The Shooting in the Shop (27 page)

Going through the open door of the flat and a
small hall, she found herself in a low, black-raftered
room which seemed to be a shrine to Ricky Le
Bonnier. The walls were covered with blown-up
photographs of him, but not of the Ricky Le Bonnier
of recent years. All of them dated back to the late
sixties, the time when he had been married to Kath,
the time of her greatest happiness, the time in which
she had been stuck ever since. For the first time,
as she looked around that room, Carole thought her
joking reference to Miss Havisham might not be so far
from the truth.

Her entrance into the room was greeted by a low
growl, followed by ferocious barking from Rupert
Sonning’s Jack Russell.

‘Be quiet, Petrarch,’ said his owner as he closed
the door behind him. ‘I’m sorry, Carole. He doesn’t
like being cooped up in here, with only Kath’s
handkerchief-sized bit of garden to roam around. He
misses the freedom of Fethering Beach.’

Carole’s first impression of the room had been of
all the Ricky Le Bonnier memorabilia, but now she
realized that Rupert Sonning had adapted Kath’s
space to recreate as nearly as possible the interior of
his hut. On the table next to where he had been
sitting stood a pile of poetry books, on top of which an
open copy of Dryden’s
Poetical Works
lay face-down.
He’d brought his radio with him and classical music
filled the room. So did the aroma from a coffee pot.

He offered her a cup, and she accepted. When
they were settled down with their drinks, Rupert
Sonning asked how she’d tracked him down. ‘Did
Ricky tell you I was here? Or Kath?’

‘I found you through Kath,’ said Carole, congratulating
herself on not quite adding to her list of lies.
‘Presumably it was Ricky who organized your being
here?’

‘Oh yes, Mr Fixit himself. He saw I was in a spot
and he offered to help me out.’

‘In what way were you in a spot?’

‘Oh, come on, Carole, you were there when Piers
came in and told me.’

She felt she was being very obtuse. ‘Told you
what?’

‘Told me that the police wanted to interview me.
Well, I couldn’t be having that, obviously.’

‘Because you knew too much about the murder?’

The old actor gave her a curious look before replying.
‘No, not because I knew too much about the
murder. Because I wanted to avoid enquiries about
whether I’d been living illegally in Pequod, in my
beach hut.’

‘What?’

‘I mentioned this when we spoke before. The
Fether District Council are very hot on their Fethering
Beach regulations. You’re not allowed to stay in a
caravan overnight in the Promenade car park, nor are
you allowed to sleep overnight in a beach hut. The
good folks at the Fedborough offices get very worried
about the dangers of Fethering turning into a “shanty
town”. They say there is insufficient water supply and
toilet facilities for people to live in beach huts.’

‘And that’s what you thought the police wanted to
talk to you about?’

‘Of course. Why else would they have wanted to
see me?’

‘They might have wanted to ask you about what
you witnessed the night Gallimaufry burnt down.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t think so. Ricky said he was sure it
was about my residency of Pequod. So he arranged for
me to be put safely out of the way up here for a while.
Just for a few days, until the police lose interest in
what hours I spend in my beach hut.’

Carole’s opinion of Ricky Le Bonnier plumbed
new depths. Was there any lie the man wasn’t capable
of telling?

Rupert Sonning, however, didn’t share her
opinion. ‘He’s a good man, Ricky,’ he said. ‘Generous
to a fault.’

Carole knew it was the moment for her to take a
leap into the unknown. ‘And do you think he gets that
characteristic from you?’

‘From me? Why on earth do you think he should
get anything from me?’

‘Because,’ said Carole coolly, ‘you are his father.’

The one reaction she hadn’t been expecting was
riotous laughter, but that was what she got. Waves of
hilarity shuddered through Rupert Sonning’s great
frame till he was choking and incoherent. Eventually,
he managed to gasp out, ‘His father? Where on earth
did you get that idea from?’

Carole was disquieted, but not completely
abashed. ‘You don’t deny that you worked with Flora
Le Bonnier in Gainsborough films after the war?’

