The Killing in the Café

TWENTY-THREE

By the end of the EGM, Arnold Bloom’s triumph was complete. He had got himself elected Chairman of the SPCS Action Committee, and suggested some names ‘from the local Fethering community’ who might be co-opted on. Most of them were current members of the Fethering Village Committee, of which he was of course also Chairman. He suggested a date for the next meeting – on the Wednesday of that week, two days on; Arnold Bloom wasn’t the kind of chairman to let the grass grow under his feet. He ordained that it – and all future meetings – should take place at All Saints Church Hall. It was agreed that Jude should sound out Sara Courtney to see if she was interested in taking the paid role of manager for Polly’s Community Café. If she were, she would be invited to the Wednesday meeting to be interviewed by the renewed SPCS Action Committee.

The Braithwaites had been eclipsed completely. No refreshments were offered to the committee members departing from Hiawatha that evening (and that wasn’t just because their hostess was immobilized on a sofa).

The following morning, the Tuesday, Jude received a call from Kent Warboys. ‘Very good to see you over New Year.’

‘My pleasure. Good to see you too.’

‘Couple of things … One – your famous dead body.’

‘Amos Green.’

‘Exactly. Just wondered if the police had been in touch again …? You know, following up and previous questions …?’

‘Nothing. Not a dicky bird.’

‘Ah. Right. Good. Which probably means they’ve closed the case. So it seems likely Amos Green’s death will join that massive list of “The Unexplained”.’

‘Looks that way, yes.’

‘Hm. Anyway … from a rather gloomy subject to a much happier one … Sara and I are engaged!’

‘Wonderful! That’s brilliant news!’

‘Certainly what we think. And we both want to thank you.’

‘I haven’t done anything.’

‘You have. You did a lot to help Sara when she was at her lowest … and then to explain things to me. We’re both very grateful to you.’

‘Well, thank you.’

‘But listen, the thing is … short notice and all that, but Sara and I are going to have a few drinks with some mates on Friday … you know, to celebrate the great event. Fethering Yacht Club, six p.m. I do hope you can come.’

‘Yes, I haven’t got anything else on that evening. I’d love to.’

‘And do bring Carole too, if you’d like to.’

Jude bit back the giggle. ‘Okay. I’ll check out whether she’s free.’

Needless to say, she wouldn’t mention why the invitation had been issued, but she felt fairly confident that Carole would agree to come along to the yacht club. Her neighbour’s inhibition about not having actually met her host and Sara as a waitress in Polly’s would definitely be overcome by her ingrained nosiness.

It also struck Jude as she walked home that, given her closeness to Kent Warboys, Sara Courtney too must believe Carole and Jude were a lesbian couple, or she would have put him right about the situation. Well, the two of them had gone on holiday to Turkey together the previous year. In West Sussex such action was tantamount to announcing your same-sex marriage in the Fethering Observer.

Jude was still giggling when she got back to Woodside Cottage.

The subject of her sexual orientation didn’t come up in the call she made to Sara shortly afterwards. After appropriate congratulations on the engagement, she said she was ringing to check out the woman’s interest in the potential paid job as manager, not of Polly’s Community Café, but of Polly’s Cake Shop.

Sara Courtney was extremely interested. In fact, she sounded really ecstatic about the possibility. She would definitely attend the committee meeting on the Wednesday and spend the interim preparing herself for the interview. She was determined to make the job her own.

‘And,’ asked Jude tentatively, ‘you feel confident you could cope with it?’

‘At the moment, Jude,’ came the sunny reply, ‘I could cope with anything.’

The subject of their lesbianism was not mentioned when Jude next spoke to Carole. But she did float the suggestion that her neighbour might be interested in organizing the Volunteer Rota for the revived Polly’s Cake Shop.

‘That’s a ridiculous idea,’ came the predictable response. ‘You know my views on Community Projects and volunteers.’

‘Yes, but the new set-up is going to be more professional.’

‘Oh?’

‘The café will have a paid manager.’

‘And who’s that going to be?’

‘Hasn’t been decided yet.’

‘Huh.’

‘And I was just thinking,’ said Jude at her most beguiling, ‘that you have all that experience of organizing things at the Home Office, so I’m sure it’s a job you could do.’

‘The question, Jude, is not whether I could do it, but more whether I would want to do it.’

‘Well, there’s no hurry for you to make a decision.’

‘Good.’

Jude knew from experience that this was the way things always had to be approached with her neighbour. An idea had to be proposed, agonized over and rejected a good few times before Carole would commit herself to anything.

But on this occasion, Jude could see that her interest had been engaged.

