Fethering 08 (2007) - Death under the Dryer (20 page)

Whatever Bridget Locke’s reason had been for calling Jude to the house, there certainly was nothing wrong with her back.

T
o leave while a client was asleep would not be the proper professional procedure, and yet to wake her seemed unnecessarily cruel. Bridget Locke’s main problem was exhaustion, and the best remedy for that was a large dose of rest. Besides, Jude could hear the excited sounds of the two girls playing in the sitting room. She had been granted more information than she had ever anticipated from their stepmother. Maybe there was more to come from Chloe and Sylvia.

“Your mother’s asleep. I’ll just wait here until she wakes up.”

The girls hardly reacted to Jude’s words as she settled herself into an armchair. They seemed to share the Locke lack of interest in people outside the charmed circle of their own family. And, as their stepmother had predicted, they were deeply absorbed in their game. Jude sat back to watch and listen to the two little, uniformed Pre-Raphaelites. From their conversation she deduced that the one who had let her in was Chloe (aka Zebba) and the smaller one Sylvia (aka Tamil).

Carole’s description left her in no doubt that they were once again playing the Wheel Quest, and she found the mechanics of the game quite as puzzling as her neighbour had. The action still took place between the Kingdom of Verendia and the Forest of Black Fangdar, but, with more time to look at the board, Jude could now see that the main port of Verendia appeared to be Karmenka, over which loomed an extensive castle called ‘Biddet Rock’.

Though she could not possibly understand the detail of what was happening, she did after a while work out that the game concerned a battle between Verendia and Black Fangdar and that the two powers represented—surprise, surprise—Good and Evil. Chloe was playing for Verendia and Sylvia for Black Fangdar. They moved their cardboard figurines around the map with great speed and no discernible logic. And they talked in the incomprehensible language Carole had described. ‘The Ordeal of Furminal’ was again referred to, as were ‘the Vales of Aspinglad’ and ‘the blood of Merkerin’. And there was a lot more where that came from.

So far as the confused spectator could piece together the action, the forces of Good, in the person of Prince Fimbador, were being pursued by the evil hordes of Gadrath Pezzekan, who of course represented Evil. Prince Fimbador had suffered a heavy defeat at the Battle of Edras Helford, and was now being hounded by the enemy army of gedros, jarks, monitewks and various other monsters. He, cut off from his comrades, had retreated to the stronghold of Biddet Rock. His ghastly opponents were at the gates of the castle and about to break them down.

“Yield, Prince Fimbador!” lisped Sylvia. “You cannot resist Gadrath Pezzekan and the power of Black Fangdar! Hand over the Grail and your life will be spared!”

“My life is worthless,” Chloe lisped back, “if the Grail ends up in the evil hands of the Merkerin! I defy you and your false accusations! You have not yet defeated me, Gadrath Pezzekan!”

“Oh no? You are alone. Your army is vanquished. You are outnumbered by thousands to one. And now you are cornered in the Castle of Biddet Rock like a rat in a trap. There is no possible escape for you, Prince Fimbador. Yield the Grail to me!”

“Never! Biddet Rock still has its secrets. Pursue me if you will, but you will never find me in the labyrinth of the Wheel Path. No one has ever found anyone in the Wheel Path. No one has even found the Key of Clove’s Halo nor used it to open Face-Peril Gate, which is the secret entrance to the Wheel Chamber. There I will go, carrying the Grail with me for safe-keeping. And from there I will escape, and come back to vanquish you another day, Gadrath Pezzekan!”

“You’re bluffing, Prince Fimbador. Already my jarks have broken through the flimsy gates of—”

Quite how that particular Grail-quest might have ended Jude never found out, because at that moment Bridget Locke, yawning and with a towelling robe wrapped around her, entered the sitting room. As if a switch had been flicked, Chloe and Sylvia were instantly silent.

“Sorry, Jude,” said their stepmother. “I do hope the girls have been keeping you amused.”

“You could say that.”

“I’m so sorry, though. I just passed out.”

“The best thing that could have happened to you. Lots of sleep, that’s what you need, Bridget. How does the back feel?”

“Amazing. I don’t know what you did to it, but it feels completely back to normal.” Hardly surprising, since there was never anything wrong with it. “Now tell me—what do I owe you?”

