Guns in the Gallery (12 page)

Good luck, thought Carole, if you think you can keep that sort of thing quiet in a place like Fethering. But then again the Whittakers weren't very well known in the village. It was possible that very few local people did actually know what had happened. Whether the media blackout could be continued once the inquest had opened was another matter. But then again the inquest might not happen for a few months and memories could be very short.

‘My sister,' Chervil Whittaker continued with some asperity, ‘may have done her best to upstage the opening of my project, but I can assure you I am not going to let her succeed. Walden will open next weekend and none of the visitors will ever know that a selfish suicide had taken place there.'

The girl's words were unequivocal. She still saw Fennel's death as another in a series of attention-seeking actions. And in her voice was a note of satisfaction from the knowledge that it would be the last one.

If, thought Carole, Fennel's death had been murder, then the person with least motive for committing it would be her sister Chervil. Public knowledge of a crime at her precious Walden would be the last thing she wanted.

THIRTEEN

T
he call came through to Woodside Cottage on the dot of nine thirty on the Monday morning. Jude, who had been going through some yoga exercises, answered and found a very distraught-sounding Ned Whittaker at the end of the line.

Would it be all right if he came to see her? He wanted to talk about Fennel's state of mind in the weeks running up to her death. He respected Jude's strictures about client confidentiality, but surely the situation was different once the client in question was dead?

Jude had a couple of people booked in for healing sessions in the afternoon, but she told Ned she was free all morning and he was welcome to come to Woodside Cottage as soon as he liked. He must have left Butterwyke House almost immediately, because within twenty-five minutes there was a knock at her front door.

Ned Whittaker still looked boyish, but there was a greyness about his face which seemed to contradict that impression. Behind the rimless glasses his eyes were red and hollow. He didn't look as if he'd had any sleep since the news of his daughter's death.

There was a jumpiness about him too, he was more uneasy than ever. ‘I'm sorry to trouble you, Jude,' he said, ‘but I feel I have to find out everything I can, try to make some sense of what's happened.'

‘Yes, I fully understand. Would you like some coffee?'

‘Thank you. Black. I seem to have lived on black coffee for the last few days.'

‘I'm not surprised.' As she settled him on one of the draped armchairs in her sitting room, Jude could not help being reminded that it was a week to the day since Fennel had been there. The recollection brought a pang of loss to her and a determination, like Ned's, to find out the truth about what had happened to the girl.

When she placed his coffee on the table between them, Ned Whittaker tried to take a sip, but his hand was shaking so much that he put the mug back down. ‘Jude, I know Fennel was coming to see you . . .'

‘There was no secret about it.'

‘No, I didn't mean that. And it was depression she was seeing you about?'

‘Yes. Though the depression was just one manifestation of a great number of symptoms. When I treat a client, I treat the whole client.'

He nodded. ‘When we last met . . . well, that is to say not when we met at Butterwyke House after . . .' He couldn't shape the words. ‘When we met at the Private View, I told you that over the years we'd tried all kinds of treatments for Fennel. Most of them started promisingly, but then . . . If it was medication, she'd forget to take it – or perhaps deliberately not take it. What I'm saying is that we had tried everything.'

‘I'm sure you did all that anyone could have done. You shouldn't be blaming yourself, Ned.'

He smiled grimly. ‘Easy enough to say, Jude, but when your oldest child, a girl you've adored for . . . when she . . . it's inevitable that I blame myself. I keep trying to work out where I went wrong, what I did that precipitated . . . what happened.'

‘That's a natural human reaction. But what you have to remind yourself, Ned, is that Fennel was suffering from a very serious illness – the fact that it was a mental illness doesn't make it any less real than heart disease or cancer. As I say, you did everything any parent could have done – more than most would have done – to help her cope with that illness. But sadly all your efforts failed.'

Jude was not ready, at this stage, to express any doubts she harboured about the authenticity of Fennel's suicide. Though the idea of murder might have energized Ned Whittaker, reduced his feeling of guilt, maybe even given him a quest to identify the perpetrator, it would have been irresponsible of Jude to set that particular hare running.

