The Corpse on the Court (28 page)

The girl nodded, embarrassed. ‘And then Ned had to go. He always had to go. He never stayed. And that made me feel miserable. It had started to rain outside and that made me feel even more miserable. I was going to sleep over with my friend in Clincham, but it was still going to be a nasty wet bike ride there. Anyway, Ned and I'd had this towel on the sofa . . .'

‘This sofa?'

‘Yes. And I wrapped the towel round me and sort of sat on the floor . . . and I was very miserable.'

‘Why?'

‘Well, I knew what I was doing with Ned wasn't right. 'Cause I really loved him, but I knew for him it was just sex. So I cried a bit and I finished up the wine that was left in the bottle and . . . then I must've gone to sleep. Next thing I know there's this woman here in the club room.'

‘What time would that have been?'

‘I don't know. It was still dark outside. Anyway, she hadn't seen me, because I was lying on the floor in front of the sofa and I sort of froze. And my only thought was that I must get out of the place as soon as I could.'

‘Which would have meant going up along the side of the court?' asked Carole. ‘The way we came in?'

‘Not necessarily,' said Tonya Grace. ‘The latch on that window over there's loose. You can get out into the Lockleigh House gardens that way. But obviously I couldn't move till the woman had gone. So I'm lying there, trying not to breathe – or not to make any noise breathing – and I can hear this woman and it sounds like she's changing into a dress or something . . . not in the changing rooms, right here in the club room . . .

‘Then I hear a car approaching and, like, parking by the court, you know, where people park when they're coming to play here. The woman must have heard it too, because – it's really scary – because she starts giggling, and her giggles sound sort of, like, hysterical. And then she actually talks. I'm sure there's nobody else there, but she says, like, to herself, “If he's so desperate to see Agnes Wardock, then Agnes Wardock he will see.” And she giggles again, and it's really horrible, like, you know, she's really lost it, like she's mad.'

‘Did she say anything else?' asked Carole.

‘Yes. After she's stopped giggling, she says, “It's the idea of a mad woman, but I like mad women's ideas”, which is like saying she was mad. And she giggles again.

‘Anyway, then the woman goes off into the court. And I thought maybe she was going outside, which would have meant if I waited a bit I could have got out the normal way, because going through the window you end up in a bed of shrubs which aren't very nice if it's been raining.

‘So I went and looked out at the court through the crack in the door. The only light was coming from the club room, so I couldn't see much. And then I saw the beam of a torch coming from the main entrance. And whoever was holding the torch went on to the court, and he stood there, pointing the beam of his torch all around, up at the roof of the court at first. I couldn't think why he was doing that.'

Carole and Jude knew why. Agnes Wardock had hanged herself from one of the high walkways up there.

‘Then he brought the torch beam down and ran it along the galleries, starting at the hazard end with the winning gallery. And just as the beam was getting close to the dedans, I saw the woman step forward there. She was wearing a white dress and she had this long blonde hair. And when the torch beam reached her, suddenly there was this horrible noise from the man who was holding it. A sort of gasping, which I keep hearing. I wake up in the night and I've been hearing it in a dream, and it's horrible. Then there's a thump as the man falls on the court and the torch goes flying away. And I hear the voice of the woman say, “Surprise, surprise!” And then she gets hysterical and I can't tell whether she's laughing or crying.'

‘So what did you do?' asked Carole.

‘I got the hell out of the window in the club room as fast as I could. I grabbed my bike and rushed to the little gate out on to the road. But then, just as I was leaving, I looked back up at Lockleigh House. And there was a light at the window in the front, and there was an old man looking at me.'

Again Tonya Grace started to weep, big, ungainly tears pouring down her cheeks. ‘He saw me! He knew that I'd been there!'

C
arole offered to take the traumatized girl back to Brighton, but Tonya said it was all right, she'd cycle to Clincham and get the train from there. The girl was embarrassed now at having spilled out so much emotion to two virtual strangers.

