Jude’s reserve finally broke. ‘Then he was lying!’ she burst out. ‘Either Burton lied or Megan lied.’
‘Yes.’ Rollins smiled grimly. ‘There is, of course, a third possibility, Jude. And that is that you lied.’
ELEVEN
Carole was unused to seeing her neighbour in the state she was that morning. As soon as the police left, Jude had rushed round to High Tor, and was now being comforted with coffee in its hospital-clean kitchen. Carole’s Labrador, Gulliver, snuffled comatose sympathy from his cosy station in front of the Aga.
And Jude, a woman whose healing brought ease to her many clients, was the one in need of healing.
‘I mean, it’s ridiculous, Carole. All I did was resist Al’s advances, leave him in his car and walk home in the rain. Now suddenly it seems that I’m the police’s Number One Suspect for having murdered him.’
‘Resisted whose advances?’
‘Sorry, there’s a lot you don’t know about this.’
‘That is certainly true.’ There was an edge of resentment in Carole’s words. Jude felt a momentary sting of guilt. Surely her neighbour couldn’t know about her mini-betrayal of conducting investigations with Oliver Parsons?
She dismissed that for the stupid thought it was. But it was a reflection of her emotional instability that she had given it a moment’s brain-room.
‘Well, Carole, the first thing to mention is that the police say they are investigating a murder.’
‘So …’ Her neighbour smiled with satisfaction. ‘For once the Fethering consensus has proved accurate.’
Jude then went on to relive every moment of the two police interrogations. This inevitably provoked a little frostiness in Carole. The first interview with the police had, after all, taken place on the Wednesday morning, but Jude had then divulged nothing about the encounter over their cottage cheese lunch at High Tor. Carole, always quick to detect a slight, was beginning to feel marginalized.
The other information Jude had to pass on did nothing to improve the atmosphere between them. She could not avoid filling in the history of her friendship with Megan and its broadening into a threesome when Al Sinclair appeared on the scene. Nor could Jude not mention Megan’s conviction that she and Al had had an affair.
Predictably, this was the detail Carole picked up on. Over the years, Jude had had a varied sex-life, but it had never been as lurid as it was in her neighbour’s imagination. ‘So, you’re saying positively that you didn’t have an affair with him?’
‘Absolutely positively, definitely not! I do know who I’ve had affairs with.’
A beady look came into Carole’s pale blue eyes, as though she doubted this assertion. ‘Then why would Burton St Clair have told his wife that he had had an affair with you?’
‘Because that was the kind of man he was. He thought he was irresistible to women. He must have claimed me as yet another of his conquests.’
‘I still don’t see why he’d do that. When would he have told her?’
‘I don’t know every detail, do I? It was probably in the course of some marital row. He saw a way of needling her. Maybe she’d expressed some jealousy of me.’
‘Why would she do that … if there was nothing to be jealous of?’
‘Just take my word for it! Al may have fancied me, but – absolutely! definitively! – nothing ever happened!’
‘So you admit that he fancied you?’
Jude was finding this hard work. Carole seemed at least as sceptical as Rollins and Knight had been. She pursued the point. ‘But if nothing ever happened, why was Megan so convinced that something had happened?’
‘Because she was paranoid. Because the fantasy of Al and me having an affair had somehow in her mind been converted into truth.’
‘And the police believed Megan about the affair?’
‘Yes, she’s convinced them.’
‘But why would she do that – and why would they believe her – if it wasn’t true?’
‘Carole, will you please stop going round the same bloody questions!’ Jude never swore. Her use of the word was another indicator of the stress she was under.
‘Of course,’ said her neighbour, ‘there could be another reason for Megan to insist on her account of things …’
‘Yes,’ said Jude wearily.
‘She might have pushed the suspicion towards you to cover her own tracks.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Megan Sinclair would need the police to have another prime suspect … if she herself had committed the murder!’
Carole sat back triumphantly, and Jude recognized that this line of thought was preferable to herself being cast in the role of prime suspect.
‘From what you say,’ her friend went on, ‘Megan Sinclair had plenty of reasons to hate her ex-husband. She would certainly have known about his walnut allergy. And she—’
Jude had to stop her. ‘I like the way you’re thinking, Carole. Sadly, though, there is no way Megan could be linked to the scene of the crime at Fethering Library on Tuesday evening. She was visiting a friend, another former actress, in Scarborough. The police have checked that out.’
‘Well, maybe she put some walnut into a sandwich which she knew Burton was likely to eat when he got in the car after his talk and she …’ Carole’s speculations trickled away in the face of Jude’s shaking head. ‘Just a thought,’ she concluded lamely.
‘Anyway, when I was with Megan, she told me—’
‘You didn’t say you’d seen her.’
‘Didn’t I?’
‘No. I assumed everything you said about her came from what the police told you.’
‘Sorry you got that impression. I had lunch with Megan on Thursday.’
‘Did you? So, you were investigating the murder on your own?’
This wasn’t going well, from Jude’s point of view. ‘No,’ she replied patiently. ‘At that stage the police hadn’t used the word “murder”. And I wasn’t investigating with Megan. I was just trying to find out whether she knew anything more than I did about her ex-husband’s death.’
‘So far as I’m concerned, that comes under the definition of “investigating”.’
Jude hadn’t got much fight left in her. ‘Very well. If you like.’
‘And may I ask where your investigations are leading you next?’
‘Steve Chasen seems to be the next obvious port of call.’
‘Steve who?’
‘Steve Chasen. He was at the library on the Tuesday night, generally making a nuisance of himself, and Oliver Parsons has managed to get a contact for—’
‘Sorry? Who is Oliver Parsons?’
‘He’s someone else who was at Burton St Clair’s talk.’
‘Someone you knew before?’
‘No. Just someone I met that evening, and he and I were talking about Burton’s death …’
‘Were you?’ The expression on Carole’s face told Jude that she was just digging herself deeper and deeper in.
‘And, as I say, Oliver’s got this contact for Steve Chasen, and I was thinking …’ She tried to get herself out of the situation. ‘It would be very good to have you on board in this investigation, because now it’s not just curiosity. I’m genuinely worried the police are going to try to pin this on me. And, if they do, I guess I could be arrested, and then I’d need you to find out what really happened and …’
‘Oh, I don’t think you’d need me,’ said Carole. ‘I’m sure your new friend Oliver Parsons could solve the case for you.’
‘What I’m saying is that, when we go and talk to Steve Chasen, you should come along too, to catch up on the details of the case.’ There was a note of pleading in Jude’s last few words.
‘Oh, no,’ said her neighbour frostily. ‘I wouldn’t want to intrude.’