The Killing in the Café

FOUR

‘I think, if we could call this meeting to order …’ The speaker, Commodore Quintus Braithwaite, banged his gavel on the table. He was the kind of man who would always have his own personal gavel.

The Commodore was in fact a relative newcomer to Fethering. That is to say that – though he had been the owner of a large house in the Shorelands Estate to the west of the village for many years – he, his wife Phoebe and their three children had spent very little time there. It was only after his retirement from the Royal Navy that he became a full-time resident. He had quickly become a familiar sight around Fethering, favouring tweed jackets or khaki gilets, open-necked shirts with very large checks and corduroy trousers in burgundy or English mustard yellow. He appeared just to have given up one uniform for another.

And for the past two years he had involved himself in every aspect of village life, bringing to local affairs the organizational skills which had raised him through his career in the Forces. The actual quality of those organizational skills was something on which the Fethering jury was still out.

The latest village initiative in which Quintus Braithwaite was involving himself was the ‘Save Polly’s Cake Shop’ campaign, already shortened to ‘SPCS’. Indeed it was he who had written the letter to the Fethering Observer about the threat from ‘an international, overpriced conglomerate with an idiosyncratic attitude to paying British taxes’, also known as Starbucks.

And he was very much taking over the second meeting of the campaign’s committee. For a start he had decreed that it should take place at his house, which gave him home advantage. The Shorelands Estate was an exclusive gated community with complicated regulations for its residents as to when they could hang out their washing or mow their lawns. Many of the houses, like the Braithwaites’, backed on to the sea, and a good few had sailing dinghies lined up at the ends of their gardens. Quintus Braithwaite, who had commanded considerably larger vessels during his professional life, was an avid sailor and very bossy to anyone who crewed for him (usually his wife Phoebe). He kept his main boat on one of the riverside moorings owned by Fethering Yacht Club, but he also owned a small blue-painted tender with an outboard which was kept at the end of his garden.

The house itself – named, incongruously, ‘Hiawatha’ – was a big six-bedroomed affair, built in what a 1950s architect had reckoned to be Elizabethan style. This meant there was a lot of red brick, a few supernumerary turrets and far too many tall chimneys twisted like barley sugar. Inside, no attempt had been made to continue the Elizabethan motif. The décor in all of the rooms had the immaculate impersonal gloss which can only be supplied by very expensive interior designers.

They were meeting in the sitting room, a huge space filled with an excess of large sofas. Rather than commanding the sea view, its picture windows faced inland towards the ‘Green’ at the centre of the Shorelands Estate, but since the thick brocade curtains were closed, nobody missed anything.

For the less well-heeled members of the SPCS campaign group, the house displayed a daunting opulence. Phoebe Braithwaite, a twittery woman in a Liberty print dress whose eyes blinked a lot behind thick glasses, had supplied tea, coffee and biscuits in very fine china. Thrown by the splendour of the venue, few of those present were about to question anything their host proposed.

Jude was there simply to support Sara Courtney. Her client seemed to have settled down after her outburst that Sunday at Woodside Cottage. There had been no more mention of the dead body she had possibly seen in the store room. But ten days on, Jude knew that Sara was still very brittle and might need support when the fate of her place of employment was discussed.

Having called the meeting to order, Commodore Quintus Braithwaite didn’t mess around. He moved straight on to the power coup which he had clearly planned. ‘Now, what we want to do this evening is to get an action committee in place, so that we can move forward in a constructive manner. At the last meeting I asked for nominations for someone to be Chair of the committee but, since we haven’t had any, I feel it my duty to step into the breach. So if we could take a vote on—’

‘Just a minute, just a minute.’ The interruption came from Arnold Bloom, a Fethering resident whom Jude recognized but didn’t know well. He was a small man who habitually wore a frayed suit and tie. Unmarried, he lived in the former fisherman’s cottage where he had been born. He still slept in the bed where the birth had taken place. His hair, dark but very thin, was combed down from a central parting in a manner which made it look as if it had been painted on to his bony cranium. Arnold had run the village’s small hardware store until the opening of a large Homebase nearby had ended its financial viability. Since then he had taken over Fethering’s Crazy Golf course (its title now modernized to Adventure Golf). He had the embittered conviction that the world had done him wrong, and had been Chairman of the Fethering Village Committee for as long as anyone could remember.

‘I was at the last meeting, Quintus,’ he went on, ‘as were a lot of other people present this evening who I’m sure could bear me out on this – and I have no recollection of nominations being asked for Chairman of this SPCS committee.’