‘Where do you stand,' he asked, ‘on the causes of depression? Do you think it's kind of genetic?'

‘I think it can be. Some medical authorities divide depression into two categories: reactive and endogenous. Reactive depression is triggered by some life event; the break-up of a relationship, the death of a loved one. Endogenous depression doesn't seem to have such a readily identifiable cause. The sufferer is just born with it.'

‘And that's what Fennel had?'

‘Definitely.' Jude posed her next sentence with some delicacy. ‘It is frequently thought that endogenous depression is hereditary.'

Ned Whittaker looked at her blankly for a moment, then caught on. ‘Ah, you're asking if I've ever suffered from depression . . .?'

‘Yes.'

‘I'd say the answer is a definite no. I've felt terrible at times – God, I can't imagine ever feeling worse than I do at the moment – but I don't think it's depression. Fennel used to tell me how she felt at times, and I've read descriptions of depression, both in medical works and novels . . . I mean, Holden Caulfield in
The Catcher in the Rye
is reckoned to be a good description of a depressive, but I've never had feelings like that. When things go wrong for me, I don't get mad, I want to get even.'

‘Which is perhaps why you're feeling so bad at the moment. Because there's no one you can get even with?'

Ned Whittaker nodded thoughtfully. ‘You could be right, Jude.'

‘Anyway, that's your side of the family. You don't have a genetic disposition towards depression.'

Once again he seemed rather slow to pick up the implication of her words, but this time Jude suspected the slowness might be calculated. ‘Oh, you mean Sheena. You're asking if there's a predisposition towards depression in her family?'

‘Yes.'

He shook his head firmly. ‘No, definitely not. With Sheena what you see is what you get. She's very upfront. No murky hidden depths there.'

His answer seemed a little too emphatic, but Jude didn't pick up on it. There'd be time enough to find out more about Sheena Whittaker, and at the moment her main priority was to give Ned any support that she could offer to alleviate his current misery.

In the circumstances, Jude didn't have any inhibitions about divulging what Fennel had confided to her in the course of their sessions. A lot of what she reported – the circling, ingrowing sense of inadequacy – was familiar to the girl's father. But he hadn't realized how much guilt Fennel had felt; guilt for taking up too much of her parents' attention, guilt for ruining their lives.

At the end of Jude's long narrative, Ned Whittaker still looked shrunken and feeble in his chair, but he did seem calmer. ‘So do you reckon – in spite of the fact that Fennel's depression was endogenous – there was some big shock that prompted her into actually taking action? You know, as opposed to talking about it, as she had done for years?'

Jude repeated Detective Inspector Hodgkinson's observation about depressives frequently committing suicide at the moment when their mood was improving and he seemed to take that on board.

‘What about the scene she threw at the Cornelian Gallery, though?' asked Ned. ‘Do you reckon that was what triggered it?'

‘I suppose it's possible.' But Jude then told him how positive the outburst seemed to have made Fennel, almost as if the denunciation of Denzil Willoughby was something essential to her, a task that had to be ticked off a list.

‘But maybe,' suggested Ned, ‘that was also part of her preparations for the suicide . . . you know, she wanted all the loose ends of her life neatly tied up?'

Jude conceded that that was a possibility. ‘What I really want to know, though, Ned, is what happened the first time . . . you know, in the flat in Pimlico . . .?'

He went even paler and trembled. He still hadn't touched the mug of coffee, which must have long since gone cold. ‘That was terrible. I'd always known that Fennel had problems. I suppose I put a lot of it down to growing up, though . . . you know, the difficulties of adolescence, of coming to terms with leaving childhood and becoming an adult. I suppose I kidded myself that it was just a phase she was going through. But what happened in the flat in Pimlico . . . that told me how serious the illness Fennel was suffering from was. It was a horrible shock.'

‘Was there something that precipitated it that time? Some emotional trauma?'

