The Shooting in the Shop (33 page)

If he’d looked pale before, a new adjective was
required to describe the pallor with which he reacted
to this news. He fumbled for a cigarette and lit up.

‘Anyway,’ said Jude easily, ‘that character of
Edwin in the book doesn’t seem very pleasant, does
he? Domestic violence is never very pretty, is it? You
always wonder about the personality of someone who
gets a thrill out of beating up a woman. If he’s capable
of that, what other crime might he be capable of?
And of course, if every copy of Polly’s manuscript had
been destroyed, the story of your violent behaviour
would have died with her, wouldn’t it?’

Piers had by now recovered himself sufficiently
to say, ‘You can’t prove anything. And if there were
anything to prove, the one witness who might have
testified is sadly dead.’

‘Sadly . . . or conveniently . . . ?’ suggested Carole.

‘Are you accusing me of killing Polly?’

‘Not necessarily. But we would like to know your
arguments for why we shouldn’t accuse you of killing
Polly.’

‘My arguments remain exactly the same as they have always been. I wasn’t in Fethering on the night
that Polly died. I was with a woman.’

‘Oh yes, the actress from the sitcom.’

‘Exactly. And just so’s you know, she has been
approached by the police investigating Polly’s death.
They wanted to check my alibi. An intrusion into
her privacy of which she took a pretty dim view, let
me tell you. In fact, it may have ruined what promised
to be a very good relationship.’

‘Or a good relationship until you started hitting
her?’ suggested Carole.

‘Listen, I don’t care what you say. You’re just two
nosy old women who have no authority at all. If the
police are satisfied my alibi is true, then I think you
should accept it as well.’

‘You mean you’re not going to give us a contact for
your new girlfriend, so that we can check for ourselves?’

‘You are bloody right, Jude. I am not.’

The two women looked at each other. Of course,
Piers could be lying – he was quite capable of it – but
both had a depressing feeling that he was telling the
truth.

‘So did you have any contact with Fethering
during that time?’ asked Carole.

‘I spoke to Lola probably about eight.’

‘About what?’

‘I just told her about the date I’d got set up for the
evening. The restaurant we were going to, that kind
of stuff.’

‘This would be your sitcom actress?’

‘Yes. Lola and I always used to confide in each
other about our dates . . . well, we did until she met
Ricky. Thereafter, there wasn’t much to say on her
side, but I’d still keep her up to date with whom I was
seeing.’

‘I thought you were cohabiting with Polly, I
thought you’d been with her since before Cambridge.
So what dates are you talking about?’

He looked only slightly discomfited by Jude’s
words; he was more interested in his self-image as
the great lover. He lit a new cigarette from the stub
of his previous one, and there was pride in his voice
as he said, ‘There were a few skirmishes with other
women.’

‘All of which conquests you described in detail to
Lola?’

‘I don’t know about “in detail”, but I’d keep her up
to date.’

‘Telling her every time that none of them were
more than “second best”, and that she was the one for
whom you would always hold a candle?’

He looked so embarrassed that Jude knew she’d
hit the bull’s eye.

‘So, apart from having to listen to you crowing
about your latest potential conquest, did Lola say anything
of interest to you?’

‘Not much. She was having a difficult evening.
Mabel had got an ear infection, and the dog was
having puppies, and Lola was trying to get everything
ready for Christmas, and her mother-in-law would soon be back being as demanding as ever
and—’

‘“Soon be back”?’ Carole repeated. ‘Did Lola say
that that Flora Le Bonnier had gone out that evening?’

‘Yes,’ Piers Duncton replied.

The lunch which the two women had in a pub in
Grafton Way was not a relaxed occasion. Neither
really noticed what they were eating – which was just
as well because it wasn’t very nice. Jude had one glass
of wine, Carole stuck to black coffee. And, meanwhile,
they both trawled through different sections of
Polly Le Bonnier’s manuscript.

They were about to enter Warren Street tube
station when Carole suddenly noticed a PC World on
the other side of Tottenham Court Road. Since her
much-delayed introduction to computers, she had,
with the fervour of a convert, become something of a
devotee of PC World.

‘Had an idea,’ she announced. ‘Just going to buy
something.’

