Simon Brett
Death under the Dryer
The Fethering Mysteries #8
One
If her hairdresser had not been killed, Carole Seddon would never have become involved in the murder at Connie’s Clip Joint. Though she knew the salon well – and indeed had to walk past it every time she went along the High Street to the inadequate local supermarket Allinstore – Carole had never before crossed its threshold. There was something too public about actually having her hair done in Fethering. Since she had moved permanently to West Sussex some ten years previously, her reclusive instincts had favoured an anonymous salon in Worthing, where every six weeks her straight grey hair would be trimmed to helmet-like neatness by a taciturn man called Graham. The arrangement had suited her. She and Graham were polite, but showed no curiosity about each other, and their haircuts were blissfully silent.
The first time Carole knew anything about his life outside the salon was when she heard that Graham had been killed in a motorcycle accident. This had happened when she rang to make her latest regular appointment. The emotion in the voice of the girl who relayed the sad news decided Carole that she needed to find another salon. She didn’t want the perfect detachment of her relationship with Graham to be spoiled by the maudlin reminiscences of other hairdressers after his death.
So the question then was where should she go. She checked the Yellow Pages, but was paralysed into indecision by the sheer number of options available. Carole hated the hidebound nature that made her react like that. About everything. Why did she have to make an issue of things? She ought to have grown out of that kind of introspection by now. She was well into her fifties – about to become a grandmother, for God’s sake – and yet, contrary to the appearance she gave the outside world, still vacillated about decisions like a young teenager.
Eventually, as part of her knew she would end up doing, she consulted Jude. Her next-door neighbour’s bird’s-nest style was probably not the best of advertisements for the art of hairdressing, but she must get it cut somewhere.
Predictably, Jude turned out to be not that bothered where she went. Her haircuts weren’t conducted according to a rigid timetable. She would just wake up one morning feeling that her blonde locks were getting a bit shaggy, or be passing a salon and go in on a whim. She did, however, say that Connie, of Connie’s Clip Joint on the High Street, was ‘absolutely fine’. Also, Fethering rumour had it, the salon wasn’t doing that well, and so booking in there would be supporting local industry.
These arguments – together with the unruly state of her hair – were enough to sway Carole. She seized the phone that very day, a Wednesday, and had a telling lack of difficulty in booking the first, nine o’clock, appointment at Connie’s Clip Joint for the following morning.
As she stood waiting outside on the pavement at ten past nine, she regretted her decision. Local people, lightly dressed for the soft September day, were walking past. She knew who they were; they knew who she was; some of them were even people she spoke to. And now they all knew that she was waiting to get her hair cut at Connie’s Clip Joint. From when she was a child, Carole Seddon had always wanted to keep an air of secrecy about what she did; she hated having her intentions known.
She tried to look nonchalant, as if she had just stopped outside the salon to check its window display. But the beautifully coiffed women and men whose photographs gazed artfully from behind rubber plants were not objects to retain the interest for long. In spite of her pretences, Carole Seddon looked exactly what she was: a middle-aged woman locked out of the hairdresser’s.
Discreetly she drew up the sleeve of her Burberry and looked down at her wristwatch. Although the only other person in sight along Fethering High Street at that moment was a pensioner deep in his own thoughts and a duffel coat, Carole moved as if she was under the scrutiny of a prison camp watchtower.
Twelve minutes past nine. Surely she hadn’t got the time wrong…? Surely the girl who answered the phone hadn’t said the first appointment was nine-thirty…? Such doubts were quickly banished. No, she had definitely said ‘nine o’clock’, and Carole had planned her whole morning around that time. She had taken her Labrador Gulliver out for his walk along Fethering Beach, and after she’d had her hair cut, she was going to do her weekly food shop at Sainsbury’s.
Oh, this was stupid, just standing about. Trying to give the oblivious pensioner the impression that moving away from Connie’s Clip Joint after precisely seventeen minutes (being Carole, she had of course arrived early) was a long-planned intention, she set off firmly back towards her house, High Tor.
As she took the first step, a silver hatchback screeched to a halt outside the salon, and a small, harassed-looking woman in her forties jumped out. She looked as if she had dressed in a hurry and clutched to her bosom an overflowing leather bag. Her brown eyes were tight with anxiety. No make-up…and her red-streaked hair, untidily swept back into a scrunchy, was not a good advertisement for the business she ran.
Because of course Carole recognized her instantly. Connie Rutherford, after whom Connie’s Clip Joint was named. Fethering gossip ensured that almost everyone in the village knew who everyone else was, but village protocol demanded that you still didn’t speak to them until you had been introduced. So Carole continued her stately progress towards High Tor.
The hairdresser, however, showed no such inhibitions. “Mrs Seddon!” she called out.
Which, Carole supposed, was better than using her first name. She turned graciously. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry, you’re the nine o’clock, aren’t you?”
“Well, I thought I was,” came the frosty response.
“Look, I’m so sorry. That idiot girl was meant to be here to open up at quarter to nine.” The woman fumbled in her bag for keys. “I wonder what on earth’s happened to her.” Still getting no reaction from her client, she said, “I’m Connie. Connie Rutherford. I run the place.”
“Oh.” Carole received the information as though surprised by the identification. “I’m Carole Seddon.”
“Yes, I know. You live next door to Jude.”
Carole was slightly miffed to think that this was her claim to fame in Fethering. No one knew about her past, her career in the Home Office. Here she was just Jude’s neighbour. And Jude hadn’t lived in Woodside Cottage nearly as long as Carole had been in High Tor. She shouldn’t have been surprised, though. Jude was outgoing. Jude was easy with people. Everyone knew Jude.
Having opened the salon door, Connie Rutherford ushered her client in and went across to switch on the lights, chattering the while. “This is really bad. Kids these days, they have no sense of time-keeping. You give them a job – and are they grateful? They don’t even understand the basics of turning up when they say they will. God, if I ever have any children, I won’t let them behave the way most of the youngsters do these days.”
Judging from Connie’s age, Carole decided that, if she was going to have any children, she’d better be quick about it.
But the hairdresser was off into another apology. “I’m so sorry, Kyra should have opened up and been ready to greet you at nine. I gave her the spare set of keys – I’ve only got the one – I thought I could trust her. Then she was meant to wash your hair, so that it’d be ready for me to cut when I came in. Oh well, don’t worry, I’ll wash it. May I take your coat, Mrs Seddon? Now, I can call you ‘Carole’, can’t I?”
“Yes,” her client conceded.
“Well, you just take a seat here, and I’ll put on some music. You’d like some music, wouldn’t you?”