Compared to Quintus Braithwaite, Arnold Bloom was perhaps less charismatic as a Chairman (the title ‘Chair’ had quickly gone the way of ‘Polly’s Community Café’), but he was effective at working his way through an Agenda. And he was more than a match for Quintus in getting his own way.

The meeting was scheduled for seven-thirty in the All Saints Church Hall, and Sara Courtney was asked to appear at eight-fifteen for her grilling. She responded well to the questions put to her – in fact she was brilliantly charismatic. Her engagement to Kent Warboys had blown away all the cobwebs of doubt that had clouded her mind. Getting the managerial job would be icing on the cake.

Jude worried slightly about the time when Sara’s volatile mood changed again, but for the moment she could only applaud her protégée’s confidence.

After Sara had left the church hall, it was a matter of moments for the SPCS Action Committee to agree that she should be offered the job. As Treasurer, Alec Walters agreed to sort out and discuss with her the terms of her employment and get the appropriate contracts drawn up.

Jude said she had fixed to meet Sara in the Crown and Anchor for a drink after the meeting, and asked if she could pass on the good news.

‘In fact,’ Arnold Bloom replied, ‘I – and many other committee members – will be adjourning to the pub, so I will be able to tell her myself. I think it would be more appropriate for such information to come from the Chairman.’

‘Of course,’ said Jude.

Arnold Bloom smiled with satisfaction. ‘How much more convenient it is,’ he observed, ‘being able to go down the road to the village pub than to be dragging all the way over to some tarted-up mansion on the Shorelands Estate.’

The Fethering Yacht Club was looking surprisingly festive that evening. This was chiefly because the Christmas fairy lights round the top of the bar hadn’t yet been taken down (and it was now into February). But the bar-room was a welcoming place, particularly in the winter, when all of the windows, right-angled to look over the Fether estuary and the English Channel, were closed. The glass was slick with condensation generated by the warmth of the large number of people inside.

Jude hadn’t been to the yacht club since her first weeks in Fethering, when she and Carole had become involved in investigating the drowning of a boy called Aaron Spalding. But, barring the Christmas lights, not a lot seemed to have changed in the interior décor. On the wall were ships’ wheels and glassed-in picture frames showing displays of nautical knots. Boards with flaking gold letters listed the club’s commodores and vice-commodores, as well as the victors in various categories of sailing. In a dusty cabinet were displayed tarnished cups engraved with the names of long-dead winners.

The whole place had an air of defeat and dilapidation about it, but that didn’t prevent its members from being very sniffy about who else they admitted to their ranks.

When Carole and Jude arrived that Friday evening, the engagement party was in full swing. Drink had been flowing for a while and the noise level of the conversation was high.

The affianced couple looked suitably radiant. Sara, in particular, glowed with happiness and looked wonderful in a defiantly scarlet dress. Careful make-up accentuated the sparkle of her dark eyes and her black hair was swept back into a girlish ponytail.

Kent looked good too, wearing an unflamboyant but beautifully cut suit in pale grey over a pale blue shirt. He greeted Carole and Jude effusively and directed them towards the bar ‘where you can order whatever you want’. The Fethering Yacht Club did not boast a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, but they did have a perfectly acceptable French one (and, after all, the French had been making Sauvignon Blanc much longer than the New Zealanders).

The first people they encountered as they weaved their way back from the bar were the Braithwaites. Quintus was in blazer and crushed strawberry cords with some naval tie over his checked shirt. Phoebe was wearing rather too formal a little black dress. She moved with her customary poise.

‘Delighted to see the slipped disc’s getting better,’ said Jude.

‘Oh yes.’ Phoebe Braithwaite, being Phoebe Braithwaite, showed no embarrassment about her sudden recovery. ‘I’ve got this wonderful little man in Harley Street who’s just magic with backs.’

Jude would have put money on the fact that she had been nowhere near Harley Street since the Monday meeting. She felt certain that the slipped disc, having served its purpose of getting Phoebe out of running Polly’s Community Café, had neatly and conveniently slipped back to its appropriate place in its owner’s spinal column.

Carole had been briefly introduced to the Braithwaites at the relaunch, and Jude was about to remind them of this when Quintus, clearly unwilling to engage in conversation, hailed a couple of yacht club acquaintances across the room and led his wife across to meet them.

Standing on the edge of the social circle, looking a little isolated, was Rosalie Achter. Carole went over to greet her. ‘I think you’ve met my neighbour Jude.’

‘I’ve certainly served you in the café,’ said Rosalie rather brusquely. ‘Served practically everyone here. Not that I’d call them my friends.’ Jude wondered whether Rosalie had inherited some of her mother’s social paranoia. ‘Except perhaps Kent. Kent used to be my friend.’