Flora Le Bonnier’s flat in St John’s Wood was as punctiliously
maintained as the old lady herself. She had
made no demur when Jude had rung, suggesting they
pay her a visit, and she looked the model of elegance
when she opened the door to them. But neither had the feeling she had dressed up specially. She always
looked like that. Flora Le Bonnier was one of those
women who didn’t possess any casual clothes. The
idea that her wardrobe might contain jeans, T-shirts
or jogging bottoms was as unthinkable as the idea that
her upper-class accent might ever slip.

When she closed the front door, they noticed that
there was an extension on the inside handle so that
she could manipulate it with her crippled hands. No
doubt there were other devices in the flat which had
been tailored to her disability.

She ushered them into a sitting room whose
dark green walls set off the numerous silver-framed
photographs that they bore. All were movie stills
or production photographs of Flora Le Bonnier in
her greatest roles. Interestingly, none of the pictures
featured anyone else. Though she had acted with
many of the great theatrical names of her generation,
apparently Flora had not wished for any of them to
share the limelight in the gallery she had selected for
display.

The only other ornaments in the room were a
collection of glass walking sticks – multicoloured,
twisted and intricately wrought. They, too, graced the
walls between the photographs.

The room was very overheated, but neither
Carole nor Jude removed her coat. Flora Le Bonnier,
ever the magnanimous grand dame, gestured her two
visitors to chairs and then took her place in a winged
armchair not dissimilar to the one they had last seen
her in at Fedingham Court House. She seemed to favour thrones. ‘I would offer you some tea or something,
but with my hands . . .’ She waved the incurling
fingers eloquently. ‘There is a woman who comes
every morning, helps me dress, does a few chores,
prepares my lunch and a cold plate for my supper.
Sadly, she is not here now, so unless you feel like
making a drink for yourself in the kitchen . . .’

‘No, thank you. We’ve just had lunch,’ said Carole.

‘Any more trouble from your back or neck?’ asked
Jude.

‘No. Oh, the usual aches and pains attendant on
my great age, but nothing worse, thank goodness. I’m
so grateful to you for the way in which you eased the
pain I had down in Sussex.’

‘It was no problem.’

‘And we, erm,’ Carole began awkwardly, ‘we
should offer you our condolences for the loss of your
son.’

‘Yes.’ But the old lady did not seem unduly
afflicted by grief. Her eyes were fixed in the middle
distance as she said, ‘He was a foolish boy, dabbling
with drugs. Taking drugs, like drinking too much, is
a sign of indiscipline. Discipline is important in all
walks of life, but particularly in the arts. Mine is a
hard profession and I would not have survived in it
so long if I had not had rigid self-discipline.’

‘So rigid that you can control all of your emotions?’
asked Jude.

‘Controlling emotion is inevitably something you
have to learn in the acting profession. You have to
build up, as it were, a repertoire of emotions within yourself, so that you can summon up the required
one for the part that you happen to be playing at any
given time.’

‘But you lost control of your emotions over Christmas,
didn’t you?’

‘I don’t understand what you mean, Jude.’

‘According to Ricky and Lola, after Polly’s death
you virtually cracked up. You were in a terrible state
of nerves.’

‘To lose a granddaughter is a powerfully traumatic
experience.’

‘Was it, though, for you?’ asked Carole. ‘You hadn’t
seen much of Polly since she was a child. She was no
blood relation of yours. Did her death really leave that
much of a hole in your life?’

‘You could not possibly understand the sufferings
of a grandmother if you have not been one.’

‘I am one,’ Carole asserted with some pride.

Jude sat forward in her chair. ‘Flora, you know
that Polly wrote a book . . .’

‘I believe she mentioned that she had at some
point. I didn’t take much notice of it at the time.’

‘I think you know rather more about her book that
that.’

‘What do you mean?’

Carole took over the prosecuting role. ‘I think you
had read at least some of Polly’s manuscript. You read
the bit about her grandmother, about her pretentious
grandmother, who’s an opera singer in the novel
rather than an actress, and who prides herself on a
family name supposed to date back to the Norman Conquest, whereas in fact the grandmother has no
connection with the family whose name she stole.
The name the character in the novel invented wasn’t
Le Bonnier, but the story’s the same.’

