The Shooting in the Shop (8 page)

‘Carole, he’s been very successful. He must’ve
made a lot of money over the years.’

‘And no doubt spent it, paying for all those wives.’

‘Well, keep your opinions to yourself, won’t you?
We don’t want rumours going round Fethering that
Ricky Le Bonnier torched his wife’s shop for the
insurance money.’

Carole’s thin face grew thinner. ‘Jude, you know
I’m always the soul of discretion.’

‘Yes.’

‘Mind you, I do think it’s suspicious. And remember
the way all the prices in Gallimaufry were
discounted . . . it didn’t look to me like a thriving
business.’

‘Very few shops do at the moment. People are
battening down their hatches, so far as spending’s
concerned. Everyone in the retail trade is suffering.’

‘Though not everyone is solving the problem by
burning down their premises.’

Jude shook her head in wry weariness. Once her
neighbour got an idea into her head, it took a great
deal of effort to shift it. ‘Well, Carole, I’m sure in time
we’ll find out more details of what happened.’

They did. On the local news that evening there
was an item about the fire. It had taken a while for the
building to be made safe, before police and firemen
could enter.

And when they got inside, they had found the
charred body of a woman.

Jude’s first instinct was to ring the Le Bonniers’
house. If there was bad news, she wanted to hear
about it straight away. She never saw any point in
prevarication.

Her primary anxiety was allayed as soon as the
phone was answered. By Lola. Her voice sounded
tight with stress, but at least she was alive.

‘I was desperately sorry to hear about what
happened at Gallimaufry.’

‘Oh well, it was only stuff,’ said Lola.

‘But you yourself are OK?’

‘I’m fine. We were all here when it happened –
me, Flora, the kids.’

‘And Ricky?’

‘Yes, of course, Ricky.’ The answer was rather
brusque, almost as if she were dismissing the relevance
of her husband. ‘The first thing we knew about
the fire was when the police rang this morning.’

‘It must be terrible for you, Lola, after all the work
you put into that place.’

‘Oh, well . . . Easy come, easy go.’ She was trying
to sound nonchalant, but couldn’t quite carry it off.
There was a silence, then Lola went on, ‘Presumably
you’ve heard the latest about the fire, have you?’

‘You mean that there was a body found there?’

‘Yes. A woman’s body.’

‘Have the police told you who . . . ?’

‘No. They’re still involved in forensic examination
and what have you. They’ve said they’ll let us know
as soon as they’ve got a definite identification.’

‘Who lives in the flat over the shop?’ Jude just
managed to avoid saying ‘lived’.

‘No one. When we took the place on, because the
flat was furnished, I thought we should let it out, so
that at least we’d get some income if things got hard
– at that time having no idea of quite how hard times
would get – but Ricky said no. He never likes thinking
about the details of finances, calls all that
“penny-pinching”. He likes to think in terms of “the
bigger economic picture”.’ There was irony in the way
Lola quoted her husband, possibly even veiled criticism.

‘So the flat was empty?’

‘Empty of people, yes. I used it for storage. There
was a lot of stuff up there, piled on top of the furniture
and beds.’ Her tone was kept determinedly light,
but Jude could feel Lola trying to come to terms with
the scale of her losses.

‘So you haven’t any idea who the dead woman is?’

‘No. I’ve checked the obvious people, and there
doesn’t seem to be anyone missing. My mother-in-law Flora’s here with us. Ricky took Polly to Fedborough
Station yesterday afternoon to get a train up
to London. He’s checked she’s at home with Piers.
I’ve called Anna and Bex . . . you know, they’re two of
the assistants.’

‘Did they know about the discovery of the body?’

‘I don’t know. Neither of them mentioned it. And
I didn’t raise the matter. I don’t want to add to the
dripfeed of local gossip. Anyway, Anna and Bex’re
both fine. And I’ve rung around all the other casual
staff. Also fine.’

‘So it sounds like whoever died in Gallimaufry, it
wasn’t anyone you knew.’

‘That’s the way it seems,’ said Lola Le Bonnier.

Sadly, she was wrong. On the national news the
following morning, it was announced that the body
found in the burnt-out shop was that of the owner’s
stepdaughter, Polly Le Bonnier.

