But it was an instinct she curbed. She’d no wish to antagonize the police any more than she had already. Wait till they came back to her, that was the way to play it. Leave the Fethering Library investigation to Carole for the time being. And concentrate on the case where her involvement wouldn’t upset anyone – the disappearance of Zosia’s Uncle Pawel.
There have always been many secrets hidden behind the placid exteriors of English country villages. Long before Agatha Christie popularized the crimes of the locations, there had been an undertow of drunkenness, debauchery, domestic violence and murder. And such antisocial tendencies had not diminished in the twenty-first century, even in a place as outwardly genteel as Fethering.
Through her work as a healer, Jude encountered much evidence of the darker side of village life. It was rarely that clients came to Woodside Cottage with ailments that were purely physical. (Indeed, Jude doubted whether any human ailments were purely physical.) The tension in a woman’s back could arise from her husband’s bullying. A schoolgirl’s anorexia could be triggered by her parents’ divorce. Depression could be exacerbated by a drug or alcohol problem. Jude always had to find the root cause of her client’s suffering before she could begin the process of healing.
And it might have surprised an outsider to find out how many nice middle-class façades in Fethering masked serious problems with drugs and alcohol. Though Jude’s ministrations in these cases could make some initial headway, often to achieve long-term benefits the sufferer would need to be referred for specialist treatment. As a result, Jude had contacts in all of the local organizations which dealt with the problems of substance abuse and alcohol dependency.
Her first call was to Karla. Of mountainous proportions and multiple tattoos, this woman had survived two decades of using drugs and abusing booze, with all the concomitant baggage of domestic violence, unwanted pregnancies, children being taken into care and prison sentences. Her shattered life turned around by courses run by a local charity, Karla had then decided to devote her remaining years to helping others out of the hell from which she had emerged. Nothing could shock her, she was unflappable, and every day for her was still a battle against the temptations offered by her former chemical supports.
That Sunday afternoon, Jude could tell as soon as Karla spoke that something had upset her. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Just a boy, someone I’d been working with, topped himself.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Yes. Really thought we were getting somewhere with him. He’d come to a lot of meetings, been clean for nearly three months. Then fell in with some of his old crowd, they offered him some stuff. He jumped off the top of a car park in Worthing.’
‘It must be hard for you.’
‘He was getting somewhere and …’ A deep, throaty sigh sounded from the other end of the line. ‘Anyway, what can I do, Jude? Someone else needs referring?’
‘No, it’s not that this time. I’m trying to track down a guy who’s in with a bunch of drinkers.’
‘Living on the street?’
‘Well, he has got somewhere to live, but I gather he spends a lot of time on the streets drinking.’
‘Where?’
‘Fethering, Littlehampton, gone as far as Brighton sometimes, I gather.’
‘What’s your contact with him?’
‘I know his niece, works in our local pub.’
‘Is that the old Crown & Anchor?’
‘Yes. You know it?’
‘Know it, yes. Never been in it. A bit upmarket for me back in my drinking days. Anyway, didn’t do pubs when I was really drinking. Been barred from most of them in Littlehampton, apart from anything else. I was more cans of supermarket lager in a seafront shelter.’
‘This bloke who’s disappeared did that too.’
‘Right, let’s get a few basics. What’s his name?’
‘Pawel.’
‘Oh?’
‘He’s Polish.’
‘Right. There are a few of them around. Surname?’
‘Haven’t got one for him. I’ll find out from his niece.’
‘It’s not that important. Most of them just use first names.’
‘His niece, who’s called Zosia, is putting him up in her flat, but she hasn’t seen him since last Tuesday.’
‘I’ll ask around and get back to you,’ said Karla.
Which was very comforting to hear. The investigation into Uncle Pawel’s disappearance could not have been in better hands.
TWENTY
Jude woke on the Monday morning in a totally different frame of mind. The news from Oliver Parsons about the negative forensic tests on the wine bottle from the library staff room, though not yet officially confirmed, had brought back her old joie de vivre. She berated herself for the unaccustomed gloom into which she had sunk over the previous few days.
Now she no longer felt she had to find Burton St Clair’s murderer to save her own skin. But that had not diminished her interest in the case. If anything, it had increased her enthusiasm for solving it.
After breakfast, she went on to her little-used Facebook account and made the contact she wanted to. Then she bounced ebulliently round to High Tor.
Even before Carole had produced coffee, Jude announced, ‘I’m back on the case. I’m no longer going to be bossed around by the likes of Detective Inspector Rollins.’
‘That’s very good news, but can you tell me what’s made you change your mind?’
Quickly, Jude brought her neighbour up to speed with what she’d heard from Oliver Parsons.
‘Excellent,’ said Carole, though an unworthy part of herself felt a little put out. She had been pleased with the way the investigation had been proceeding with her in sole charge. The idea of having Jude back at full throttle caused a momentary pang. From a child, Carole Seddon had never been that good at sharing.
‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘I have decided that, for the next stage of our investigation, we need to contact—’
‘Persephone St Clair!’
Carole was miffed by the interruption, because that was exactly what she had been about to say. And her nose wasn’t immediately set back in joint by Jude going on, ‘What’s more, I’ve just this morning made contact with her.’
‘How? Have you got their home number?’
‘No, I did it through Facebook.’ Carole’s sour expression said everything about her views of social media. ‘And what’s more, she’s agreed that we can go over to Barnes to talk to her this morning!’
From Carole’s point of view, in that sentence the ‘we’ was the only word that was welcome. She had had her own plans as to how she was going to contact Persephone St Clair, and she didn’t like having them pre-empted. Still, she worked hard not to let her annoyance show, as Jude rushed back to Woodside Cottage to fetch a warm coat.
As Carole closed the front door of High Tor, Gulliver looked up wistfully from his station by the Aga. It was as if he could tell when his owner was busy on a case.
Having not had long to adjust to the idea of being a wife, Persephone St Clair seemed to have acclimatized very quickly to being a widow. There was a dramatic quality to the way she carried herself, as though preparing to deliver a great speech of bereavement.
She was very pretty in a slightly Kensington way. Round the thirty mark, so a good twenty years younger than Burton. Nor had he just gone for a younger model of Megan. While his first wife had been dark and petite, Persephone was blonde and willowy. She had the kind of upper-crust looks which, Carole recalled, used to feature on the inside pages of Country Life.