‘Yes,’ Jude agreed. And then asked, with some urgency, ‘And did you see anything?’
‘Well, there are really two questions there, Jude.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘There’s the question of whether I saw anything, and there’s the question of whether I told the police that I’d seen anything.’
‘And you’re saying the answers to the two questions are different?’
‘Yes, I am, Jude.’
‘Are you saying in fact that you lied to the police?’ asked Carole, whose loyalty to her former employer, the Home Office, was prone to come up at such moments.
‘I didn’t lie to them so much, as I didn’t tell them the complete truth.’
‘And why was that?’ Carole’s tone was still harsh. ‘Did you have something to hide?’
‘No, no,’ the old lady replied. ‘Someone of my age hasn’t a lot to hide. I just didn’t really want to be involved with the police.’
‘Oh?’ Carole had the skill of putting quite a lot of accusation into a monosyllable.
‘Why didn’t you want to be involved?’ asked Jude, more gently.
‘Well, it goes back to an experience my late husband Gerald had. He was always a very law-abiding man. Brought up that way, and he spent his career in insurance, so he was never going to break the law, was he? But there was a scandal at the firm he worked for, a scandal to do with car insurance.’
‘What happened?’
‘It involved a company of panel beaters – you know, car-repair people?’
‘We have heard of panel beaters,’ said Carole, in a manner testy enough to prompt a look of mild reproof from Jude. They were both desperate for the information that Eveline Ollerenshaw had to reveal, but the old lady had to be allowed to deliver it at her own pace.
‘Well, these panel beaters had got into the habit – the criminal habit, it should be said – of making the damage to cars that were brought in for repair rather worse than that caused by the original accidents.’
‘So that the insurance companies were charged more than they should have been?’
‘Exactly, Carole. And there was some deal whereby the extra money was divided up between the owner of the vehicle and the panel beaters.’
‘There have been scams like that around,’ said Jude, ‘as long as there has been car insurance.’
‘Oh yes. But for this particular fiddle to work, when the police investigated it, they reckoned there had to be someone on the inside.’
‘Someone in the insurance company?’
‘Yes.’ Resentful of Carole’s hurrying her, Eveline Ollerenshaw deliberately slowed down her narrative. ‘Well, the thing was, because Gerald worked in the car insurance section of the company, and because it was a very small department, for some time there was suspicion that he might have been involved in the fiddle. Of course he wasn’t – and eventually it was proved that he wasn’t. The rotten apple was a junior clerk – wide boy from the East End; he should have been the first suspect straight away – but Gerald was very much upset by the episode. He said it showed how easily lies get believed as truth, and how easy it would be for a miscarriage of justice to take place. He never forgot it.’
Evvie was silent for a moment, lost in recollection. Then she pulled herself back to the present. ‘Anyway, thereafter Gerald always discouraged me from doing anything to help the police. So when that Detective Inspector Rollins and her gawky sidekick came round here to ask if I’d seen anything during the night in the library car park … No, of course I hadn’t! I normally sleep very badly, I told them, but I had a really early night on the Tuesday and I’d slept right through. One of the best night’s sleep I’d had for a long time.’
Eveline Ollerenshaw sat back in her armchair with considerable satisfaction.
Carole and Jude exchanged looks, both thinking the same thing: by what small details the processes of justice can be affected. Detective Inspector Rollins and Detective Sergeant Knight had spent more than a week in frustrating dead-end investigations, Jude had been put through a nightmare of suspicion … and all the time there had been a witness to the crime. A witness who, for a reason that didn’t stand up to any logical examination, had withheld her testimony and not revealed to the police what she had witnessed on the night in question.
Assuming, of course, that she had witnessed something on the night in question.
Jude asked first. ‘So tell me, Evvie, what did you see?’
The old lady’s narrative provided just what they had hoped for. It confirmed suppositions they had made, and provided new details. After a couple of supplementary questions, Carole and Jude had all the information they required.
They thanked her, refused offers of more tea and cake, and left Eveline Ollerenshaw to her loneliness.
TWENTY-EIGHT
It was the first time either Carole or Jude had seen his house. The luxury of the interior matched the expectation given by the black Range Rover parked in the open garage. A detached Edwardian villa, it was only separated by the coast road from the grassy dunes to the west of Fethering Beach.
But there was something anonymous about the inside of the house. The cleaning had been done with efficiency rather than love. Though some of the objects – African masks, Japanese hangings, beer steins – reflected Oliver Parsons’ life of travel, they gave the impression of tokens rather than mementos. Even the framed stills from his television work looked somehow unregarded. Jude wondered how different the atmosphere in the house would have been when his wife was alive. Since their first meeting in the library, the deceased woman had not been mentioned again but, inside the house, Jude felt her absence.
Oliver Parsons seemed to know why they had come, but showed no emotion stronger than a resigned amusement. Jude had phoned to check that he was in, and they had arrived in the Renault around noon. Oliver was of the view that that was a perfect time to open a bottle of champagne, and neither woman disagreed with him.
‘So,’ he said, after they had raised their glasses and sipped, ‘you have found out my little secret?’
‘I think we have,’ said Carole.
‘Well, congratulations. We spoke in the Hare & Hounds in Weldisham, Jude, about Golden Age amateur sleuths and policemen. This is one up to the amateur sleuths. You got there before the flatfoots.’
‘You’re not attempting to deny what you did?’ asked Carole.
‘What would be the point of that? It’s a fair cop. You’ve got me bang to rights.’ He proffered his wrists before him, as if to have the handcuffs clicked on.
‘But you must have done some research,’ Carole persisted. ‘There’s no way you could have set the whole thing up on the spur of the moment.’
‘No, you’re right. It became a little project for me, and the research was part of that project. Rather fascinating, actually. I got really caught up in it.’
‘As you got caught up in the library Writers’ Group, and the study of Golden Age crime fiction?’ Jude suggested.
‘Ah. You’ve seen through me,’ he said. ‘Yes. I always have suffered from a low threshold of boredom. While I was directing, that wasn’t so much of a problem. There was plenty of work; each project offered new horizons, new challenges. The adrenaline junkie within me was constantly fed, constantly stimulated. As the offers of work dwindled, things got more difficult. I needed something else in my life. Tried booze for a while, even drugs. They didn’t fill the void. They were just time-wasting and destructive. As you say, Jude, I picked up on the Creative Writing, studying the Golden Age, lots of other courses and things. Each time I started with enthusiasm, but after a few months, a few weeks in some cases, I still felt unsatisfied. And then I thought of having a go at murder …’