There was a long silence, then Flora said in her
even, beautifully modulated voice, ‘I am a Le Bonnier.
The world knows me as a Le Bonnier. My autobiography
is about being a Le Bonnier. I cannot have that
taken away from me.’

‘Even if it’s not true?’

The old actress turned on Carole a look of pure
malevolence. ‘True? What do you know about truth?
Most people never find real truth. I have been blessed
to find it through my professional work. I have been
nearer to pure truth on stage than you ever have
been in your entire miserable life. People with my
talent don’t have to obey the rules created by ordinary
people. I am Flora Le Bonnier. That is my name.
That is true.’

‘But it’s not your name.’

‘I cannot expect someone like you to understand.’
The line was spoken with enormous dignity, and
Jude felt sure Flora was quoting from some play she
had once been in. That was really the trouble. The old
actress could no longer distinguish between reality
and the parts she had played.

‘I can understand this much,’ said Carole. ‘That
you killed Polly down at Gallimaufry and then persuaded
your son to torch the premises in the hope of
covering up your crime.’

Flora Le Bonnier offered her clawlike hands. ‘I shot someone? These hands were able to hold a
gun and pull its trigger? I wish that were true. I wish
I were capable of shooting someone. Because then I
would also be capable of doing a lot of other things
which these hands will not allow me to do.’

Jude tried another tack. ‘Do you deny that you
have read any of Polly’s book?’

‘Yes, of course I do.’

‘Do you know where there are copies of the book
now?’

A sly smile crept across the old lady’s patrician
features. ‘Polly was, I believe, carrying a copy of the
manuscript in the haversack she brought down to
Fedborough. It was destroyed in the fire at that ridiculous
shop of Lola’s.’

‘And that was the only copy?’

‘I believe so, yes.’

‘But in these days of computers,’ said Carole,
‘copies of any text are ten-a-penny. The original stays
on the writer’s computer.’

‘It is my belief that Polly also had her laptop computer
in the same haversack. That, too, was burnt
beyond recognition or repair.’

‘How fortunate then that I have this,’ said Carole,
producing the flash drive that she had just bought at
PC World.

‘What on earth is that?’

‘A miracle of miniaturization, Flora. This tiny
object, called a flash drive or a memory stick, is a
wonderful device for storing data. You can put an
enormous amount of text on a little thing like this. A whole book, if you want to. And that’s what Polly
used this one for. The whole text of her book is
retrievable from this tiny little rectangle of plastic.’ As
she spoke, Carole placed the flash drive casually on
the table next to Flora Le Bonnier.

Then she looked glumly across to Jude. ‘Sorry, it
looks as if we’ve been barking up the wrong tree.’

‘Oh?’ Jude wasn’t quite sure what her neighbour
was up to, but was happy to play along until an explanation
arrived.

‘Our clever theory about Polly having been killed
by her grandmother looks a bit threadbare now,
doesn’t it, Jude? With her hands in that condition,
Flora wouldn’t have been capable of holding a gun, let
alone pulling its trigger. And she certainly wouldn’t
have been capable of sending the text message from
Ricky’s phone that summoned Polly back to Gallimaufry.
I’m sorry, Flora, I think we owe you an
apology,’ Carole concluded, standing up as she did so.

‘Apology accepted,’ said the old lady gracefully.
‘I’m afraid the shock of tragic events has a tendency
to stop people from thinking straight.’

‘Well, goodbye,’ said Jude, also rising from her
seat. She still didn’t know what Carole’s plan was; she
just hoped her friend had one.

‘Excuse me if I don’t see you out, but movement
is getting increasingly difficult for me.’

‘No, of course. That’s fine,’ said Jude, looking
enquiringly at Carole in hope of some elucidation of
what the hell was going on.

But she got nothing. Dutifully, she led the way into the hall and reached up to open the front door.
Just at that moment, Carole said, ‘Oh, good heavens,
I forgot the memory stick!’

Both women turned back towards the sitting
room. And both women saw Flora Le Bonnier’s hand
reach instinctively forward to grab the memory stick.
Between her fingers. Which, though their knuckles
were swollen, were otherwise straight and fully functional.