The Shooting in the Shop (9 page)

‘People like Lola?’

‘Yes, exactly. People like Lola.’ He seemed for a
moment to lose the thread of his narrative. ‘Anyway,
with all that happening . . . the dynamics of me and
Polly changed.’

Carole remembered the difficulty Polly had
hinted at of maintaining their affair through Piers’s
time at university.

‘And then after Cambridge and after I’d done
shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, we moved in
together. In a flat just near Warren Street tube station,
where we still are, actually. Or were.’ He didn’t want
to dwell on the thought. Anyway, I started having
some success as a writer and poor Polly was still
finding the acting work hard to come by and . . . well,
it put even more pressure on the relationship. You
know, I was kind of mixing with supposedly glamorous
people in the comedy world, and the prospects
for me getting my own sitcom away were looking
good, and then there’s Polly sort of in my wake. She
hated being seen as an appendage or a parasite. I
think that’s what got her thinking about writing
something herself.’

‘“Anything you can do, I can do better” syndrome,’
suggested Jude.

‘Exactly that.’ The memory seemed to depress
him. He sank back into silence.

Carole decided it was time to move into investigative
mode. ‘You say you got a text from her from
Fedborough Station saying she was about to catch the
London train . . . ?’ He nodded. ‘Have you any idea
why she might have changed her mind and come
back down here to Fethering?’

‘None at all. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I
thought you might know something.’

‘Sadly not,’ said Jude.

‘Oh well.’ He picked up his coffee cup in a shaking
hand and downed the remaining contents. ‘Thank
you for your time. I’m sorry if I’ve interrupted your
evening. It’s just I feel so powerless. Polly’s dead and
I’ve got to do something to find out why!’

‘I know how you feel,’ said Jude, her voice sounding
even softer after his outburst. ‘One thing . . .’ she
said, as he rose from his chair.

‘Yes?’

‘You talked about the dynamics of your relationship
with Polly changing, the balance changing. How
much have they changed?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘One of the first things you said when you came
here this evening was that what had happened to
Polly made you feel “guilty”. You presumably mean
you feel guilty because you think you should have
been around, protecting her?’

‘I suppose so. In a way, yes.’

‘I was just wondering whether there might be
another reason why you felt guilty . . . ?’

He controlled another flash of instinctive anger,
then said, ‘Are you suggesting that I might have had
something to do with Polly’s death? Because I was in
London at the time and I do have an alibi for the night
of the fire, someone who can vouch for where I was
and—’

‘Whoa, whoa, whoa.’ Jude raised a hand to calm
him. ‘I’m not making any accusations here. All I was
wondering was whether the cause of your feeling
guilty might be because your relationship with Polly
was coming to an end?’

‘I didn’t say that.’ Piers was blushing furiously.

‘No, but was it?’

There was a silence which Carole eventually
broke. ‘Interesting that you said you had an alibi
for the time of the fire . . . someone who could
vouch for where you were all night . . .’

Any barrier of defiance Piers might have put up
instantly crumbled away. ‘Yes, all right. I was with
another woman.’ He went on, recklessly, ‘I’ve met
someone else. One of the cast of the new sitcom I’m
writing. This is the real thing. I was going to tell Polly
as soon as we got Christmas and New Year out of
the way. I didn’t want to hurt her over the holiday.’

‘Ah,’ said Jude.

‘How thoughtful of you,’ said Carole.

Jude disclosed as little information about her ‘clients’
as she could, so she hadn’t told Carole that her first
contact with the owner of Gallimaufry had been professional.
Before she’d taken her son Henry along
for help with his asthma, Lola herself had needed to
call on Jude’s healing skills. After the birth of her
first child Mabel, she had suffered terrible post-natal
depression. Exceptionally intelligent, coming from a
high-powered job in music PR, used to having her
own way, Lola had found the shock of being stuck at
home as a mother totally drained away her self-confidence.
Sessions at Woodside Cottage (and with
an acupuncturist to whom Jude referred her) had
sorted out the problem, and it had not recurred after
the birth of Henry. But Jude remained aware of the
woman’s inner fragility and was worried about how
she would be coping with the shock of Polly’s death.

So she rang Lola again on the Wednesday morning,
Christmas Eve. ‘Are you surviving?’

