The Witness at the Wedding

Thirty-Two

You’re being stupid, Carole Seddon told herself. It was something she had told herself many times over the years. Indeed much of the interior duologue of her entire life had been castigating herself for some real or imagined lapse. Such was the penalty of being a postwar middle-class woman.

But that morning on Fethering Beach, Carole wondered whether she really was being stupid. She had picked up Gulliver as soon as she got back to High Tor from Gatwick, and taken him straight out for his walk. He was, as ever on the beach, in canine nirvana. He scuttled around on missions of desperate urgency, whose purposes he kept forgetting. He faced up to the threats of weed-fringed plastic bottles, and boldly challenged strips of khaki bladderwrack to single combat.

The day was sunny, June getting seriously warm as July approached.

And Carole Seddon could not get out of her head the feeling that she was being watched.

Stephen’s PA had arranged a hire car for Gaby and Jude to pick up at Bordeaux Airport. Gaby drove. She knew the way to Villeneuve-sur-Lot; it was a route she had followed many times before. And, besides, Jude had not been behind the wheel of a car for a long time.

The first part of the journey was motorway, not that different from a motorway in any other part of the world. The service stations, stacked with knick-knacks and souvenirs, were different from English ones, but not as different as when Jude had last been in France. She regretted the homogenization of Europe. How far would you have to go at the beginning of the twenty-first century to find somewhere that felt foreign?

Things improved when they left the motorway and pottered through small towns, past distant vineyards and dusty fields of tobacco. Painted signs to restaurants offered untold gastronomic delights. But even in the countryside, the multinational logos on petrol pumps and hoardings diluted the sense of being abroad. Jude thought back wistfully to her first visit to France as a teenager, when everything, from the bedclothes to the taps, to the sugar-lumps, to the bitter black chocolate, to the previously unheard-of yoghourt, to the corrugated iron cars, breathed the excitement of foreignness.

Conversation with Gaby continued to flow. They didn’t talk of anything momentous, just their shared love of France and the uncompromising arrogance of the French.

They stopped in Villeneuve-sur-Lot to pick up some fruit as a gift for Grand’mère, and found they had arrived on a busy market day. This felt more authentic, the profusion of fruits and vegetables on the stalls, the variegated beans and greens, the strings of plump purple garlic. Huge slabs of unknown cheeses were on offer, giant skin-straining sausages, olive oil in plastic mineral water bottles, infinite arrays of herbs and nuts. Yet even these were not as exotic as they once had been. Most of the goods would be available in any large English Sainsbury’s.

There were a few individual touches. Live chickens with trussed legs, and rabbits shut in tiny boxes defied English sensibilities. A few ancient crones sat over trays offering handfuls of meagre root vegetables. But set against these survivals of peasant tradition were the omnipresent stalls selling replica designer T-shirts, CDs, DVDs and the other initialized technology of the twenty-first century. The music that blared from the speakers was American.

Nor could the crowd of sellers and buyers be characterized as uniquely French. The ethnic mix was much more varied since the last time Jude had been at a French country market. Tall deep black North Africans and women in saris mingled with the locals. In the crowd, bright Romany skirts balanced the severity of Muslim headgear.

Jude knew the development was good, that the only future for the world lay in the celebration of its diversity. But she could not suppress a slight nostalgia for the days when countries felt different, when you could recognize a person’s nationality by theirfootwear, before the ubiquitous trainer achieved world domination.

As she had the thought, she smiled inwardly, thinking of the robustness and lack of political correctness with which Carole would undoubtedly have expressed not dissimilar views.

The retirement home was an old farmhouse, most of whose land had been long sold off, one of those four-square symmetrical buildings with tall windows flanked by neat white shutters. This, at least, thought Jude, as Gaby brought the car to rest in the visitors’ car park, is archetypally French.

The smartly suited woman on reception instantly recognized Gaby, and, once her travelling companion had been introduced, a flurry of voluble greetings ensued. Jude was pleasantly surprised by how readily her understanding of French returned, though she feared fluency of speech might take longer. Despite the unhappiness in which her two-year sojourn in France had ended, she still felt a charge to be back among French speakers.

The receptionist said she’d better show them the way to Gaby’s ‘belle Grand’mère’, because she had changed rooms since the girl’s last visit, “now she cannot move around so well.” Gaby would probably see a change in the old lady, “But she still manages, and is grateful for every day she remains with us.”

