‘Yes.’
‘Was it just Di with you in the staff room?’
‘No, that sidekick of hers, grumpy kid who was running the bar.’
‘Vix Winter,’ said Jude.
‘I don’t know her name. She was the one who kept trying to stop me topping my glass up in the actual library.’
‘So, what happened after Di had poured the glass for Burton?’
‘Well, there was still three-quarters of a bottle left, so I reckoned I was due a top-up and I reached for the bottle, but both the girls reached for it at the same time and it got knocked over and smashed on the floor. Which I thought was a bloody waste of good red wine … well, not that good red wine, but still a waste.’
Jude and Oliver exchanged looks, both thinking the same thing: that if the walnut – in ground form or whatever – had been put in the wine bottle, seeing that it got smashed might be a good way of destroying the evidence, after Burton’s glassful had been poured. Jude remembered Vix Winter telling Di Thompson that she’d tidy up the mess.
‘So,’ said Oliver, ‘assuming you didn’t put the walnut into the wine bottle, Steve—’
‘Which I bloody well didn’t!’
‘We should think who else might have had the opportunity to do it. In other words, who else went into the staff room that evening.’
‘Well, all right, I’ll hold my hand up,’ said Jude. ‘I went through to the Ladies at the end of Burton’s talk, so I had an opportunity to do it. An opportunity which, as it turns out, I didn’t take.’
‘There was quite a lot of traffic to the loos,’ said Oliver.
‘So any one of the old biddies of Fethering could have doctored the drink,’ suggested Steve sarcastically. ‘Out of thwarted love for the author of Stray Leaves in Autumn perhaps …?’
That revealed that, despite his earlier avowal, Steve knew full well what Burton’s book was called. Indeed, he would have had to be pathologically unobservant to have sat through the entire Tuesday evening in Fethering Library without knowing. Jude wondered if there were other, more relevant, details of which he claimed ignorance. Everything about Steve Chasen’s manner and body language suggested to her that he was hiding something.
She caught Oliver Parsons’ eye. His expression implied that he didn’t think they were going to get any more useful information out of their interviewee.
So they left Steve Chasen to the excitements of his night shift at Sainsbury’s in Clincham. And asked him to let them know if he had any contact from the police.
He wasn’t the first person on the police contact list, though.
Jude had considered asking Oliver in for a drink, but when the Range Rover drew up outside Woodside Cottage, there was another vehicle parked outside. A Panda car. Detective Inspector Rollins and Detective Sergeant Knight emerged from it to welcome her home.
‘Would it help if I were to come in?’ suggested Oliver Parsons.
‘No. Thank you, but no.’
‘There are quite a few things that interest us about your behaviour,’ said the Inspector.
‘Oh?’
They were once again on the sofa and chairs of the front room at Woodside Cottage. Never before had three bottoms perched so unrelaxedly on their welcoming contours.
‘For instance,’ Rollins went on, ‘we find it interesting that you feel the need to be in contact with potential witnesses of events in the library on Tuesday …’
Jude offered no more than another ‘Oh.’
‘Particularly since these contacts follow on from your meeting with Megan Sinclair on Thursday.’ This time Jude was silent. ‘So, on Thursday evening you contact Oliver Parsons who, so far as we know, you had not met before the Tuesday.’
‘No, I hadn’t. And, incidentally, I didn’t contact him. He contacted me.’
‘Of course,’ said Rollins, clearly disbelieving. ‘Then this evening you both go and talk to Steve Chasen.’
Jude had always known there were few secrets in Fethering. Once the police became involved, it seemed there were absolutely no secrets in Fethering.
‘So why do you find this odd behaviour?’ asked Jude.
Detective Sergeant Knight took it upon himself to answer that one. ‘The Inspector means that your actions would seem to show an excessive interest on your part in the details of Burton St Clair’s death, almost as if you were trying to find out how much other people know about the circumstances of that death – which actions could be construed as guilty behaviour.’
For the first time, Rollins did not express disapproval of her junior’s intervention. Jude wondered whether this implied some collusion between the two detectives, some prior planning as to how they were going to conduct this latest interview.
‘For someone in my situation,’ said Jude calmly, ‘your approach seems calculated to make me feel guilty.’
‘What exactly do you mean by that?’ asked Rollins.
‘You’re behaving as though you think I had some connection with Burton’s death.’
The Inspector did not deny this. Instead, she came up with some standard police verbiage. ‘We’re at a very early stage of our enquiries, Jude. We haven’t ruled out any possibilities. We’re just trying to gather as much information as we can about the background to the case.’
‘So are you saying I am not on your list of suspects?’
‘I am not saying that, no.’
‘Are you denying that I am your Number One Suspect?’
The Inspector’s brow wrinkled with distaste. ‘I’m afraid expressions like “Number One Suspect” tend not to be used outside the confines of television police dramas.’
‘Let me put it another way then. Am I high up on your list of suspects?’
‘I’m afraid, until we have solid evidence that will remove you from that list, you will remain there.’
‘But it should be obvious that I had nothing to do with it.’
‘Obvious to you, maybe. Perhaps less obvious to us. Listen, Jude, when we investigate a crime, we start off with almost no information. We don’t know the place where the offence happened, we don’t know the people involved. So we start gathering information – and that’s something we’re very good at. We have much more experience than the average amateur.’ She slightly leant, with a hint of criticism, on the last word. ‘And the information we gather leads us towards certain hypotheses as to what might actually have happened. So, if a lot of facts that we get together seem to point in a certain direction, we follow the logic through until we find a new fact which renders that particular hypothesis invalid. In this case, we have yet to find the fact that makes our current hypothesis invalid.’
‘Your current hypothesis being that I murdered Burton St Clair?’
‘I didn’t say that, Jude. It’s not our habit to share the details of our investigations with people who might be significant witnesses.’
‘Or who might be the perpetrator of the crime?’
‘I didn’t say that either.’
‘No, but the implication was there.’
The Detective Inspector shrugged. ‘What you infer is up to you.’
From her relish for language, Jude was getting the firm impression that Rollins must have been a fast-track graduate entrant to the police force – perhaps another cause of disharmony between her and the Detective Sergeant.
But it wasn’t the moment for such sociological observations. ‘So what you’re looking for, Inspector,’ she asked, ‘is a piece of evidence that would rule me out as a suspect in this case?’
‘That would be enormously helpful,’ Rollins replied, ‘both to us and to you.’ But she couldn’t resist adding, ‘If such a piece of evidence exists.’
Jude was silent.
‘Look at it from our point of view,’ the Inspector went on. ‘We know the cause of Burton St Clair’s death. We think it likely that chopped walnut, ground walnut – something containing walnuts – was put into the bottle of red wine in the staff room at Fethering Library. We know you were aware of the deceased’s allergy to walnuts.’