The Liar in the Library

FIFTEEN

Vix Winter seemed surprisingly ready to talk to Carole. About anything. When told it was about Burton St Clair’s death, she was even more enthusiastic. And no, she hadn’t had any face-to-face conversations with the police yet, just a call in which she’d been asked to confirm that she had left the library in Di Thompson’s car on the Tuesday night. She’d been questioned briefly about cleaning up the staff room when the bottle of wine had been broken, then told that the police would probably be contacting her again at a later date. But, since then, she hadn’t heard anything more from them. She sounded disappointed, and Carole wondered whether that’s why she’d agreed so readily to talk to her.

‘We can’t do it here, though,’ the girl whispered conspiratorially down the phone line. ‘I live with my parents.’

‘Well, when do you think you’ll be well enough to meet up?’

‘What?’

‘I’ve just come from the library. Di Thompson said you’d called in sick.’

‘Oh yes. Actually, I’m feeling a bit better than I was earlier. Thank goodness. Could meet now if it’s OK with you?’

‘Fine. Where?’

‘I don’t know. Some pub?’

‘My local’s the Crown & Anchor in Fethering. Don’t know if you know it?’

‘’Course I do. I’ve lived in the village all my life.’

‘Whereabouts?’

‘Downside.’

‘Right.’ Carole had duly taken note of this social marker. The Downside Estate, to the north of Fethering, was made up of council houses – or, as they seemed to have become known, ‘social housing’. Their world was far from the middle-class gentility of High Tor.

‘Then of course you know the Crown & Anchor. Well, might that be suitable? Or would you worry about meeting Di there – you know, what with you being off sick?’

‘That’d be OK. She never goes near the pub. Doesn’t drink.’

‘So, when could you meet?’

‘I don’t know … twelve?’

‘Sounds good to me. What, will you walk there, or do you have transport?’

‘Ooh, no. Couldn’t afford a car on my salary. But I don’t really fancy walking, not with being off sick and all.’

‘Of course not. I’ll pick you up then.’

Carole’s instructions were not to collect the girl from the house. She was to pick Vix up by the postbox at the end of her road. Whether the girl wanted the assignation to be a secret from her parents, or was ashamed of where she lived, Carole neither knew nor asked.

So, the immaculate Renault was driven sedately out of the High Tor garage. For a moment, Carole considered telling Jude what was happening, even suggesting she might come along. But she curbed the instinct. Her neighbour seemed to have been genuinely frightened by the cautions Detective Inspector Rollins had given her. Jude wanted to – indeed, had to – keep her nose clean.

Which meant that Carole Seddon was the sole investigator on the case, if you didn’t take the police into account. And, despite her Home Office background, when Carole was involved in an investigation, she very rarely took the police into account.

Vix Winter hadn’t said much on the short drive from Downside, and she didn’t say much inside the Crown & Anchor until she had taken a long swig from her pint of cider. As instructed, Carole had asked at the bar for a ‘K’ (which was apparently some kind of cider), but Zosia had said they didn’t carry it, so she had made do with draught Aspall’s.

Carole hoped Ted Crisp didn’t appear in the bar. The sight of her in the company of a girl with green hair and facial piercings would provide him with teasing ammunition for weeks.

‘Phew!’ said Vix, putting her glass down on the table. ‘I needed that.’

‘Oh?’ said Carole, after taking a sip from her small Sauvignon Blanc.

‘Got a bit bladdered last night.’ She took her mobile phone out and placed it on the table right in front of her. ‘On the “K”, I was, with my mate Jools, in this club we go to.’

‘And then you woke up this morning feeling ill?’

‘Yes.’ A sly grin crept across the girl’s plump face. ‘Don’t know why.’

The temptation for Carole to be censorious was only momentary. She was reminded that she needed to ingratiate herself with Vix Winter to extract the maximum amount of information from the girl.

‘You presumably know about everything that happened after you left the library on Tuesday evening?’

‘Well, I don’t know everything, or I’d know who the murderer is, wouldn’t I?’ She giggled, and took another long, revivifying swallow from her pint glass. ‘But I know what I saw, sure enough. Everyone in the library’s been asking me about it, and at the club we were in last night too.’

She spoke with some level of pride. Vix Winter wasn’t the first person Carole had encountered who glowed in the spotlight turned on them by having some involvement in a murder enquiry.

‘Right, on the Tuesday, after the library had been locked up, Di Thompson drove you home?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was that a usual arrangement?’

‘How’dja mean?’

‘Did Di normally give you a lift home, if you both finished work at the same time?’

‘God, no. She could do that quite easily, I’m virtually on her way, but she’d never think of it. No, normally I have to walk, or catch a bus. But, as I’m sure you know, there’s no buses in Fethering at that time of night.’