Jude’s charges for her healing services were very flexible. Some people she treated free; those who she thought could afford it, she billed for whatever figure came into her head. Even though the Lockes were not well-heeled, she charged Bridget at something near her highest rate. Jude was very sympathetic to psychosomatic sufferings, but not to non-existent ones.

She called on her mobile for a taxi, and exchanged conversation of little consequence with Bridget until it arrived. The two girls sat silently on the floor, in suspended animation until they could resume their game. A stranger’s presence hadn’t inhibited them at all; but their stepmother’s did. Jude wondered how they’d react had it been Rowley who came into the room. She got the feeling the Wheel Quest would have continued uninterrupted.

When the cab arrived, Bridget Locke escorted her to the door. Her farewell words were: “Do give my good wishes to Carole.” This possibly answered the question that had been building in Jude’s mind since she arrived at the house: why had Bridget summoned her there? Could it be that all the Lockes had wanted to do was confirm that there was a connection between Carole and Jude? Were they aware of the two neighbours’ interest in the circumstances of Kyra Bartos’s death?

Jude couldn’t be sure, but in the taxi back to Chichester Station, she certainly felt more that, rather than investigating at the Summersdale house, she herself had been being investigated.

“This is where I live. Since you’ve come all the way from Fethering, can I invite you in?”

Carole had never felt so foolish in her life. To have failed so dismally at surveillance was bad enough, but to be patronized by the person she was supposedly tailing added insult to injury. Her first instinct was to drive off immediately, to slog shamefacedly back to High Tor and give Gulliver his supper and a nice walk.

But another part of her demanded that, having come so far, she had to see the thing through. She hadn’t worked out precisely what she was going to do when Theo reached his destination, but she had prepared herself for the possibility that, if he did see her, he would tell her to get lost. Instead, she was being invited inside his home. Surely, for someone who occasionally dared to think of herself as an investigator, that was too good an invitation to turn down.

On the other hand, what she was investigating was a murder and Theo’s odd behaviour suggested that at the very least he had something to hide. He was quite possibly in the frame as a suspect. To go into the house or flat of such a person could be risky to the point of recklessness.

Theo himself interrupted her indecision. “Make your mind up. I’m going in. You can come with me or not. But I’m not likely to ask you again.”

“I’ll come in,” she said with a boldness she didn’t feel.

“Fine.” He showed his beautifully veneered teeth in a smile that looked just sardonic, but could easily have been evil.

The BMW turned out to be parked exactly in front of his home. He used a key to let himself in through the heavy black door with fine brass trimmings, and summoned an old brass-gated lift—or, when inspected more closely, a reproduction of an old brass-gated lift. Inside, the control panel was all high-tec and computerized. Politely he gestured Carole to go in before him, and pressed the button for the third floor. Nothing was said as the lift moved smoothly upwards.

The silence continued as he led her out and moved straight ahead to open his flat. There were no other doors on the landing, indicating that Theo owned the whole of one floor. Carole just had time to register that hairdressers must make a lot more money than she had previously thought before he ushered her into the flat itself. There her impression was confirmed. Through the open hall door, she could see that the huge sitting room, its tall windows looking down over the square to the sea, was exquisitely and lavishly appointed. Sunlight glinted on the deep dark patina of fine furniture, and the paintings on the walls looked as if they were the work of artists Carole had heard of. If all of this came from hairdressing, Theo’s prices must be absolutely astronomical.

“I hope you don’t mind if I close the door,” said Theo. “I’m not sure what it is you suspect me of, but I don’t in fact have any intention of either raping or murdering you.”

His words so closely matched the anxieties running through her head that Carole found herself blushing. Theo indicated an armchair for her and sat down opposite, his bright brown eyes fixed on her pale blue ones. She looked away. She got the unpleasant sensation that he was enjoying her discomfiture.

“So…what’s this all about? You following me two days running? With your chubby friend yesterday…when I managed to give you the slip…and today on your own? As they say in the worst kind of thrillers—what’s your game?”

Carole decided to brazen it out. “I’ve been following you because I think you have a guilty secret.”

His hands flew up to his mouth in a theatrical gesture of shock. For the first time that afternoon, she saw some of the high campness he had demonstrated in Connie’s Clip Joint. “I heard you used to be a civil servant. Don’t tell me you’re from the Inland Revenue.”

