The Strangling on the Stage

FOURTEEN

On the Monday, by arrangement, the police had come to Jude’s home to take her statement. She had described to the best of her recollection exactly what she had witnessed the previous day at St Mary’s Hall. She had told the truth, but not quite the whole truth, omitting to report Hester Winstone’s words about the death being her fault. Jude had glossed over that, saying that Hester was too hysterical to say anything coherent.

Her motives for telling the lie were instinctive and benign. She recognized Hester’s mental fragility and didn’t want to get her into any more trouble than she already was.

But she decided not to tell her neighbour what she’d done. Perhaps because of her Home Office background, Carole strongly disapproved of lying to the police.

Now that there was a corpse involved, Carole Seddon suddenly found the doings of SADOS a lot more interesting. Her voice was full of suppressed excitement as she asked, ‘You say Ritchie Good was hanged, Jude? Was his neck broken?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Then it would have been a very painful death.’

‘Oh?’

‘Humane hangmen usually arrange it so that the force of the drop breaks the victim’s neck. Then death – or at least unconsciousness – is more or less instantaneous. If the neck isn’t broken, the victim dies slowly of strangulation. It can take ten – or in some cases up to twenty – minutes. Pretty nasty way to go.’

Jude looked at her friend in surprise. ‘Is that something you learned at the Home Office? I know there was a lot of back-stabbing there; I didn’t know they went in for strangulation too.’

‘Ha, ha, very funny. No, it’s just information I picked up,’ Carole replied airily. She had an increasing interest in the mechanics of crime, and had started filling directories on her laptop with the fruits of her research on the subject. But it was not a hobby she ever talked about, even to Jude.

It was the Tuesday, two days after Ritchie Good’s death. They were having coffee at Woodside Cottage. The two women hadn’t seen each other for a few days. Carole’s daughter-in-law Gaby had been struck down at the weekend by a particularly nasty bout of a sickness bug and Granny had been summoned to the rescue in their house in Fulham. Since Carole absolutely worshipped her granddaughter Lily, this was no hardship for her. And with Gaby confined to bed, she even got over her customary unease at staying anywhere other than High Tor. She had taken Gulliver with her, and she was much entertained by the bonding between dog and granddaughter.

Because of her absence from Fethering till the Tuesday afternoon, this was the first Carole had heard about the death in St Mary’s Hall. Jude recognized the sparkle of interest in her pale-blue eyes as she asked, ‘So do you reckon that this Ritchie Good person was murdered?’

‘I really don’t know. It’s an odd one. I’ve been going through the facts, revisualizing everything I saw on Sunday night. And it strikes me there are two major questions that need asking. First, who switched the safe noose with the Velcro joint in it for the real, unbroken one? And, second, why on earth did Ritchie allow the noose to be put around his neck?’

‘Are you sure he didn’t put it there himself?’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘To commit suicide. Come on, you saw more of him than I did, Jude. I just exchanged a few words with him in the Cricketers. Did anything he said to you make you think he might have depressive tendencies?’

‘Absolutely not. I don’t think I’ve ever met a man so armoured in self-esteem as Ritchie Good. He wouldn’t want to deny the world the pleasure of his company. He would have regarded that as a terrible deprivation for everyone else on the planet. No, what happened to him is a complete mystery.’

‘Intriguing, though,’ said Carole, and behind their rimless glasses there was even more sparkle in her pale-blue eyes.

‘Hello, Mike Winstone.’ The voice answering Jude’s call had its bonhomie firmly fixed in place.

‘Hello, it’s Jude. Remember, you came round with the champagne to say thank you …?’

‘Yes, yes, of course. How the devil are you?’

‘Fine, thanks. And you?’

‘Never better.’

‘I was actually ringing about Hester …’

‘Oh yes?’ For the first time there was a less welcoming tone in his voice.

‘When I last saw her on Sunday she was in a terrible state.’

‘Well, she’s fine now,’ said Mike Winstone curtly.

‘But it looked as if she was about to be taken away by the police.’

‘She did go with them to the station, where she made a statement and then was allowed to come home.’

‘So is she there now? Would it be possible for me to speak to her?’

‘No, I’m afraid that wouldn’t be possible.’

‘But she is there, is she?’

‘No. No, she’s not.’ He spoke as if he had just thought of the answer. ‘Hester’s gone to stay with a friend.’

And that was all Jude got out of him. Except for the impression that he was lying.