‘You say you mentioned what you'd seen on the court that night to Marina Gretchenko?' said Carole.

‘Yes, but she wasn't very interested. Busy with all those children, and I think Vladimir was there when I rang.' The way she mentioned his name showed that she was aware of the domestic violence in the Gretchenko household.

‘Did you tell anyone else?' asked Carole. ‘About what you saw on the court?'

‘No. Oh well, yes. Just one person.'

‘And who was that?'

‘There's this lady who plays tennis here – or at least she used to – and she's been very kind to me since I joined the club and—'

‘Felicity Budgen,' Jude surmised.

‘Yes.' Tonya was too emotionally drained to wonder how Jude knew that. ‘Anyway, I did tell her about what happened, you know, me being here that night.'

‘How did she react?'

‘Oh. Well. She's a very kind woman, Felicity. She didn't bawl me out about being with Ned. She said she'd never breathe a word to her husband about it . . . though she might talk to George Hazlitt and get him to have a quiet word with Ned.'

Maybe it was that ‘quiet word' Jude had overheard in Oenone Playfair's conservatory. ‘When did you have this conversation with Felicity, Tonya?'

‘Oh, just this afternoon, before I left to come over here.'

‘And did you tell her you were coming here?'

‘Yes.'

‘And,' asked Carole, ‘did you tell her about everything you'd witnessed on the court that night?'

‘Yes, I did. Felicity's the only person I can really talk to. My
babushka
's always too busy looking after my grandfather and Marina's caught up in her own problems. Felicity's always been a good listener.'

Carole and Jude were both wondering how the chairman's wife would have reacted to what she had listened to from Tonya that afternoon. That depended, really, on how much of it she already knew.

‘And you told Felicity about the man in the window at Lockleigh House?'

‘Yes, I did.'

Both Carole and Jude were kicking themselves for not having thought of Cecil Wardock earlier. Tom Ruthven had described him as ‘the eyes and ears of Lockleigh House'. Insomniac, sitting at his window rereading the books that he had published, he could easily have witnessed all the comings and goings through the little gate on the night in question. Cecil Wardock could well be the perfect witness. Why on earth hadn't they thought to question him before?

‘Well, we're on the spot,' Carole concluded. ‘We must go and see him. No time like the present.' She rose from the sofa, then looked down to see why Jude wasn't doing the same.

‘What's up?

‘There's a call I have to make,' said Jude miserably.

‘Ah.' Carole knew who it would be to. ‘Shall I wait here for you?'

‘If you wouldn't mind.'

The bit of the pros' office with the computers and phones in it was locked, but there was a kind of anteroom whose door was always open. On its walls were lists of match results, members' handicaps and so on. From wooden pegs hung hire rackets and others that the pros had just restrung or repaired. There was also a glass-fronted cabinet, displaying new rackets and a variety of kit items marked with the distinctive Lockleigh House tennis court insignia. Crossed rackets underneath a fish.

It was from the relative security of this room, with its door closed, that Jude rang Piers.

‘Hello, light of my life,' he answered cheerily. ‘I'm missing you like mad. When are we going to meet?'

‘Piers,' said Jude evenly. ‘I've found out more about what happened at the court the night Reggie Playfair died.'

‘Oh.'

‘Including the fact that you were having an ongoing affair with Felicity Budgen.'

To give him his due, he didn't come back with blustering denials. He just said, in a dull voice, ‘I was going to tell you about that, in time. About Felicity. And you have to believe me – that's over.'

How many men over the years, thought Jude, have used that line to a new lover about a previous one. But at that moment she did actually believe Piers.

She heard the main entrance to the court click open, then the sound of footsteps walking softly down past the court towards the club room. Presumably one of the doubles players for the seven o'clock court.

‘Listen, that's what caused it all,' Piers protested.

‘Caused what?'

‘This whole mess. It was me saying to Felicity that things were over between us that set the whole thing in motion.'

‘And when did you tell her?'

‘Obviously –' he sounded exasperated now – ‘I told her when I met you.'

