Guns in the Gallery

TWELVE

Most weekends now Carole Seddon heard from the family in Fulham. A weekly call from Stephen was far greater frequency of communication than she had been used to, but then so much in their relationship had changed. His marriage to Gaby, introducing someone who hadn’t grown up in the claustrophobia of Carole’s own marriage to David, had started the thaw, and its progress had been greatly speeded up by the arrival of Lily. Whereas conversations between mother and son had always been rather stilted, with Stephen talking about his work (which Carole never fully understood) and both of them trying to avoid any mention of David, there now always seemed to be something to say. Lily was developing at such a rate that every week there was some new achievement to report, some physical action, a new word or, increasingly, new sentences.

But that Sunday evening the Fulham call came not from Carole’s son but her daughter-in-law.

‘About the week after the end of May Bank Holiday . . .’

‘What about the week after the end of May Bank Holiday, Gaby?’ asked Carole, trying to work out what date that would be. One of the effects of retirement from the Home Office, she found, was a profound vagueness about the dates of public holidays. Now they no longer represented days off work, they seemed infinitely less important than they had.

‘I’m talking about the one at the end of May, not the one at the beginning. Well, Stephen’s got to be in Frankfurt that week for work.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘Yes, his bosses never seem to be aware of public holidays.’ Carole almost heard that as a criticism of herself. ‘So he’s flying out on the Bank Holiday Monday and doesn’t get back till the Sunday after. And I was thinking: what a perfect opportunity for me to take Lily for a little jaunt to the South Coast.’

‘That’d be lovely. You’d be most welcome here, of course, Gaby. Just let me get my diary and check the dates.’

‘No, don’t worry, Carole. I wasn’t suggesting that we should impose ourselves on you at High Tor.’

‘Oh?’ Being Carole, she couldn’t take this statement at face value; she had to read something into it. Gaby and Lily had come to stay in Fethering the previous summer when Carole had rented a beach hut at Smalting for the occasion, and that seemed to have worked all right. But was Gaby now intimating that the visit hadn’t been as much of a success as Carole had considered it? Was she finding some inadequacy in their accommodation at High Tor?

Even as she had the thought, though, Carole did also feel a degree of relief. Much as she loved Gaby and Lily, she did find the presence of other people in her house a considerable strain. Any people. The long habit of living on her own meant that she always had to make an effort with other people present, she couldn’t be unaware of them and just carry on with her life. In fact, she’d always had the instinct for privacy. She hadn’t even felt relaxed with her husband in the house. Maybe that was one of the many factors that had led to their divorce.

‘The point is,’ Gaby explained, ‘that when I had this idea I was with a friend, who’s got a little boy roughly Lily’s age. And her husband’s going to be away the same time as Stephen, so we made this plan for the four of us to come down together, and I know you haven’t really got room for all of us in High Tor.’

‘Well . . .’ said Carole, relief flooding through her. ‘I could move things around and make space for you.’ She knew she didn’t sound convincing.

‘No, no, I wouldn’t hear of it,’ Gaby bubbled on. ‘But if we were staying nearby, then we could not get in each other’s way . . . you know, meet up with you some days, other days just do our own thing . . .’

‘It does sound rather a good idea,’ Carole conceded. Yes, wonderful. Gaby and Lily near enough for her to see them, but without the obligation of feeling responsible for their well-being every minute. ‘So where were you thinking of staying?’

‘Well, that’s the point,’ said Gaby. ‘We don’t know. But we thought, with you down there, you know, able to apply a little local knowledge to the problem, well, you might be able to recommend somewhere.’

Carole was hit by a brainwave. ‘Gaby,’ she said, ‘what would you think of the idea of staying in a yurt?’

Of course Walden had its own website. Any project the Whittakers got involved in was organized to a very high spec. There were beautiful professionally taken photographs of the glamping site, even a video tour of the interiors of the yurts. Chervil’s ‘Deeply Felt’ pun was much in evidence. And there was, of course, a ‘Contact Us’ page.

Carole no longer really thought about it, but using her laptop had in some ways changed her attitude to communication. Whereas she would have regarded telephoning someone at the weekend on a matter of business as a major social gaffe, emailing seemed perfectly legitimate. So she had no qualms about making contact through the Walden website.

