The Shooting in the Shop

Twenty-Five

As she drove to the vet’s, Carole tried to find explanations for what had happened at the beach hut after Piers’s arrival. She had been unceremoniously sent on her way, and, when she left, the young man was also chivvying Old Garge to gather up his belongings and leave. The actor raised no objections, evidently as keen as Piers was that he should get out of the place. Presumably the reason for his departure was to avoid further interrogation from the police. And he had dropped that clue about trying to minimize his contact with the constabulary – was that because he’d had uncomfortable experiences with them in the past? Everything that had happened in Pequod again raised the intriguing questions of how much Old Garge knew and whom he was trying to protect. Carole, having come so close to hearing the actor’s account of Gallimaufry’s burning-down, felt acutely frustrated at being denied her breakthrough on the case.

She didn’t see Saira Sherjan at the vet’s. Gulliver was brought out by one of the green-clad nurses while Carole paid the receptionist the usual eye-watering bill. The dog seemed none the worse for his hospitalization, and greeted his mistress with heart-warming enthusiasm. She was advised that he should have no adverse reactions to the surgery, but she should try for a week to keep him from eating dried food and chewing bones or sticks, to give the gum a chance to heal.

Gulliver seemed very pleased to be back in High Tor and wolfed down the plate of (soft) dog meat that Carole put in front of him. He then sat up, his tail thumping on the floor, with an expectant look which she knew well. The dog was telling her that he hadn’t had a decent walk in the last twenty-four hours, and she had a moral duty to rectify that state of affairs as soon as possible.

Carole was sorry to disappoint him, but telling Jude about her morning’s encounters was a more pressing priority. So pressing that she even went round to Woodside Cottage without ringing first to say she was coming.

Jude tapped her chin thoughtfully. “I wonder…”

“What?”

“Well, it’s fanciful…and it would probably be too neat to have happened in real life…but wouldn’t it be great if we found out that Rupert Sonning was Ricky Le Bonnier’s father?”

“He admitted that he and Flora had worked together,” said Carole cautiously.

“Yes, though as we well know, women don’t have babies by all the men they work with. Even in the theatre, where a certain laxity of moral standards has always been the norm. But the timing could be about right.” And Jude told Carole about the relevant movie history she had read in One Classy Lady. “You say Old Garge mentioned being in some Gainsborough costume movies after the war. Late nineteen-forties – that’d be about the time Ricky was born. Hm…Pity you didn’t ask whether he and Flora had ever been an item.”

“I virtually did, though not at the time realizing quite how important the question might be. I wasn’t contemplating the possibility that he might be Ricky’s father. Anyway, the only answer I got from him on the subject was a diplomatic one, which admitted nothing.”

“Oh, it’d probably be too much of a coincidence.” Jude sounded almost dispirited. “But it all comes back to Fethering, somehow. Ricky was brought up around here by an aunt. He went to school here, which is where he met Kath. And now he comes back to live near here. Then you say Old Garge also has long-term connections with the place. What about Flora? She must have come here sometimes to visit Ricky as a child. And if the aunt who looked after him was her sister…”

“Have we any means of checking up on this aunt, Jude? Whether she’s still alive, even?”

“Well, I doubt if we’d get anything out of Flora. The person who definitely would know is Ricky himself. But he’s in London. I heard that when I was over at Fedingham Court House yesterday. Not back till tomorrow. I suppose that Lola might know, but…” She snapped her fingers. “Oh, just a minute, of course! Kath! She would have known about his aunt.”

Jude rang through to Ayland’s. Again it was Kath who answered the phone, and again she seemed unsurprised by being questioned about Ricky. She remembered instantly. “His Auntie Vi. That’s what she was called – Auntie Vi.”

“And is she still here in Fethering?”

“Oh no. She’s long dead now. Even when she came to our wedding, she was quite doddery. She went into a home soon after, and I don’t think she lasted there very long.”

A new thought came to Jude. “Was Flora Le Bonnier at your wedding? Surely she would have been there to see her son married?”

“No, she couldn’t come. Making a film somewhere, I think she was. But she sent us a very generous present. A silver tea set. I’ve still got that at home.”

“Going back to Auntie Vi…you knew her, didn’t you?”

“Oh yes. I often used to go back to her place after school. With Ricky. For tea.”

“And do you know what relation she was to him? Was she Flora Le Bonnier’s sister?”

“I don’t think she was a relation.”

“But he called her Auntie Vi.”

“That’s what she liked to be called. By all the kids. She looked after other kids, you see, as well as Ricky.”

“What, she was a kind of paid child minder?”

“More a foster parent, I think you’d call it. All the kids loved her.”

Jude’s mind was having difficulty keeping track of the new information, and the new thoughts that led from it. “Did Ricky talk much about his mother when you knew him?”

“No. Very little.”

“Or his father?”

“He never mentioned a father.”

“But people…other children at school, they must have asked if he was related to Flora Le Bonnier?”

“Why should they have done?”

“Well, it’s not a very usual surname, is it?”

“Le Bonnier?”

“Yes.”

“But Ricky wasn’t called Le Bonnier at school.”

“What was he called?”

“He was just ‘Ricky Brown’ then.”

“So when did he start calling himself Le Bonnier?”

“When he went up to London. When he pretended he wasn’t married to me. When he came under the influence of the first Devil Woman.”

Oh, thought Jude, here we go again.

Gulliver finally got his walk, with his mistress and her neighbour. Because she didn’t want him chewing unsavoury things on the beach with his injured gums, Carole kept him on the lead. He took a very dim view of that.

Carole and Jude had agreed that they had to pay a visit to Old Garge. He was the only one who had potentially new information, which might untangle some of the confusions that were building up around their investigation.

The padlock was in place on the hut’s door, locking the hasp on to its ring. Knocking produced no reaction. No classical music wafted from the interior. The place was empty and, though Carole had only been there a few hours before, it felt as though it had been empty for a long time. And that it might stay that way for a long time, too.

As the two women walked back up the beach, they were aware of the scrutiny of two uniformed officers sitting in a Panda car by the Promenade. The men had clearly been watching their approach to the hut. Carole and Jude were not the only people interested in the whereabouts of Old Garge.