‘So it had been going on up until three weeks ago.'

‘To some extent. We didn't see each other very often. I think the relationship was on the way out before I met you. But, anyway, Felicity got into a very bad state when I told her. And somehow once it was over, she seemed to get even more worried that Don would get to hear about it.'

‘And you understood what Reggie said about “secrets” during the Sec's Cup to be a threat that he was going to spill the beans?'

‘I didn't hear it that way. But Felicity did. She was desperately worried that Reggie was going to tell Don. She said we had to silence him.'

‘And so between you you came up with a rather elaborate plan to eliminate Reggie?'

‘No.'

‘And fortunately you had on hand a conveniently loopy estranged wife whom you could persuade to—'

‘I didn't persuade—'

‘You know you've committed murder, Piers,' said Jude solemnly.

‘No, I haven't. You've got it all wrong.'

‘I don't think so. You set up Jonquil to kill Reggie.'

Suddenly Jude heard Carole's voice calling from the far end of the court. ‘Excuse me – can I help you?' Then there was a sound of footsteps hurrying past and the clicks of the court door opening and closing.

And through all this, Jude could hear Piers Targett saying, ‘It wasn't me who set Jonquil up. It was Felicity!'

Then Carole was at the door. ‘There's this strange woman just come in, looking for Tonya. She said she was going to kill her!'

Jude looked out of the office window. Immaculately dressed as ever in a pale grey trouser suit, Felicity Budgen was walking sedately across the garden toward Lockleigh House.

In one hand was a handbag.

In the other was the metal crank used for adjusting the height of the real tennis net.

B
y the time Carole and Jude got outside the court Felicity Budgen had disappeared inside Lockleigh House Nursing Home for the Elderly. They didn't have to talk, they both knew where she was going. She had failed to kill one witness of her crimes, Tonya Grace. She was hoping to have better luck with Cecil Wardock.

The woman on reception in the great hall of Lockleigh House called after them as they rushed to the stairs. ‘Hey, you can't go up there!' But Carole and Jude took no notice.

They dashed along the landing and burst in through Cecil Wardock's door.

The tableau that greeted them there might have been comical in different circumstances. Cecil Wardock, his chair facing away from the window on this occasion, was looking up at them in bewilderment. Behind him, in front of his precious bookshelves, stood the elegant Felicity Budgen, the crank handle in her hand upraised to be brought down on his thin skull.

At Carole and Jude's entrance she froze, then slowly lowered her arm.

‘Well,' said Cecil Wardock, ‘aren't I the popular one this afternoon? Delighted to see you again, ladies. To what do I owe this pleasure?'

‘Oh,' said Jude, inadequately in the circumstances, ‘we were just passing.'

‘Well, what a nice surprise. Felicity was just getting a book down for me.'

‘Yes,' she agreed. Placing the crank handle on a table, she reached into the bookshelves. ‘
Katherine Mansfield: A Biography
– that was the one, wasn't it, Cecil?'

‘Yes, thank you, Felicity dear. Very stylishly written. Author's sadly dead now.' He stroked the book lovingly. ‘Beautiful artefact, isn't it? Any book is, but this one more than most.' He let out a dry chuckle. ‘Can't see anything as beautiful as this ever being replaced by a Kindle, can you?'

Once again Cecil Wardock stroked his book, then opened it at the title page. ‘So much still to read,' he said. ‘So much still to read.'

A
fter her murder threat and her attempt to commit the real thing, Felicity Budgen had become remarkably docile. She made no demur about accompanying Jude and Carole back to the tennis court's club room and, once there, agreed that a strong cup of coffee might be a good idea.

While the coffee was brewing, the four young men about to play the seven o'clock doubles emerged from the men's changing room. They recognized Felicity, who greeted them with effortless politeness and said she looked forward to encountering them for a game sometime soon. The rest of their conversation was played out against a background of cheery shouts from the court and the sound of balls thundering on penthouses.

‘I think we know most of what happened,' said Jude.