‘Yeah, it’s not easy, but having the kids around is
helping. They don’t realize what’s happened, so they
kind of take my mind off things. Mabel’s had an ear
infection, but that’s better, thanks to good old antibiotics.
She’s fantastically excited about Father
Christmas coming. Henry’s still a bit young to take all
that in, but he’s pretty bouncy too. And one of the
Dalmatians has just had puppies, so they add to
the feeling of new life about the place. I’m surviving.’

‘Good. Just wondered if you’d like to meet. You
know, if I could be of any help?’

‘Not a bad idea. I’ve got some last-minute shopping
. . . which I could do in Fethering. Apparently
the rest of the parade’s open now . . . apart, of course,
from Gallimaufry,’ she added sardonically.

They agreed to meet at the swings by the beach.

Lola, Mabel and Henry looked as though they’d
stepped out of a catalogue for upmarket winterwear.
The Yummy Mummy and her two adorable kids, the
little ones muffled up in so many layers that they
looked like multicoloured Michelin men. Mabel was
extremely articulate about which swing she wanted to
go on, a grown-up one with no restraining cradle.
Henry, who couldn’t yet speak, made his desire to be
put into one of the baby ones equally clear. Having
taken an immediate shine to Jude, Mabel wanted to
be pushed by her, and Henry seemed happy for his
mother to do the job. As they pushed the swings, the
women talked.

‘How’s Ricky taking it all?’ asked Jude.

Lola screwed up her face in puzzlement. ‘Always
hard to know with him. I mean, he’s usually so up, so
positive about everything, that it takes time for a real
disaster to get through to him. I think he is suffering
– he must be. But there’s always been quite a distance
between him and Polly . . . you know, she kind of
came in a job lot when Ricky married her mother.
They didn’t see that much of each other, there was a
bit of history from when the marriage broke up, and
then her mother dying didn’t help.’

‘Oh, I didn’t know that.’

‘It was ugly. Drugs overdose, thought to be accidental,
though no one’s quite sure. Heroin. It’s
amazing, actually, that Polly was as sane as she was.
Anyway, their relationship could be pretty spiky, but
Ricky did care for Polly a lot, in his own way. Mind
you, you’d never know it from the way he’s behaving
now. I asked if he wanted me to pull the plugs on
Christmas, you know, minimize the celebrations
with a view to what’s happened, but he wouldn’t hear
of it. Wants to leave all our arrangements in place,
even through to our New Year’s Eve party. I did send
you an invitation to that, didn’t I, Jude?’

‘Yes, thank you, I’ll be there.’ A sudden thought
came to her. ‘I say, would you mind if I brought a
friend with me?’

‘Fine. The more the merrier.’

‘It’s Carole, my next-door neighbour. You know,
you met her in the shop.’

‘She’ll be very welcome.’

Jude was glad Lola didn’t ask why she wanted
Carole along on New Year’s Eve. Partly, it was because
she didn’t like thinking of her friend on her own that
night, but she had another motive too. There had
been an unexplained death in the Le Bonnier family.
If any investigation was required, Jude would be
glad to have Carole’s rational mind helping her on
the case.

‘So you say Ricky’s OK?’

Lola nodded, then sighed with frustration. ‘It’s
strange . . . you can be very close to someone, love
someone very much and then suddenly realize that
there are whole areas of their personality that you
just don’t know at all.’

‘At the party Polly told Carole that she’d introduced
you and Ricky.’

‘Sort of, yes. It was through her, well, through
Piers, really.’

Jude picked up a subtle flicker of intonation in
the voice, and she made a connection with Piers’s
reaction when he’d talked about their time together at
Cambridge. Her brown eyes found the woman’s hazel
ones. ‘You and Piers used to be lovers, didn’t you?’

Lola did not hesitate with her reply. ‘Yes. It’s a
long time ago now. When we took a Footlights revue
up to the Edinburgh Festival. We were sharing a flat
and sort of living in each other’s pockets up there
and . . . well, it was inevitable.’

‘Did the affair continue after Edinburgh?’

‘Not for long. We both had other people. Piers was
with Polly, as he had been from before he started at
Cambridge, and I was with . . . a Classics don at Caius.’

‘Another older man,’ Jude suggested.