‘I don't know. I'm pretty certain once again there was a man involved. And not a very suitable man. I'm afraid Fennel has – used to have, I should say – a rather
kamikaze
track record with relationships. According to Chervil, while she was at St Martin's her sister had been seeing some fellow art student, who messed her around a lot. I'm afraid both my girls have to be careful when it comes to men. Once it's discovered how well off Sheena and I are, they tend to attract a lot of spongers.'

‘Is that true of Chervil too?'

‘It has happened.'

‘And what about her current beau, Giles Green?'

‘Sheena and I have only met him a couple of times. He seems pleasant enough. Quite a bit older than Chervil, which may not be a bad thing.'

‘And you don't think he's after her money?'

‘Why?' Ned Whittaker was instantly alert. ‘Do you know something about him?'

‘No. Very little. I'd maybe met him once or twice in the gallery, and then at the Private View. All I know is that he's recently lost a rather lucrative job in the City.'

‘Hm . . .' The millionaire looked exhausted, as if he couldn't cope with anything else. His grief over the loss of one daughter was such that he couldn't begin worrying about the love life of the other.

‘You haven't heard, I suppose,' said Jude, changing direction, ‘whether the police have found Fennel's mobile yet?'

He shook his head wearily. ‘No. If they have, they haven't told me. Why, is it significant?'

‘It might be. It'd offer a record of the calls she'd made and received on Friday evening. I mean, I know she sent a text to Chervil, and I'm pretty sure she received one later in the evening. Knowing the contents of that one could be important.'

‘You mean it might contain something that'd pushed her over the edge?'

‘Possible.'

‘Hm.'

‘Ned, presumably you saw the note that Fennel had left in the yurt?' He nodded. ‘You didn't notice anything strange about it?'

He was silent for a moment, as if thrown by the question. Then he replied bitterly, ‘Well, I suppose I thought it was strange that my beautiful daughter would want to kill herself.'

‘No, I meant strange about the actual note. For instance, there's no question that Fennel wrote it?'

‘Who else might have written it? Chervil?' The tone in his voice was almost one of petulance now. Apparently the thought had never crossed Ned Whittaker's mind that his daughter might have been murdered. And Jude felt glad she'd refrained from planting it there.

‘No. I meant the writing, the phrasing – did that read like Fennel's?'

‘Yes.'

‘Was it similar to the note she left the last time . . . the time Chervil found her in the flat in Pimlico?'

Ned Whittaker looked her straight in the eyes and replied, ‘On the previous occasion Fennel didn't leave a note.'

‘Ah. Right.'

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes even pinker. ‘I've thought about her so much over the last few days. Wishing things could have been different, wishing I could have done something . . . you know. I wish there was someone I could blame apart from myself.'

‘I suppose you could blame Fennel.'

‘Yes, at times I've felt furious with her. Furious at her selfishness. She knew how much pain it would cause me, and yet she just went ahead and did it.'

‘Hm.' Jude tried to keep all intonation out of the monosyllable.

‘At times I've always wished that Fennel had been murdered.'

‘Oh?' This was a new tack, which took Jude by surprise. ‘What makes you say that?'

‘Well, then I would have someone to blame, wouldn't I? The bastard who did it. And I could turn some of my hatred away from myself.'

‘Perhaps.' Since he'd raised the subject, Jude went on, ‘You've no reason to believe Fennel was murdered, have you?'

‘No logical reason, no. Just, as I say, it might make me feel better about myself.'

‘Hm.'

‘Why, is there gossip about Fethering that she might have been murdered?'

‘No. Very few people in Fethering even know she's dead yet. There's been nothing in the press.'

‘And that's the way it's going to stay,' said Ned Whittaker with considerable vehemence. ‘One thing I've learnt over the years is how to keep the press out of my life. I've got quite good at that, from harsh experience.' After a silence, he continued in a softer tone, ‘Do you imagine, when people know about her death, that some people will think it was murder?'