‘It may not have been said in so many words,’ the owner of Hiawatha protested, ‘but I think it was implicit in our discussions.’

‘I don’t think that at all,’ said Arnold Bloom. ‘All that was said was that at the next meeting we would need to appoint a Chairman.’

‘I prefer the word “Chair”,’ said the Commodore.

‘Well, I prefer the word “Chairman”. At meetings of the Fethering Village Committee I don’t like to be referred to as a piece of furniture.’

‘I think you’re being rather small-minded, Arnold.’

‘Do you? Well, I think I know rather more about the workings of Fethering than you do. I was born in the village; I’ve lived here all my life.’

‘Well, I have owned this house for over thirty years.’

‘Not quite the same, though, is it, Quintus? You may have owned the house but you’ve hardly spent more than the odd week in it.’

‘That,’ the Commodore responded with some hauteur, ‘is because I have been abroad, defending the realm on behalf of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second.’

‘I’m sure she was very grateful to you,’ said Arnold Bloom drily, ‘but it doesn’t change the fact that you know very little about how this village works. We do still have some respect for democracy in this neck of the woods, you know.’

‘I too have an enormous respect for democracy. That was another thing I was defending, as well as the realm.’

‘Well if, Quintus, you have as much respect for democracy as you claim, why are you trying to ride roughshod over the democratic system to get yourself elected as Chairman of this committee?’

‘I am not “riding roughshod”. I am offering my services on behalf of the community.’

‘Very generous of you. But I still think we should have checked to see whether there are any other nominees for the post of Chairman of the SPCS Action Committee.’

‘Well, are there?’ The Commodore looked balefully around his sitting room, daring anyone else to put themselves forward. Nobody did. ‘Right, it would seem that—’

‘Just a minute. If you can put yourself forward, then so can I.’

‘You?’

‘Yes. I, Arnold Bloom. I am putting myself forward as a candidate for the position of Chairman of the SPCS Action Committee.’

‘But you can’t do that.’

‘Why not? You just did.’

‘My situation is entirely different from yours.’

‘In what way?’

‘You are already Chair of the Fethering Village Committee.’

‘Chairman, actually.’

‘Never mind that. If you were also Chair of the SPCS Action Committee, there would be a clear conflict of interest.’

‘No, there wouldn’t.’

‘Yes, there would.’

‘No, there wouldn’t.’

Jude was beginning to wonder whether this pantomime crosstalk would go on until the two men ended up hitting each other. But Quintus Braithwaite stopped the bickering and, turning to the assembled throng of the usual suspects, he said, ‘Very well, we now have two candidates for the post of Chair of the SPCS Action Committee. Myself, Commodore Quintus Braithwaite, and Arnold Bloom, who, as you all know, is already Chair of—’

‘Chairman of—’

‘Chair of the Fethering Village Committee. He claims there would be no conflict of interest were he to take on the role of Chair of both bodies, but I need hardly point out that, should the SPCS Action Committee decide to follow a course which was opposed by the Fethering Village Committee …’ He spread his arms wide and shrugged. ‘Need I say more?’

‘Well, I think you should say more if—’

But the Commodore steamrollered over Arnold Bloom’s objections. ‘Very well, so we’ll take this straight to the vote. Will those of you who believe that Arnold Bloom is the right person to take over the task of chairing the SPCS Action Committee please raise your right hands?’ Only a few went up. ‘And those of you who believe that Commodore Quintus Braithwaite would do a better job in the role, please raise your right hands?’

Maybe, thought Jude, he thinks speaking of himself in the third person makes his total disregard for the democratic process more acceptable? It didn’t matter, though. Commodore Quintus Braithwaite had won the vote and was duly elected Chair of the SPCS Action Committee.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’m glad that’s sorted. And I think the next most important thing we should organize is getting some headed notepaper printed. Nothing impresses or shows the seriousness of any business enterprise more than an effective letterhead. Now there’s a stationery printer in London whom my wife Phoebe has used for invitations for charity balls and that kind of thing, and I think we can guarantee that they would produce a stylish letterhead for—’

‘Just a minute,’ interposed Arnold Bloom. ‘Aren’t we getting a bit ahead of ourselves here? Yes, we may in time need SPCS notepaper, but we shouldn’t be thinking about getting it printed until we know what names are going to be on it.’

‘I thought we’d just established,’ said the Commodore acidly, ‘that I am Chair of the SPCS Action Committee. So obviously my name should go on the letterhead.’

‘Yes, but what other names should also be there?’

‘I don’t think, Arnold, we actually need any other names.’

‘But what about the names of the Action Committee’s other officers?’