Her emailed enquiry about prices and availability arose partly from her search for accommodation for Gaby and Lily, but she wasn’t convinced that Walden would be the right place for them. She felt sure it would be very expensive, for a start. Though, when she came to think of it, her son and daughter-in-law never seemed to lack for money. She had no idea what Stephen earned doing whatever it was he did with money and computers, but she thought his pay packet must be substantial. There certainly hadn’t been any talk of Gaby needing to return to her job as a theatrical agent in the immediate future.

But of course Carole’s email to Walden had another purpose. It was a legitimate way of making contact with the Whittakers. Jude had brought Carole up to date on her conversation with Carmen Hodgkinson and, despite the Inspector’s conclusion, they both still thought there was something strange about the death of Fennel Whittaker. Something that required further investigation.

She was surprised to get a call back only moments after she had sent her email. The voice at the other end of the phone was unmistakably that of Chervil Whittaker. ‘Hello, is that Carole Seddon?’

‘Yes.’

The girl identified herself. ‘Have we met? Your name sounds familiar.’

‘We did meet. I came to Butterwyke House with my friend Jude last Saturday. You showed us round Walden.’

‘Oh yes, of course, I’m so sorry. I should have remembered.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘Well, I’m glad you were sufficiently impressed by the site to be making further enquiries. Your email said you were thinking of the week after the Bank Holiday at the end of May . . .’

Chervil was all businesswoman, keen to make a booking. She wasn’t about to mention that there had been a death at Walden.

But Carole decided that she would. ‘Look, I heard about what happened to your sister. I just wanted to say that I’m very sorry.’

‘Thank you.’ The words were deliberately bleached of emotion. ‘Now at Walden we have yurts of various sizes. How many people are you looking to accommodate?’

‘It’s not for me, actually. It’s for my daughter-in-law and I’m really just checking prices.’

‘Well, at the end of May you should really be into our High Summer rates, but I’d be prepared to make a deal for you on . . .’

Chervil Whittaker went through a very detailed list of prices and terms of business and concluded by saying that she would also put the information in an email. ‘But I’d advise you to move quickly. That Bank Holiday week is already getting quite booked up.’

‘I’ll get back to my daughter-in-law this evening,’ Carole lied. The next day would be quite soon enough.

‘Anyway, I’ll give you my mobile number,’ said Chervil. ‘Quicker to get me direct than through the website.’

Carole made a note of the number before saying, ‘Presumably you had to delay Walden’s official opening.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I thought you were opening this weekend and obviously with what happened to your sister . . .’

‘This weekend was only going to be a dry run with some friends testing out the facilities,’ said Chervil Whittaker, in direct contravention to what she had told Carole and Jude when they visited Walden. ‘My plan was always to have the official launch next weekend.’ And she said it with such conviction that most people would have believed her.

‘Presumably the site will be fully accessible then . . .?’ asked Carole.

‘Of course it will be. I’m sorry, what do you mean?’

‘I was just meaning that by next weekend the police will presumably have finished their investigations at Walden.’

‘They’ve indicated that they will have done, yes. And, incidentally, for obvious reasons we’re trying to keep the news of my sister’s suicide out of the papers. So if the subject does come up, I’d be grateful if you could keep quiet about what you know.’

Good luck, thought Carole, if you think you can keep that sort of thing quiet in a place like Fethering. But then again the Whittakers weren’t very well known in the village. It was possible that very few local people did actually know what had happened. Whether the media blackout could be continued once the inquest had opened was another matter. But then again the inquest might not happen for a few months and memories could be very short.

‘My sister,’ Chervil Whittaker continued with some asperity, ‘may have done her best to upstage the opening of my project, but I can assure you I am not going to let her succeed. Walden will open next weekend and none of the visitors will ever know that a selfish suicide had taken place there.’

The girl’s words were unequivocal. She still saw Fennel’s death as another in a series of attention-seeking actions. And in her voice was a note of satisfaction from the knowledge that it would be the last one.

If, thought Carole, Fennel’s death had been murder, then the person with least motive for committing it would be her sister Chervil. Public knowledge of a crime at her precious Walden would be the last thing she wanted.