“No, I’m not.”

He did an equally elaborate impression of relief. “Thank God for that. If you had been, then I might have had to admit to the odd guilty secret, but then I regard it as a point of honour to deceive the taxman in any way possible. If it’s not tax, though…” he spread his hands wide in a display of innocence, “…my conscience is clear.”

“It’s nothing to do with tax.” Having started on a course of confrontation, she had to continue. “It’s to do with the murder of Kyra Bartos.”

“Ah.” The small brown eyes narrowed. “I might have guessed. In a hotbed of gossip like Fethering, I’m sure there are quite a lot of busybodies who have their crackpot theories about that. Yes, I suppose every second pensioner over there sees herself as the reincarnation of Miss Marple.”

Carole’s first instinct was to be affronted, until she realized that ‘pensioner’ was in fact an entirely accurate definition of her status. She tried being a little less combative. “All right. Everyone is gossiping about the case, I agree. And everyone is making wild conjectures about all the people involved with Connie’s Clip Joint…”

“Thank you for the ‘wild conjectures’. The use of the expression displays remarkable self-knowledge.”

“So,” she persevered, “it therefore does become of interest when one of those people turns out to have a guilty secret.”

Theo looked puzzled. “But I thought we’d established that, apart from a little finessing on my tax returns…” Light dawned. “Ah. You are referring to my habit of changing cars at Yeomansdyke…”

“Not just cars. Changing personalities too, I’d say.”

She didn’t know how he was going to react to this, and was surprised to see him laugh. “Well, I can assure you it’s quite legitimate. My membership at Yeomansdyke is fully up to date. And I have special permission to park a car there overnight. I drive to the hotel in the morning, do a work-out in the gym, and then drive on to be a stylist at Connie’s Clip Joint. Anything wrong with that?”

“You change clothes.”

“And when you were employed as a civil servant, Carole, didn’t you quite frequently change out of your work clothes at the end of the day?”

“Maybe. But I didn’t change cars. Changing clothes and cars suggests very definitely to me that you have something to hide.”

“Perhaps.” But the accusation still seemed to amuse rather than annoy him. “Before we go into that…in your Miss Marple role…” Carole found herself blushing again. “In that role, where do you see me fitting into…‘The Case of Kyra Bartos’?”

She didn’t enjoy being sent up and came back with some vigour, “I see you as a murder suspect.”

“Do you?” This amused him even more.

“Yes, I do. And quite a strong suspect too.”

“I see. And would you be generous enough to tell me why?”

“Very well. First, you work at Connie’s Clip Joint, which was the scene of the crime…”

He slapped the back of his hand on his forehead in a ‘Foiled again!’ gesture. “How on earth did you work that out?”

Carole wasn’t to be deterred. “What’s more you presumably have keys to the place, so you could get in and out at any time of the day and night…”

“That too I can’t deny. God, where did you learn to be so devilishly clever?”

“What is more,” Carole pressed on, “you had a very strong feeling of dislike for Kyra Bartos.”

“Did I? And where did that come from?”

“It arose, because she was the one who had got Nathan Locke to fall in love with her, and you loved him.”

Her previous statements had tickled his sense of humour, but this one reduced him to uncontrollable hysterics. Carole sat rigidly still and deeply embarrassed until the paroxysms died down.

“Oh, that is wonderful!” said Theo, wiping the tears from his eyes. “That is so brilliant! Thank you, Carole. We all need a good laugh, and that is the funniest thing anyone has said to me for years and years. “I killed Kyra because she had stolen the affections of the man I love…” Too wonderful.” Relishing the idea brought on another spasm of laughter.

When the last ripples had died down, Carole said, “I don’t know that it’s such a ridiculous idea. I’ve seen photographs of Nathan—he’s a very attractive young man. Just the sort who would appeal to a…” she couldn’t bring herself to say ‘gay man’ “…to a homosexual.”

“A homosexual like me, you mean? How many gays—how many
homosexuals
do you actually know, Carole?”

“Erm…” Her knowledge wasn’t that extensive. There were one or two men in Fethering who everyone said
were
, but she didn’t actually know any of them to speak to. “There were quite a few in the Home Office,” she concluded lamely.