper had quilted panels of scarlet silk and some gold braid at the neck. The house looked like a display unit for building effects; its owner a display unit for haberdashery. Her pallor accentuated the fussiness of her garments. Jenny Grant looked literally washed out, as though she had been put too many times through the laundry cycle.

She still expressed no curiosity at Carole’s arrival, but ushered her into a sitting room that looked like a display unit for upholstery. Tea things were already on a tray, with a plate of sugared biscuits.

“It’s very good of you to see me,” said Carole.

“No problem.”

After she had poured the tea, Jenny Grant sat back, her faded blue eyes blinking, waiting for whatever should come next. She didn’t volunteer anything. Maybe she never took any initiative, was eternally reactive. That was perhaps the way to survive as wife of someone as noisily energetic as Harry Grant.

“As I said on the phone, I want to talk about Pauline Helling. Terrible tragedy that was.”

“Terrible,” Jenny Grant agreed, as though commenting on a minor deterioration in the weather.

“Harry said you were actually related to her in some way…”

“Distantly. My maiden name was Helling and there are lots of branches of the family round the area. I think possibly our grandmothers were cousins, something like that.”

“So you didn’t know Pauline well?”

“I don’t think anyone knew her well, except possibly Brian. She kept herself very much to herself.”

“I heard that there was more to it than that.”

“How do you mean?”

“That the village actually ostracized her.” From Jenny Grant’s expression, she had never heard the word. “That she wasn’t made to feel very welcome in Weldisham.”

Jenny shrugged. “There are a lot of very snobbish people up there.”

“And you’re about to go and join them, I gather. I heard from Harry that you’d got your planning permission on the barn.”

If Carole had hoped to prompt Jenny’s views on whether she and her husband would be accepted socially in Weldisham, she was disappointed. All she got was a ‘Yes’.

“You must be delighted about that.”

“It’s what Harry wants.”

And Carole had a feeling that in that sentence lay the secret of the success of the Grants’ marriage, “Anyway, as I gather,” she went on, “let me get this right…Pauline Helling wasn’t brought up the village…”

“No. She lived not far from here. The Downside Estate…Do you know it?”

“Yes. I live in Fethering.”

Downside was the poor end of town.

“And did Pauline marry a Helling?”

“No, she was born a Helling. She never married.”

“So you don’t know who Brian’s father was?”

A shake of the head. “No idea. I don’t know anyone who knew. It was a long time ago. Brian must be nearly forty now.”

“Do you know him?”

“I know who he is. I’ve never had a conversation with him.” Jenny Grant didn’t sound as though that was a situation she was in any hurry to change.

“And Pauline used to work as a cleaner in Weldisham. For Graham Forbes and his first wife.”

“That’s right.”

Still there was no curiosity as to how Carole had got this information or why it was of any relevance to her.

“His first wife was also a Helling, I believe?”

“Yes. Sheila.”

“Did you know her?”

“Oh yes. I went to the same school as she did. Many years afterwards, of course.”

Suddenly Carole realized what kind of school it had been that the two attended. An upmarket girl’s private school. Jenny Grant’s manner of speech was so lacking in animation that its vowels had been ironed out, but now she concentrated, Carole could detect the upper-class languor underneath. Harry Grant had married a few grades above himself. Maybe Jenny’s social status had made up for her lack of more obvious attractions.

So those who had borne the Helling name went through the strata of class, Sheila Forbes and Jenny Grant aiming at the top, Pauline Helling and Lennie Baylis’s mother down at the bottom, with no doubt many social nuances in between.

“Did you know Sheila Forbes well?”

“Quite well.”

“Were you surprised when you heard she’d gone off with another man?”

“It did seem odd, certainly.” But nothing seemed to have the power to surprise Jenny Grant for long. She shrugged. “Still, that’s what she did. Maybe a romantic heart beat beneath that forbidding exterior.”

“Was she forbidding?”

“Perhaps the wrong word. She was very correct, though. Always did the right thing. British, in the old–fashioned sense. You know, didn’t let her emotions show on the surface. I’m sure that’s why she and Graham went down so well abroad.”