Carole nodded agreement, although, thanks to her trusty Renault, she had not travelled by bus once since she had moved permanently to the village.

‘On Tuesday, Di had to promise me a lift home. Otherwise there was no way I was going to stay for the evening. I thought it was a liberty asking me to do it, anyway. No talk of overtime. I know the hours I’m meant to work, and evenings aren’t part of them. Having spent the whole day dealing with books, last thing I want to do is stay at work in the evening for some bloody author.’

It wasn’t the first time during their interview that Carole had contemplated asking Vix whether she thought she’d really taken the right career path. Though there were not many librarians amongst her acquaintance, the ones Carole did know were very devoted to their profession. They might moan about management and changes in regulations, as everyone who worked for a large organization did, but they did actually care about the libraries and the customers who frequented them. Above all, they loved books.

But that was a part of the job specification which seemed to have passed by Vix Winter.

‘Tell me,’ asked Carole, ‘did Di say anything about the evening as she was driving you home?’

‘No. She hardly said a word. Except “Goodnight” when she dropped me at the end of our road.’

‘She didn’t make any comment about Burton St Clair? Or the contents of his talk?’

‘No.’

‘What did you think of it?’

‘What did I think of what?’

‘Burton St Clair’s talk.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, you were there, weren’t you? You must’ve heard what he said.’

‘I wasn’t listening. I was sat at the back with my mobile. Spent most of the time WhatsApping my mate Jools.’

Once again, a question about Vix’s suitability for her chosen career was on the tip of Carole’s tongue. But she didn’t let it go any further than that. ‘Presumably you were in the library when Burton St Clair arrived that afternoon?’

‘Yes, he got there about six. Library closed at five thirty, so Di and I had had to rush around moving chairs and things before he arrived.’

‘I gather some volunteers were there too, to help put the chairs out?’

‘Yes. But I did most of it.’

‘And what time were the doors opened for the public?’

‘Six thirty.’

‘Did you get the impression that Di had met Burton St Clair before?’

‘Don’t think so. She went into her routine about how much she’d always enjoyed his work, and how delighted she was about the success of … whatever the new one’s called. But I’ve heard her do all that with other authors.’

‘Hm. Earlier, Vix, you talked about the “murderer”. Has anyone actually said that Burton St Clair’s death was murder?’

‘Well, everyone in Fethering says it was.’

‘But you haven’t heard the word used by the police?’

‘Like I said, I only had a brief chat on the phone with them.’

‘Of course. When Burton St Clair did his talk, I understand he had a bottle of mineral water with him …’

‘Oh, are you going down the poisoning route? Yeah, a lot of people have been talking about that. And before you ask: no, the bottle of water had not been opened before it was set up for him. I know that, because I took it out of the staff room fridge myself.’

This did of course raise the possibility that Vix herself might have had the opportunity to adulterate the contents, but Carole didn’t think that avenue was worth pursuing. She was coming round to Di Thompson’s view that planning a murder would have been too much like hard work for Vix Winter to have anything to do with it.

‘God, I feel better for that.’ Vix looked down at her empty glass. Carole took the hint. Though she was only halfway down her Sauvignon Blanc, she went to the bar to get another pint of Aspall’s. Zosia served her. The girl looked rather subdued and, Carole noticed, wore heavier eye make-up than usual. The whites of her eyes were pinkish, as though she’d been crying. Jude would instantly, without any awkwardness, have asked Zosia if everything was OK. But Carole wasn’t made like that. She just voiced her thanks and took Vix’s cider back to the table.

As the girl took another deep swallow, Carole asked, ‘Do you mind just going through what happened between Burton St Clair’s arrival at the library and the start of his talk?’

‘Not much did happen, really. I told you, I spent most of the time moving chairs.’ The resentment in her voice was strong. ‘Some volunteers were meant to come in at six thirty to help with that, but by the time they arrived I’d done it all,’ she concluded righteously.

‘And where was Burton during this time?’

‘He was in the staff room with Di. She’d got some M & S sandwiches. Not that I was allowed to have any. They were all for him. And she made him some coffee.’

‘Didn’t offer him anything stronger at that stage of the evening?’

‘No. She was worried about not having enough wine for later.’

Carole remembered Jude saying Burton had had a close relationship with alcohol. ‘Did he mind about that?’

Vix shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t hear him say anything.’

‘So, Di was in the staff room with him, what, talking about his books?’

‘I guess,’ said the girl without interest.

Carole changed direction. ‘Was Burton St Clair wearing an overcoat when he arrived at the library?’

‘No. He was parked directly outside. Maybe he’d got one in his car.’

‘I think Jude said he was wearing a black leather jacket.’

‘That’s right. But when he was chatting with Di, he took it off and hung it over the back of the chair.’

‘You don’t know how long it stayed there?’

‘I don’t think he picked it up again before he went through to the library for Di to introduce him, you know, at the beginning of his talk.’