‘I do seem to be a sucker for them, you’re right.’
Lola grinned ruefully. ‘And, to save you the trouble of
working out the psychological reasons for that . . .
yes, my father was a strong presence in my life, and
he did die when I was in my early teens.’

‘Thank you. Has Ricky talked to you much about
Polly’s death?’

She shook her head. ‘Only about practical things.
For someone who seems so open to everyone who
meets him, he’s surprisingly reticent about saying
what he’s feeling.’

Jude gestured to the children on the swings. ‘And
presumably these two haven’t shown any reaction to
what’s happened?’

‘I haven’t told them anything about it. Mabel
adores Polly – Polly goes into a kind of grown-up
naughty sister routine when they’re together. Or, that
is, she did. But she’s not here that often, so Mabel,
having seen her on Sunday afternoon, won’t be aware
that she’s not around for quite a while. By which
time . . .’ Lola sighed ‘. . . I will have worked out something
suitable to tell her.’

‘So, in spite of the tragedy – the double tragedy –
life in the Le Bonnier household continues as normal.’

‘As normal as I can make it. Though the real difficulty I’m having is with Ricky’s mum.’

‘Flora?’

‘Yes. She’s never been easy. Partly just the
actressy temperament. And her disability doesn’t
help. She can hardly use her hands at all now and
Flora is . . . well, let’s say she’s not the kind of person
to make light of adversity. But also she was always on
the side of Ricky’s previous wife.’

‘Polly’s mother?’

‘No. God, no. She loathed that one, apparently.
Regarded her as the evil seductress, luring Flora’s
precious son into a life of substance abuse. Though,
from things Ricky’s said, I think it was actually him
leading Polly’s mother astray.’

‘What was her name?’

‘Vanessa.’

‘But then you said there was another wife before
Ricky married you?’

Lola smiled ruefully. ‘Mm. Always very generous
with his favours, my husband. Yes, he married this
woman called Christine, who nobly dragged him out
of what the tabloids would call his “drugs hell”. Sanctimonious
prig, from everything I’ve heard about her.
Organized Ricky to within an inch of his life.’

‘And I now know about all of Ricky’s wives, do I?’
asked Jude.

‘All you need to know is that I’m the fourth.’ Lola
grinned. ‘And last. He’s not going to get away from
me.’ There was a lot of love and determination in her
words. ‘Anyway, Flora and Wife Number Three got on
very well together – which I think may be part of the
reason why the marriage broke up. Wife Number
Three – I’m sorry, I do have great difficulty thinking
of her as Christine – got Ricky back on to the path
of righteousness. I think he was grateful to her for
getting him off the drugs, but as time went on, he
began to find the path of righteousness very boring,
so the marriage sputtered to a halt.

‘Anyway, Flora has never made any secret of the
fact that she thinks I’m a very poor substitute for
Wife Number Three. Still, she’s fond of the children,
we don’t actually meet that often, and we’ve worked
out a kind of modus vivendi, whereby we’re polite to
each other and avoid open rows.’

‘So what’s happened to her now?’

‘She’s taking Polly’s death terribly hard. Seems to
have fallen apart completely.’

‘Were they very close?’

‘Not in recent years, from what I can gather. Flora
was apparently all over Polly when Ricky first
married Vanessa. Glamorous actress with glamorous
little girl accessory. And Polly wasn’t actually a grandchild,
so she didn’t cast too unflattering a light on
Flora’s age. But then adolescence kicked in with its
usual destructive force, and from what Ricky’s said,
Polly started to cast a more critical eye over her
famous “grandmother”. So, having once been very
close, they became . . . I don’t know what you’d
say . . . estranged? I mean, Polly can still be polite
in Flora’s company, though she doesn’t find being
with her easy, so she tries to avoid it whenever
possible and—’ Lola’s progress was stopped by a
sudden thought. ‘That is, she
tried
. Did try. I must get
used to saying “did”.’

‘You say Flora’s falling apart completely. What do
you mean by that?’

‘She’s staying in her room, doesn’t want to eat
anything. And the times I’ve been in to see her,
she’s actually been crying. That’s very unlike her.
Flora was always of the “stiff upper lip” persuasion.
She’s an actress, she can disguise her emotions. So,
anyway . . .’ Lola sighed wearily – ‘that’s just another
thing I have to cope with.’