‘No, I don’t, but the theatrical myth that all leading
men sleep with all their leading ladies, though
perhaps flattering, is just an invention of the gutter
press. I can assure you I have never been to bed with
Flora Le Bonnier. She may be one of the most beautiful
women of her generation, but she’s too much like
a piece of Dresden china for my taste. I have always
gone for something rather earthier in my women.
Dirty knickers, I’m afraid, are my thing. So Flora Le
Bonnier has never ticked any boxes for me.’

‘So you never even went out together?’

‘Oh, we did a bit of that. For the benefit of the
press.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Flora and I first met at the Rank Charm School.
Being trained up to become film stars. The publicity
department there was always dreaming up romances
for their stars. So Flora and I might be photographed
leaving a restaurant together, but it was only to
increase our public profiles, not because either of us
had any genuine interest in the other.

‘They were notorious, that publicity lot. They’d
invent anything to get a few column inches about
their embryonic stars. I mean, that’s where the nonsense
started about Flora having a connection with
the Le Bonnier family.’

‘You mean there never was any truth in it?’

‘No, complete fabrication from beginning to
end. But she looked the part – and sounded it. Her
very boring solicitor father had sent her to the right
schools, so the cut-glass accent was there. She looked
like an aristocrat, sounded like and aristocrat, so the
Rank publicity boys thought: “Why not make her into
an aristocrat?”’

‘But people believed it?’

‘The general public did, yes. In “the business”
nobody had any illusions but, equally, nobody cared
that much either. We’d all had our past lives reshaped
in the cause of publicity. If Flora Le Bonnier wanted
to claim an aristocratic lineage, good luck to her.’

‘I’m surprised the press didn’t expose her.’

‘The press was different in those days, Carole.
They were genuinely in love with the British film
industry. Nothing they liked better than printing out
word for word whatever press releases the publicity
departments sent them. They knew it was mostly
hokum, but they played along. They actually became
part of the conspiracy.’

‘But you’d have thought, in more recent times,
when the nature of reporting has changed so much,
somebody would have exposed Flora Le Bonnier’s
real background.’

‘Maybe.’ Rupert Sonning shrugged. ‘But by then
she had become a national treasure. And the public
don’t like having their national treasures shot down
in flames. Anyway, for the tabloid-reading public,
Flora’s now way too old to be interesting. All they
want to hear about is the doings of drugged-up girl
singers or love-rat footballers.’

‘So there never was a newspaper exposé of Flora?’

‘There was one, actually, now I remember. Early
seventies, as I recall. Done by a music journalist
called Biff Carpenter. I think it was a hatchet job on
Ricky Le Bonnier, actually, but it did bring in the fact
that his mother’s background was completely fabricated.
There was a bit of a fuss at the time, but it soon
blew over. The British public liked to think of their
national treasure Flora Le Bonnier as an aristocrat,
and they weren’t going to let a little thing like the
truth get in the way.’

Carole made a mental note to google the name of
Biff Carpenter as soon as she got back to High Tor.
Then she turned the conversation back to the fire
at Gallimaufry. ‘Suppose you’d got it wrong, Rupert?
Suppose it wasn’t about your residency at the beach
hut that the police wanted to talk to you?’

‘Ricky told me it was about my being in the beach
hut.’

‘But he might have been lying. Your being out of
the way here might not be in order to protect you, but
to protect Ricky himself.’

‘But why?’

‘Because, Rupert, you did see Ricky from your
beach hut the night Gallimaufry burnt down, didn’t
you?’

‘Yes, all right, I did, but there was no way I would
have told the police that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I don’t like authority.’

Carole took a risk and asked, ‘Is that all?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I got the impression, when we last met, that you
might have a particular reason for wanting to steer
clear of the police.’

His pale blue eyes looked sharply into hers. ‘How
much do you know?’

Carole wasn’t about to answer this truthfully and
say, ‘Nothing.’ She shrugged, hoping that her silence
would prompt further revelations.

It did. Rupert Sonning’s gaze moved rather shamefacedly
down to his battered trainers. ‘Last summer I
had a bit of a set-to with the cops. I hadn’t done anything,
but if you live my lifestyle, you open yourself
up to certain accusations.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘As you know, I spend most of my time wandering
along the beach and inevitably, during the summer, I
walk past lots of families with young kids. Well, some
of them don’t like that.’