The room was at the back of the building. The bed was empty, a wheelchair stood by the French windows, and a blanket-wrapped Grand’mère was propped up in a lounger on a small balcony that looked over fields to the dark green edge of a forest. The balcony could be completely glassed in, but that warm June day one window was open and the room was full of the smells of outdoors.

“Your visitor has arrived, Madame Coleman,” said the receptionist, as Gaby rushed forward to greet her grandmother, wrapping the frail body in her plump arms. After much excited banter and the ceremonious handover of the fruit from Villeneuve-sur-Lot, Jude was introduced. There seemed no problem in her being there. No explanation of her presence was requested or given.

When she got a chance to look at the old lady, she was struck by the family likeness, emphasized by Grand’mère’s fragility. Marie’s prematurely pinched face was uncannily reflected in the old lady’s age-eroded features. The short-sighted vagueness in the faded eyes was also reminiscent of her daughter. And the tight perm – she was evidently very well soignée by the staff at the home – echoed her granddaughter’s bubbly curls.

Grand’mère and Gaby spoke instinctively in French, but Jude did not have too much difficulty in keeping up. She was surprised by how on the ball the old lady seemed. From what Carole had passed on of Marie and Robert’s opinions, she had been expecting someone totally blind and in the last stages of Alzheimer’s. But, though physically very frail and with limited vision, there seemed to be nothing wrong with the old lady’s mental processes.

And for her, there was no question of hergranddaughter being called ‘Gaby’. Her birth name was Pascale, and that is what she was called. Gaby did not argue; she had learnt over the years not to challenge the old lady’s formidable will.

After the initial affectionate greetings, Grand’mère said how shocked she had been to hear of Howard Martin’s death. “It is terrible that once again the happiness of our family should be darkened by the shadow of murder.”

“Yes.” As she agreed, Gaby looked straight at Jude. There was a lot of meaning in her look. Although they had never discussed the subject, the girl knew that Carole and Jude had taken more than a casual interest in the two recent murders and were desperate for explanations. Part of Carole’s motivation for the trip had been removing the threat to her future daughter-in-law, but the two neighbours were also caught up in the fascination of the puzzle for its own sake. Gaby’s look at Jude seemed to say that she knew all that, and that she too wanted to use the visit to find out a few basic truths about her tainted family history.

“You know, Grand’mère,” she said firmly, “that the police believe Michael Brewer killed Dad.”

“That is the way the police think, in every country. Here in France too. The person who has committed one murder is the first suspect when another murder occurs.” She sighed. “Yes. It is thirty years. He has served his sentence for his wickedness, and now is the time for the next stage of the process. Evil cannot be hidden for ever. He caused so much pain to our family.”

“Did you know Michael Brewer well?” The question was instinctive; only once she’d spoken did Jude realize that her interposition into a family discussion might be out of place. But Grand’mère seemed either not to notice or, if she did, not to mind.

“Oh yes. My husband was very keen on shooting. Mick was a gamekeeper. They would shoot together. Often they would make a night of it, drive round, I think, in Land Rovers with big lights, you know, to shoot rabbits. And then they would go off somewhere to drink. Mick had drink stashed away somewhere on the estate. Always, after my husband went off shooting at night with Mick Brewer, he came back drunk. I did not approve of this.” The asperity in the last line reminded Jude of the old lady’s reputation for strictness on moral matters.

“And I gather Howard would also sometimes shoot with Michael Brewer too?”

“Yes. He was often one of the party. But then, I don’t know, they fell out. Howard I think took advantage, went shooting somewhere without Mick’s permission perhaps.”

That tallied with what Carole had reported from her conversation with Robert Coleman. “And I heard that Howard was shooting the night Janine Buckley was killed. He alerted the police to the burnt-out car.”

The old lady did a small, quintessentially Gallic, shrug. “That is quite possible. I do not know the details. All of that period is a blur of great unhappiness. With my dear husband dying and – I was very ill,” sheadmitted. “For a long time I was very ill. There is much from that time that I have done my best to forget.”

“Grand’mère,” asked Gaby, “if you knew Michael Brewer so well, were you surprised when you discovered that he was a murderer?”