“The archetypal British couple.”

“That’s it, yes.”

“And would you say their marriage was a happy one…You know, before the split?”

Jenny Grant’s hands lifted and flopped ineffectually back on to her lap. “Who can say? A marriage may look fine on the surface, but nobody except the two inside know what it’s really like.”

There was a slight change in her tone as she said this. Carole wondered if a comment was being made on the Grants’ own marriage. But Jenny didn’t seem about to expand on the hint and, intriguing though the subject might be, it wasn’t what Carole was there to find out about.

“Graham and Sheila Forbes were quite well heeled, I gather. Someone said he had private money.”

“‘Had’ being the operative word. I don’t think he’s got much now.”

“Oh?”

“Well, presumably he’s got a British Council pension. Not much else, though.”

“You know that for a fact?”

“Harry told me. I don’t know where he got it from, but he’s usually pretty reliable. There aren’t many secrets round here.”

“So where did Graham Forbes’s money go? Has he got a secret vice or something?”

“Don’t think so. But I would imagine he’s like the others.”

Carole looked quizzical.

“Most people round here who’ve lost a lot of money – I don’t mean from firms going to the wall, I mean investment income…Well, it doesn’t do to talk about it, but with most of them it was Lloyd’s.”

“Ah.”

The crash of many Lloyd’s syndicates had hit a lot of ‘names’, as the major investors were called. In a well-cushioned area like the part of West Sussex around Weldisham, there had probably been many casualties.

“Moving on, Jenny…do you remember when exactly Pauline Helling had her pools win?”

“Well, let me think…” Jenny’s brow wrinkled, and the effect was to make her look younger, suggesting that she might once have had more spark and vivacity. Maybe it wasn’t just her social position that had drawn Harry Grant to her. “She moved into Weldisham round…I don’t know…I should think about 1988…so presumably some time round then.”

“Did she put all the money into buying Heron Cottage?”

“I don’t know. I’ve no idea how much she actually won. I don’t think anyone knew. I’m sure Pauline would have put a cross in the box for ‘No Publicity’.”

“But you don’t know whether she celebrated by taking a trip abroad or anything like that?”

“I don’t think so. I didn’t know her that well. She could have done all kinds of things I never knew about.”

“Of course. So, as far as you know, she never did travel abroad?”

“No, I don’t think…She wasn’t the kind to…” Something came through the fogs of memory. “Oh, just a minute, though…Yes, she did. I remember being surprised when Harry told me. He’d bumped into Brian, who said his mother had suddenly got herself a passport and was going off on a jaunt somewhere. It seemed so out of character, that’s why I’ve remembered it.”

“You don’t remember where she went?”

Jenny Grant shook her head. “I don’t think I ever knew. I don’t even know if she actually did go. I just remember Harry mentioning about the passport.”

“And when did this happen…presumably after the pools win?”

“I suppose it must have been…except…” Again Jenny Grant screwed up her face with the effort of recollection. “No, because Harry was out working on a development in Spain for most of 1988 and ‘89, so it must’ve been before that. End of ‘87, I suppose.”

“Really?” said Carole, suppressing the excitement that spurted inside her.

They talked a little longer, but nothing else emerged that was relevant. Not that Carole minded. She’d already got more than she’d dared hope for.

Jenny Grant seemed as unsurprised when Carole said she must go as she had been by her arrival.

“Very good of you to see me, Jenny.”

“No problem. Lucky you called today, though.”

“Oh?”

“Harry and I are off to Portugal tomorrow. For a week. To celebrate the planning permission on the barn.” She made it sound like a death sentence.

Beneath the stained glass of the open front door, Carole shook her hostess’s hand, and it was then that she saw something in the woman’s eyes that maybe explained her unquestioning passivity.

Jenny Grant was on tranquillizers, Carole felt sure. A hefty dose of Librium or something similar was needed to maintain that placid equilibrium. Maybe that was the only way this rather quiet woman could survive being married to a social climber like Harry Grant.