Carole had been ambivalent about getting a Christmas
tree. She hadn’t done so any other year since
she’d been alone in Fethering. But then again she
hadn’t had Stephen and family coming down any
other year since she’d been alone in Fethering. And
Lily was getting to the age when she might start to
take an interest in pretty lights and shiny baubles. It’d
really only be for the hours when they were with her,
which was a bit of an unnecessary indulgence . . . but
then again . . . She ended up buying a Christmas tree
about three feet high, and a set of fairy lights. And a
box of assorted glass baubles. And some lametta. And
a little silver fairy to perch on the topmost branch.

Carole thought she’d been rather foolish to buy all
the stuff, but she did enjoy setting it up. And while
she dressed her Christmas tree, she thought about
Polly Le Bonnier. She did an action replay in her mind
of the conversation they had shared at Jude’s open
house, and tried to identify anything the girl had
said that might be odd. But nothing came. Except that
line ‘I know where things went wrong for me.’ That
was intriguing, but now there was no chance of
finding out from Polly what she had meant.

A more obvious question was: why, though, when
her father had taken the girl to Fedborough Station to
catch a train up to London, had she ended up back in
Fethering? Carole concluded with some frustration
that she didn’t have enough information to provide an
answer. But the mystery still niggled away at her.

Jude phoned her round five that afternoon. ‘I’ve just
had a call from Lola.’

‘Oh, any more news about how it happened?’

‘No. Well, if she had any, she didn’t volunteer it to
me. But listen, Lola’s got Piers Duncton with her . . .’

‘Polly’s boyfriend?’

‘Exactly. Apparently he’s in a terrible state –
which is hardly surprising. He feels confused and
guilty. I get the impression Lola’s finding it difficult to
deal with him . . . you know, she’s got the children
and Ricky and his mother and . . . I think she’d be
quite glad to get Piers out of the house for a while.’

‘So?’

‘So she was suggesting he might come and talk to
me.’

‘What, you as a healer?’

‘No, no. Me as someone who gave a party which
Polly attended. Piers is desperate to work out what
happened to his girlfriend in the hours before she
died. He wonders whether she might have said anything
to someone she’d seen at the party, something
that might give a clue to what she was feeling, or what
she was planning to do.’

‘It’s funny, I was just thinking the same myself.’

‘Well, anyway, I said fine, he was welcome to
come here and ask me anything he wanted. Lola
sounded so relieved. I gather things are pretty tense
up at their place – one of the kids, Mabel, the little
girl, is laid up with an ear infection, one of the
Dalmatians has just had puppies – and Piers may be
just one extra complication she could do without right
now. So he’s on his way.’

Carole, hypersensitive to any imagined slight,
immediately thought that she was being excluded.
‘Very well,’ she said shortly. ‘Let me know if he tells
you anything interesting, won’t you?’

‘Carole . . .’ Jude lengthened the name in mild
exasperation. ‘What I was going to say was why don’t
you come round and talk to Piers as well? You spent
at least at much time at my party with Polly as I did,
probably more.’

‘Yes,’ said Carole. ‘That’s true.’

He was tall, gangly, with big ears and a big mouth.
What would be called ‘a mobile face’. There was no
surprise that he worked in comedy. But he wasn’t
smiling that afternoon. He looked tense and was
sucking on a cigarette as though his life depended
on it.

Piers Duncton refused Jude’s offer of an alcoholic
drink, opting for a black coffee instead. But she had
some Chilean Chardonnay left from her party (the
booze never did run out), and she poured glasses for
herself and Carole.

‘We were desperately sorry,’ Jude said, ‘to hear
about what happened to Polly.’

‘Thank you.’ Nicely spoken, clearly went to the
right schools before Cambridge. ‘I still can’t really
believe it. I feel so guilty about the whole thing. I
mean, I had a text from Polly yesterday afternoon,
saying she was going to catch the seven thirty-two
train to Victoria . . . and now . . . this.’

He sat uneasily on one of Jude’s over-draped
armchairs, tense as a cat testing out an unfamiliar
surface. She found a glass dish for him to use as an
ashtray and said, ‘Please, do ask us anything you
want. If there’s something we can do to help, then
just say what it is.’

‘Thank you . . . Jude. was it?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And I gather Polly came to a party here on
Sunday . . . ?’

‘Yes.’

‘With her dad?’

‘And her famous grandmother.’