“But of course. You do not expect this from anyone, least of all from a family friend. But I do not claim to understand the workings of evil – what drives someone to do something of that nature. Only the good Lord can give an explanation of such terrible things.”

“But you knew Janine Buckley too, did you?”

“Oh yes. She was a very close friend of Marie. She was often in the house. They were two very lively girls, so high-spirited, so talkative, so naughty.”

“Naughty?” echoed Jude.

“Yes, she was always supposed to be doing her school homework, supposed to be behaving like a good Catholic girl, but her head was only full of thoughts of pop music and of boys.” The disapproval in Grand’mère’s voice was strong. “Fortunately, Marie behaved herself in that respect. She knew what was expected of a good Catholic girl. Sex before marriage is always wrong.”

Gaby’s eyes evaded the stern look that accompanied this. Grand’mère sighed. “If only poor Janine had remembered that. I often think, if Janine’s parents had brought her up as a better Catholic, she would still be here with us today.”

Jude, with Gaby’s tacit approval, continued the questioning. “Given the fact that Marie was so high-spirited and lively, wasn’t it rather a surprise when she suddenly gave up on her A-levels and married Howard?”

“Perhaps, in one way. In another way, it made perfectly good sense. I don’t think you can understand, Jude, what it was like for all of us after the murder of Janine Buckley. A terrible shock. We all felt it. Poor Robert had to be so strong. He was the one who held the family together at that time. My husband died very soon after the murder. I was distraught and had to be hospitalized, but Marie also was totally shattered. It changed her personality entirely. At that age, you think only about having fun, you don’t have a care in the world, you think perhaps that you can have relationships with boys with freedom, with no strings. Even though this is wrong, that is what a lot of young people think.

“And then this thing happens in your life. Suddenly you’re in the real world. It is brought home to you that sex can lead to pregnancy. Even worse, you discover that, in extreme circumstances, pregnancy can lead to murder.”

Had Carole been there, she would have recognized Grand’mère almost echoing Robert Coleman’s words.

“So for Marie,” the old lady went on, “it was a terrible time. She had no security. Her father was dead, her mother in hospital. Everything she had believed in had been proved to be false. And there was Howard, a good man who had been holding a candle for her for a couple of years. He loved her and wanted to marry her. For Marie, he represented security, and a chance to get away from Worthing.”

“Did you approve – and would your husband have approved – of Howard as a husband for your daughter?”

Another little Gallic shrug, with an equally characteristic ‘Phwoof’ noise. “We had always known he was an honest man, and a good Catholic. He had been in the shop working with us for a long time. It was maybe a surprise when Marie said she wanted to marry him, but she was happy about the idea and it seemed a good solution.”

“And do you think it continued to be a good solution?” It was Gaby who asked this question, and, from her lowered voice, Jude got the feeling it was the first time she had talked to her grandmother about the state of her parents’ marriage.

“Howard was a good man and a good Catholic. I think he made your mother as happy as anyone could have done. After Janine died, Marie – well, she shut off so much of her personality. She was never really complete after that.”

Jude heard a discreet cough behind her. A uniformed nurse stood in the doorway. “I am sorry, but I am afraid I must take Madame Coleman now for her bath.”

Gaby’s offer to help her grandmother into the wheelchair was politely rejected. The indignities of age were to be witnessed by professional carers, not by family members.

As they were leaving – with promises that they’d be back the following morning – Gaby noticed a photograph in the array on Grand’mère’s dressing table. She and Stephen smiled out, caught in a relaxed moment at some friend’s wedding. “Ah, I’m glad to see we’ve made it into your gallery.”

“But of course you have. Your fiancé is a fine-looking man. A little serious perhaps, but I think you can be relied on, my dear Pascale, to lighten him up.”

Jude would have been impressed by the accuracy of this assessment, had her attention not been distracted by another framed photograph in the display. This showed a considerably younger Howard and Marie Martin, standing outside an open front door. Howard was less bulky than in later years and almost handsome in his old-fashioned way. Marie looked washed out, but triumphant. In her arms she bore the source of their pride, a tiny, shawl-swaddled baby.

Across the white strip at the bottom of the photograph was handwritten: “Pascale comes home – 27 May 1974.”

Jude, intrigued by the lack of symmetry in the spaces between the ‘27’ and the ‘May’ and the ‘May’ and the ‘1974’, looked more closely.