‘You mean they think you have designs on their
children?’

‘Not to put too fine a point on it, that’s exactly
what I mean, Carole. The press is so full of hysteria
about kids being abducted and paedophiles and . . .
any man who goes for a walk on his own puts himself
at risk of that kind of accusation.’

‘So somebody did make that accusation against
you?’

‘Yes, some uptight Yummy Mummy whose
daughters had been changing into their bathing
costumes as I walked past. She called the police and
made a complaint against me. So I was hauled in
and . . . well, let’s say, they didn’t give me a very nice
time.’

‘Were you charged?’

‘No. There was nothing they could charge me
with. And that made them even more furious. Anyway,
the result of that rather unpleasant experience is
that I vowed never to go out of my way to co-operate
with the police again.’

‘Even if you were a witness to a murder?’

‘Even then.’ He looked up at her again, an expression
of definace now on his face. ‘I don’t know
whether you want to believe me or not – that’s up to
you – but I can assure you that I have no interest in
small children. The sight of a mature adult female
in a bikini can still sometimes get the old juices
flowing, but children – no. That has never turned me
on. As I say, you don’t have to believe me.’

After a silence, Carole said, ‘Actually I do.’ And she
did.

‘Anyway, it was an unpleasant experience – and
one that’s characteristic of the way things are going
these days. I think there are too many people around
in this country trying to tell the rest of us how to
live our lives. What happened to the great British
principle of minding your own bloody business?
That seems to have gone from contemporary life.
We’ve become a nation of busybodies, whistleblowers,
informers, sneaks. Like all these officials who’re trying
to get me out of Pequod. We’ve lost far too many
basic freedoms during my lifetime – particularly
since we joined the European Union. I think people
should have the right to use their own property as
they think fit.’

‘Even to the point of burning it down?’

‘In Ricky’s case, yes. His wasn’t the first and it certainly
won’t be the last insurance fire in the history of
the world. Gallimaufry was doing badly – hardly surprising,
it was a stupid thing to set up in the first place
– money was getting tight, so Ricky burnt it down.’

‘Did you see him do that?’

‘I saw him go in the back way carrying a can of
something. Then I saw him drive away. A few minutes
later I could see the flames licking upwards from
the downstairs window.’

‘What time would that be?’

‘Soon after midnight, I think.’

‘From what you say, Rupert, you don’t seem to
regard lighting an insurance fire as a crime?’

‘Not really. Well, if it is, it’s a victimless crime.
The only people who suffer from it are some faceless
bureaucrats in an insurance company.’

‘You say they’re the only people who suffer. You’re
forgetting that Ricky’s stepdaughter was inside the
shop when it burnt down.’

‘Yes, but she must have been already dead. Ricky
would never have lit the fire if he’d known she was
alive in there.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Positive.’

‘So who do you think killed Polly?’

‘As to that, Carole,’ said Rupert Sonning, ‘I have no
idea.’

While she continued to play the Hiding Things game
with Mabel, Jude took only Woolly Monkey out of the
secret hiding place. She left the mobile phone sock
where it was and slid the hidden drawer back into the
skirting board. It moved with great ease, as if it had
been recently oiled, but she reckoned the mechanism
was probably quite old. Fedingham Court House had
borne witness to many generations who had no doubt
used the secret space to hide valuables, jewellery,
private papers perhaps even the vessels and vestments
for a Catholic Mass.

Mabel’s parents didn’t arrive back at seven, but if
they had, they would have found all calm at Fedingham
Court House. Their daughter had given Jude
very detailed instructions about how to serve supper
for herself and her brother, told her about the bit of
CBeebies television they were allowed to watch, and
talked her through the required rituals of bathtime.
Henry, a model of docility, had a bottle of milk before
retiring and allowed himself to be put back in his cot
with no fuss at all. Mabel indicated to Jude the three
stories she required to have read to her – all of which
she seemed to know by heart – and then she, too, had
her light turned off and settled down for the night.
Neither child seemed at all fazed by having their
bedtime routine conducted by a relative stranger.