‘We can’t do it here, though,’ the girl whispered conspiratorially down the phone line. ‘I live with my parents.’
‘Well, when do you think you’ll be well enough to meet up?’
‘What?’
‘I’ve just come from the library. Di Thompson said you’d called in sick.’
‘Oh yes. Actually, I’m feeling a bit better than I was earlier. Thank goodness. Could meet now if it’s OK with you?’
‘Fine. Where?’
‘I don’t know. Some pub?’
‘My local’s the Crown & Anchor in Fethering. Don’t know if you know it?’
‘’Course I do. I’ve lived in the village all my life.’
‘Whereabouts?’
‘Downside.’
‘Right.’ Carole had duly taken note of this social marker. The Downside Estate, to the north of Fethering, was made up of council houses – or, as they seemed to have become known, ‘social housing’. Their world was far from the middle-class gentility of High Tor.
‘Then of course you know the Crown & Anchor. Well, might that be suitable? Or would you worry about meeting Di there – you know, what with you being off sick?’
‘That’d be OK. She never goes near the pub. Doesn’t drink.’
‘So, when could you meet?’
‘I don’t know … twelve?’
‘Sounds good to me. What, will you walk there, or do you have transport?’
‘Ooh, no. Couldn’t afford a car on my salary. But I don’t really fancy walking, not with being off sick and all.’
‘Of course not. I’ll pick you up then.’
Carole’s instructions were not to collect the girl from the house. She was to pick Vix up by the postbox at the end of her road. Whether the girl wanted the assignation to be a secret from her parents, or was ashamed of where she lived, Carole neither knew nor asked.
So, the immaculate Renault was driven sedately out of the High Tor garage. For a moment, Carole considered telling Jude what was happening, even suggesting she might come along. But she curbed the instinct. Her neighbour seemed to have been genuinely frightened by the cautions Detective Inspector Rollins had given her. Jude wanted to – indeed, had to – keep her nose clean.
Which meant that Carole Seddon was the sole investigator on the case, if you didn’t take the police into account. And, despite her Home Office background, when Carole was involved in an investigation, she very rarely took the police into account.
Vix Winter hadn’t said much on the short drive from Downside, and she didn’t say much inside the Crown & Anchor until she had taken a long swig from her pint of cider. As instructed, Carole had asked at the bar for a ‘K’ (which was apparently some kind of cider), but Zosia had said they didn’t carry it, so she had made do with draught Aspall’s.
Carole hoped Ted Crisp didn’t appear in the bar. The sight of her in the company of a girl with green hair and facial piercings would provide him with teasing ammunition for weeks.
‘Phew!’ said Vix, putting her glass down on the table. ‘I needed that.’
‘Oh?’ said Carole, after taking a sip from her small Sauvignon Blanc.
‘Got a bit bladdered last night.’ She took her mobile phone out and placed it on the table right in front of her. ‘On the “K”, I was, with my mate Jools, in this club we go to.’
‘And then you woke up this morning feeling ill?’
‘Yes.’ A sly grin crept across the girl’s plump face. ‘Don’t know why.’
The temptation for Carole to be censorious was only momentary. She was reminded that she needed to ingratiate herself with Vix Winter to extract the maximum amount of information from the girl.
‘You presumably know about everything that happened after you left the library on Tuesday evening?’
‘Well, I don’t know everything, or I’d know who the murderer is, wouldn’t I?’ She giggled, and took another long, revivifying swallow from her pint glass. ‘But I know what I saw, sure enough. Everyone in the library’s been asking me about it, and at the club we were in last night too.’
She spoke with some level of pride. Vix Winter wasn’t the first person Carole had encountered who glowed in the spotlight turned on them by having some involvement in a murder enquiry.
‘Right, on the Tuesday, after the library had been locked up, Di Thompson drove you home?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was that a usual arrangement?’
‘How’dja mean?’
‘Did Di normally give you a lift home, if you both finished work at the same time?’
‘God, no. She could do that quite easily, I’m virtually on her way, but she’d never think of it. No, normally I have to walk, or catch a bus. But, as I’m sure you know, there’s no buses in Fethering at that time of night.’
Carole nodded agreement, although, thanks to her trusty Renault, she had not travelled by bus once since she had moved permanently to the village.
‘On Tuesday, Di had to promise me a lift home. Otherwise there was no way I was going to stay for the evening. I thought it was a liberty asking me to do it, anyway. No talk of overtime. I know the hours I’m meant to work, and evenings aren’t part of them. Having spent the whole day dealing with books, last thing I want to do is stay at work in the evening for some bloody author.’
It wasn’t the first time during their interview that Carole had contemplated asking Vix whether she thought she’d really taken the right career path. Though there were not many librarians amongst her acquaintance, the ones Carole did know were very devoted to their profession. They might moan about management and changes in regulations, as everyone who worked for a large organization did, but they did actually care about the libraries and the customers who frequented them. Above all, they loved books.
But that was a part of the job specification which seemed to have passed by Vix Winter.
‘Tell me,’ asked Carole, ‘did Di say anything about the evening as she was driving you home?’
‘No. She hardly said a word. Except “Goodnight” when she dropped me at the end of our road.’
‘She didn’t make any comment about Burton St Clair? Or the contents of his talk?’
‘No.’
‘What did you think of it?’
‘What did I think of what?’
‘Burton St Clair’s talk.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, you were there, weren’t you? You must’ve heard what he said.’
‘I wasn’t listening. I was sat at the back with my mobile. Spent most of the time WhatsApping my mate Jools.’
Once again, a question about Vix’s suitability for her chosen career was on the tip of Carole’s tongue. But she didn’t let it go any further than that. ‘Presumably you were in the library when Burton St Clair arrived that afternoon?’
‘Yes, he got there about six. Library closed at five thirty, so Di and I had had to rush around moving chairs and things before he arrived.’
‘I gather some volunteers were there too, to help put the chairs out?’
‘Yes. But I did most of it.’
‘And what time were the doors opened for the public?’
‘Six thirty.’
‘Did you get the impression that Di had met Burton St Clair before?’
‘Don’t think so. She went into her routine about how much she’d always enjoyed his work, and how delighted she was about the success of … whatever the new one’s called. But I’ve heard her do all that with other authors.’