The boy nodded. Clearly he’d already encountered
the formidable Flora. ‘Had you met Polly before?’

‘No.’

In response to his quizzical look, Carole said, ‘Nor
had I.’

‘Did you talk to her much?’

Jude shook her head. ‘Only really to say hello. I
was busy looking after my other guests.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘I had quite a chat with her,’ Carole volunteered.

‘What did you talk about?’

‘Her family, a little bit. She mentioned you too,
and the fact that you’d be spending Christmas with
your parents in Gloucestershire.’

His face registered a new pang of suffering as he
said, ‘God, I haven’t told them what’s happened yet.
It’s like I’m pretending it’s all a mistake, like the
body in Gallimaufry has been indentified wrongly, and
Polly’s about to come through that door any minute.’

Emotion seemed momentarily to rob him of
words, so Carole thought she might as well continue.
‘She also told me that she was an actor – which is, I
suppose, what I would call an actress – and that she
was finding work hard to come by.’ Piers nodded
acknowledgement of this. ‘She said that you were a
comedy writer, and that she was writing something
too.’

‘Ah. So she mentioned the book?’

‘She sounded quite optimistic about it, almost as
though its publication might start a turnaround in her
life.’

‘Polly said that?’ He shook his head wryly. ‘She
always was something of a dreamer.’

‘Have you read the book?’ asked Jude.

‘No. She was very private about her writing.’

Carole was quick to pounce on the inconsistency.
‘Polly said you had read it. Said you thought it was
wonderful.’

He looked confused for a moment, as if he had
been caught in a lie. Though a more innocent explanation
might be that he was thrown by these reminders
of his dead girlfriend. The confusion in his expressive
face gave way to sudden anger, but he managed to
curb it. He reached into his pocket for cigarettes, then
belatedly appealing to Jude for permission to smoke,
lit one up.

‘Yes, I did read a few chapters of Polly’s book,’ he
conceded.

‘And did you think it was wonderful?’

The question made him look even more uncomfortable.
‘It’s very difficult to pass comment on the
work of someone with whom you’re emotionally involved.’

Jude nodded heartfelt agreement. At various
times she had shared her life with an actor and a
stand-up comedian, so she knew at first hand the
level of paranoia in many creative people.

‘What kind of book was it?’ asked Carole. ‘Polly
told me it was part fact, part fiction.’

‘I’d say it was pure fiction,’ said Piers firmly.

‘And what was it about?’

‘Hard to say. A girl growing up, I suppose, and the
difficult time she had doing so.’

‘A “Misery Memoir”?’ Jude suggested.

‘Well, if it were true, you might have called it that.
But it was fiction. And Polly kept telling me what a
happy childhood she’d had, so I don’t think there
could have been any autobiographical element in it.’

‘From what you say,’ said Carole, ‘or rather, from
what you don’t say, I don’t get the impression you
thought much of Polly’s book.’

‘Well . . .’ He was silent, then a bit tearful as he
went on, ‘It can’t hurt her now for me to say what
I really thought.’ He took a deep breath before
announcing, ‘The writing was clumsy and, from what
I read of it, the plot just didn’t hang together.’

‘So you don’t think she’d have had any chance of
getting it published?’

‘God, no.’

‘But she said an agent friend had also liked it a lot.’

‘Wishful thinking. I know the agent friend in
question, Serena. I was up at Cambridge the same
time she was. And Serena didn’t want to hurt Polly’s
feelings, so she said what she wanted to hear. It’s
significant she didn’t offer to represent her as an
agent once the book was finished. I’m afraid the
situation was that . . . well, Polly always wanted to be
as good as other people, particularly as good as me.
When we first met, we were both in the National
Youth Theatre. And she was always a better actor
than me, I’d never argue about that. I mean, I can
do revue and stuff, funny faces, funny accents, but
I’m not really an
actor
, not like Polly. So when we
first met, she was kind of the dominant partner.
Then I went up to Cambridge and I got involved
with the Footlights, so I was writing and appearing
in revues and what-have-you . . . and Polly, on the
weekends she came up, was consigned to the role of
a hanger-on. You know, she’d be down in London
during the week, trying to get acting work, and I’d be
in Cambridge having a whale of a time, surrounded
by lots of extremely bright and privileged people . . .’