‘We don’t have any other officers.’

‘No, but we will. You’re not proposing to run the whole thing on your own, are you, Quintus?’

It was clear to Jude, from the expression on the Commodore’s face, that that was exactly what he was proposing to do. ‘Well, obviously,’ he said, ‘I’ll need secretarial back-up and—’

‘But more than that,’ Arnold countered, ‘you will rely on the full support of your committee.’

‘Well, yes,’ the newly elected Chair conceded, ‘I’m sure their views on certain topics will be invaluable to my work but—’

‘I don’t think we can proceed any further until we have appointed the full committee.’ Arnold Bloom sat back with some satisfaction. And even more satisfaction when a ripple of agreement went around the room. No one in Fethering could outdo him when it came to procedural protocol. He felt he had won a small but significant victory over Quintus Braithwaite.

A lengthy discussion then ensued as to the optimum number of committee members required. Needless to say, the Commodore had views on this subject too. He also laid down some ground rules, trying to cancel out Arnold Bloom’s recent triumph. Without mentioning his rival by name, he said he thought it would be invidious for any member of the Fethering Village Committee to be on the SPCS Action Committee, for the previously mentioned ‘conflict of interest’ reasons.

On this he didn’t get his own way, though. Arnold Bloom spoke eloquently of the need for ‘transparent liaison’ between the two committees and, experienced in the ways of managing meetings, pushed for a quick vote on the issue. This time, probably because some of those present were feeling guilty for having excluded such a stalwart of Fethering society from the Chairmanship, he won and was duly elected a member of the SPCS Action Committee.

Looking at the faces of the two men, Jude envisaged many conflicts in meetings to come and felt glad that there was no danger of her being involved in their process of oneupmanship.

A long wrangle then ensued as to how many people should be members of the ideal action committee. The Commodore recommended nine, so that in the event of a four-all split, the Chair’s casting vote could decide the issue. Arnold Bloom, for reasons which seemed to be nothing more than bloody-mindedness, favoured a larger committee. Thirteen seemed to him to be the ideal number.

This suggestion was vetoed, however, by a woman with the long blonde hair of a flower child from the Sixties. The face framed by this hair suggested that it could well have been in the Sixties when she first started dyeing it.

She identified herself as Flora Claire and objected that thirteen was a ‘bad luck number’ and it would be, like, really tempting fate to set up the committee on such an inauspicious basis. ‘I think we should go with a committee of fifteen,’ she said. ‘Fifteen is a number which has really good vibes. It’s made up of one and five and they are both really sympathetic numbers.’

‘But fifteen,’ protested Arnold Bloom, ‘is too many. In my very extensive experience of committees, with fifteen everything becomes very unwieldy. Thirteen is the perfect number for maximum efficiency.’

‘Fifteen, though,’ Flora continued, ‘is a really auspicious number. Not only is it, like I said, made up of one and five, it’s also five times three, and three is like one of the most potent numbers there is. I think we have to go with fifteen.’

Normally the Commodore would have pooh-poohed such a flaky suggestion, but in this case it was an argument against Arnold Bloom so, come the vote, he supported Flora Claire. As did the majority of those present and in that way Braithwaite achieved his first small victory over his rival. And also, to Jude’s mind, ended up with a committee which was far too large to be efficient.

Encouraged by his success, though, Quintus next laid down another ground rule. This again was on the grounds of conflict of interest. He decreed that no one who had any involvement in the current ownership or management of Polly’s Cake Shop should be allowed on to the committee.

This did not seem to Jude to be too controversial. Neither Josie Achter nor her daughter Rosalie had shown any interest in attending either the first or second meeting of the SPCS. But to her surprise she felt Sara nudge her and heard a whisper in her ear saying, ‘Will you stand on the committee for me then?’

‘What?’ Jude whispered back.

‘I’m very concerned about the future of Polly’s. I want to be involved in whatever happens to the place. And if I can’t be on the committee, then I want someone there rooting for me.’

‘Well, I’m not sure that I—’

But she was interrupted by the Commodore asking for nominations for the other vacant positions on the SPCS Action Committee. This was another characteristic rule-bending ploy. If he’d asked for volunteers, he would have ended up with all of the usual suspects who were on every other committee in Fethering. Asking for nominations might wrong-foot some of them and make for a less predictable line-up.

And the first name to be put forward could certainly not have been predicted. Before she had time to stop her, Jude found herself being nominated by Sara Courtney. Painfully aware of the woman’s fragility, she didn’t want to raise objections in such a public forum and so, to her hidden fury, found herself duly elected to the SPCS Action Committee.