‘So there might have been a moment when the jacket was left unattended in the staff room?’

Another shrug. ‘Might have been. Quite likely, I suppose.’

‘One other thing. While he was in the library on Tuesday, did Burton St Clair make a pass at you?’

‘“Make a pass”? What you mean, like, “come on to me”?’

‘Yes.’

‘No, he bloody didn’t!’ The girl looked disgusted to the depths of her dumpy soul. ‘He’s old.’

‘Were you aware that he had “come on” to Di Thompson?’

‘To Di?’ Her nose wrinkled with further distaste. ‘Oh my God, that must’ve made her day.’

‘I don’t think it did.’

‘Well, I think it’s a long time since she’s seen any action of that kind. I can’t imagine her ever doing it, actually.’ The pierced nose was wrinkled with disgust. ‘Her and Burton St Clair – yuk!’

‘Well, apparently he did grope her.’

‘That’s horrible.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, they’re both so old!’

To Carole Seddon, who was probably exactly the same age as Di Thompson, this was less than amusing. ‘There was one other thing I wanted to ask you, Vix. About the timing of—’

She was interrupted by a pinging from the girl’s phone. Without a word of apology, it was picked up. A text was read, and a short reply sent off.

‘Sorry, gotta go. My mate Jools is outside in her car. We’re going on to meet some people in another pub.’

And, pausing only to down the remains of her cider, Vix Winter rushed out of the Crown & Anchor.

On her way to the door, Carole did the public-spirited thing of taking the two empty glasses up to the bar. Zosia was slumped forward against it, looking even more dejected.

‘Are you all right?’ Carole asked, knowing that Jude would have put the question less brusquely.

She was right. The Polish girl looked up. Tears started to sparkle on the heavy mascara of her eyelashes, and she went wordlessly out through the door that led to the kitchen.

‘Women’s moods, eh?’ It was the landlord, Ted Crisp, barrelling his way along the bar towards Carole. ‘Though presumably saying that would be sexist these days, wouldn’t it?’

‘Probably. Though I didn’t think political correctness had ever really been your thing, Ted.’

‘Well, it certainly wasn’t so important when I was doing the stand-up circuit. Nowadays, almost any joke you make is going to offend some minority. No way round it, though, so far as I can see. Jokes have to be at someone’s expense, for heaven’s sake. Jokes have to have butts, otherwise they’re not jokes.’

‘Maybe.’ Carole found Ted’s company obscurely comforting. The fact that they had once had a brief affair was still a source of surprise to both of them. Though the differences in their personalities meant that a relationship of such closeness could never have lasted, it had remained a bond between them.

She moved on. ‘Do you know what’s wrong with Zosia?’

He shrugged awkwardly. ‘Moods?’

At least he hadn’t said ‘time of the month’, thought Carole, though she knew exactly what he meant. She was constantly amazed by how embarrassed men got about the subject of periods. And how they assumed that they must be the cause of all of women’s emotional upsets.

‘Let me fill your glass up.’

‘No, Ted, I should really be—’

‘On the house.’

She didn’t argue.

He poured out the New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and pulled himself half a pint of Sussex Gold. This was unusual. Though Ted Crisp liked to build up the image of himself as a hard drinker, it was increasingly rare for him to sample his own wares. He had seen too many pub landlords ruin themselves and their businesses by sliding down the easy slope to alcoholism.

Anyway, trade was slack. Even though it was a Saturday, pubs across the country were still suffering from the post-Christmas slump. He raised his glass to his guest.

After they had toasted each other, Carole suddenly remembered that Jude had entrusted her with a murder investigation, and one in which Ted might be able to provide more information. ‘People still talking about that business with Burton St Clair in the library?’

‘Of course they are. It only happened on Tuesday and, in case you’ve forgotten, we do live in Fethering, a village where a dog fouling the dunes can fuel six months’ worth of gossip. No way they’re going to stop talking about a murder in four days, is there?’

‘No. When Jude and I were last in here, you talked about some American woman pontificating in here with some theories about different kinds of murders.’

‘Yes, I remember her. At the time, I thought what she was saying was a load of cobblers, and I haven’t changed my mind on that.’

‘You don’t know if her name was Nessa Perks, do you?’

Ted shook his head. ‘No idea what she was called.’

‘And you don’t know if she had any connection with the University of Clincham, do you?’

His eyes lit up. ‘Oh yes, I do remember one of the kids she was with mentioning the place.’

‘Thank you.’ At least Carole now knew who was the next person she should try to contact.

As, feeling rather mellow, Carole walked back from the pub to High Tor, for the first time she wondered whether Jude might actually have had something to do with Burton St Clair’s death. The thought was quickly suppressed, but she knew it was one which, once planted, would continue to linger just below the level of her consciousness.