‘I didn’t know you knew him,’ said Carole.

‘Ah, didn’t you? No, a lot of people didn’t.’ This seemed a rather enigmatic reply, but Rosalie wasn’t slow in providing an explanation. Her eyes, as they had been during their meeting in the Crown and Anchor, looked a little glazed. Her glass contained what looked like vodka and tonic. Once again, Carole wondered if she was a little drunk.

‘What you’re saying is: you wonder why I’m here.’

‘Not at all. As a colleague of Sara’s at the café, I—’

But Rosalie wasn’t listening. ‘It’s a perfectly good question. I think Kent also wonders why I’m here. I was invited – Sara rang me – but I don’t think Kent ever expected me to turn up. But I thought I would – just to show him.’

‘Are you saying,’ asked Jude tactfully, ‘that there’s some history between you and Kent?’

‘That’s a bloody tactful way of putting it, isn’t it? “Some history”? Yes, we were an item. Not a full, public item,’ said Rosalie sarcastically. ‘Not the bells-and-whistles variety like him and Sara. No prospect of me and Kent ever having an engagement party at the Fethering Yacht Club. Sara doesn’t even know that we were ever together. Oh no, I was just his “bit on the side”.’

Carole looked embarrassed by her frankness. Jude now thought she understood what Kent had referred to on New Year’s Eve when he mentioned ‘age difference’ as a reason for one of his relationships failing. And she remembered Carole reporting that Rosalie had been with someone but broken up four months previously. The news opened up a lot of intriguing possibilities.

‘Not that I want to get married,’ Rosalie continued. By now both Carole and Jude were convinced she was drunk – maybe she’d topped her level up beforehand to steel herself for the encounter with her ex. ‘From what I’ve seen of my parents’ marriage, there’s no way I want to go down that route. I can be quite unhappy enough on my own without deliberately adding to the misery. It’s easy enough to hate yourself. Marriage just spreads more hatred around, so that you end up hating everyone involved.’

‘But when we talked,’ said Carole reasonably, ‘you implied that you loved your father.’

‘Oh, I did. When I was twelve I adored him. And I thought he adored me too. But he seemed quite happy for me suddenly not to be part of his life. Just like that – one day I’m living with him, next I’m not. End of story. End of relationship. End of everything.’

‘I thought you still saw him sometimes.’

‘Been a while. My father, the ever-loving Hudson Vale, has got a new wife now. And twin daughters. Couldn’t show any love to one daughter, but now he’s lavishing it on two of the little buggers. Ridiculous for a man of his age to be going back to nappies and nursery school, isn’t it? But that’s what he’s chosen.

‘Maybe that’s what all men are looking for – the secret of eternal youth. Shacking up with a younger woman is supposed to do the trick – certainly Kent kept saying how young I made him feel. The blood of young virgins – huh. And this lot—’ her wide, unsteady gesture took in everyone present at the Fethering Yacht Club – ‘are all trying to recapture a time when they were younger and less stressed, just “messing about in boats” …’ She nodded derisively towards Quintus Braithwaite. ‘Getting up to stupid things in their dinghies, playing secret games and—’

‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Carole eagerly. ‘Do you actually know something that Quintus—?’

But Rosalie had already moved on. She swilled down the remains of her drink. ‘So what shall I do now – make a scene? Really bugger up Kent and Sara’s celebration. Tell Sara what a devious bastard she’s taking on; spill the beans about all the shady deals he’s been involved in over the years; destroy any hopes of happiness they might have?’

For a moment she looked as if she was about to put that plan into action. Then her shoulders slumped, tears started in her eyes and, with a mumbled, ‘I must go’, she edged her way through the crowd to the exit door.

‘Do you think we should go after her?’ asked Carole.

To her surprise, Jude shook her head. ‘I think it’s something she’s got to sort out on her own.’

They might have had further discussion, had Sara Courtney not come across at that point to give them both lavish hugs. She too had had a little too much to drink, but it hadn’t had the destructive effect on her that it had had on Rosalie Achter. Sara seemed positively to sparkle from head to toe. ‘I’m having such a wonderful time,’ she said. ‘I’d given up hopes of ever having an engagement party.’

‘Didn’t I tell you you should, “Hang on in there”?’

‘You did, Jude, you did. And bless you for it.’ Sara let out a little giggle. ‘Well, maybe you should be next.’

‘Next to do what?’ asked Carole.

‘Get engaged. Get married – now it’s legal for you.’

The look on Carole’s face when she heard this was one that Jude would cherish for a long, long time.