‘I used to travel a lot when I was directing. And now maybe I keep myself to myself. My wife died a couple of years back. I think she must have been the social one in our partnership.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
He shrugged. ‘One recovers.’
‘Anyway, what I was going to say, Oliver, is that the way you talk about him, it sounds as if you know Burton.’
‘I don’t know him, but I know a lot about him.’
‘Oh?’
But he didn’t take the cue to open up as much as Jude had hoped. ‘As you may have gathered from my questions,’ he said, ‘I’m very interested in crime fiction.’
‘Yes.’ Jude didn’t feel inclined to admit at that moment what she knew about Burton’s earlier writing, probably under the pseudonym of Seth Marston. She still had some residual loyalty to him. She’d wait and see where Oliver Parsons was going with the subject.
‘I’ve made a bit of a study of the Golden Age,’ he went on. ‘You know, Twenties, Thirties …’
‘Christie, Sayers, that lot …’
‘Exactly. And some of the less well-known ones. Yes, I got quite caught up in it, the research and so on, at the start. Some of the murder methods and things are quite ingenious, but …’ The tailing-off of his words suggested that the appeal of the Golden Age was fading for him.
At this moment, further conversation was prevented by the arrival of Di Thompson, who had just emerged from the staff room, clutching a sheaf of printed sheets. ‘Sorry, forgot these,’ she said in a rather flustered manner. ‘Evaluation forms. If you could just fill them in to say what you thought of the evening …?’
‘Are we allowed to be honest?’ asked Oliver Parsons sardonically.
‘Well, of course,’ Di replied, clearly not skilled in picking up when someone was joking. ‘That’s the aim of the exercise. If you need a pen, Vix has got some over at the drinks table.’
‘No, it’s fine, I’ve got one.’ Oliver reached into his tweed jacket.
The just-mentioned Vix was now sidling over, trying to attract her superior’s attention. Jude noticed that, as well as the green hair and piercings, a red snake tattoo was crawling up the girl’s neck. Her voice was local West Sussex, whiny and slightly put-upon. ‘Di, don’t know what I should do. There’s this feller who keeps just filling up his wine glass and they’re only supposed to get one—’
‘I can’t be bothered with that now, I’m busy!’
The sharpness of the reaction surprised Jude. When she had introduced Burton at the beginning and then thanked him at the end, Di Thompson had seemed a mild, rather benign personality, but her mood had certainly changed. Or maybe Vix, the junior librarian, had always got on her boss’s nerves. There was a recalcitrance about the girl’s body language which suggested she might not be the easiest person in the world to work with.
But even as Jude had this thought, another explanation offered itself. The star of the evening, Burton St Clair, came out from the same door as Di and, as he insinuated his arm around her waist, said, ‘Well, how about a drink for me? I think I’ve deserved one.’
The way the librarian flinched, and the speed with which she disconnected herself, asking a sharp ‘Red or white?’, suggested that, however well he’d gone down with most of his female audience, here was one Fethering woman Burton St Clair had failed to charm.
FOUR
Burton St Clair asked for red wine and there was a moment of confusion while Vix Winter explained to her senior that there wasn’t any left on her table and she’d have to go back to the staff room to get some. Di, apparently unwilling to spend more time with the evening’s guest than she had to, said she’d come and help.
Burton St Clair directed at Jude what he would probably have defined as ‘a roguish smile’. ‘Long time no see. I’m so glad you made the effort to come to hear my modest presentation.’
‘No worries. I live just down the road.’
‘Funny. When we used to see a lot of each other, in what feels like another life, it never occurred to me you might end up in a backwater like Fethering.’
Jude shrugged. ‘It suits me very well.’
‘And what are you doing now? When we last met you were a restaurateur … or was it a model?’
‘I did a bit of both back then.’
‘And are you still …?’
His look suggested that Jude’s fuller figure might not now be so much in demand for fashion shoots. Rather than be offended by the implication, she giggled. ‘I’ve done a lot of things since then. Now I’m a healer.’
‘A healer?’ Burton’s eyebrows rose towards his receding hairline. ‘What, you mean “laying on of hands” and ginseng and bloody dumping hot stones on people’s—’
Fortunately, before she had time to defend her profession against this predictable flood of scepticism, their conversation was interrupted by the opening of the door to the staff room. An unwilling Steve Chasen was the first to emerge, being pushed out by Di Thompson.
‘It wasn’t my bloody fault!’ he was protesting. ‘I didn’t spill it!’
‘Yes, you did,’ countered the librarian. ‘And you shouldn’t have been in there, anyway. The staff—’
‘You pushed the bottle over! I saw you!’ said Steve Chasen.
‘Do you need a hand?’ interposed the urbane voice of Oliver Parsons.
Di Thompson looked gratefully at her saviour, as Oliver took over her pushing duties. ‘Come on, old chap. You’ve just had a little bit too much to drink and I think it’d be better if—’
‘I’m going!’ said Steve Chasen, shaking himself free of his latest ejector and turning to face Burton St Clair. ‘I don’t want to stay in the same room as a bloody liar like you!’ He shook a finger at the more successful author. ‘But don’t worry, you’ll get your comeuppance!’
Then, with a failed attempt at dignity, Steve Chasen staggered out of the library.
Burton chose to ignore the interruption and, with a smiling face, turned towards the staff-room door, from which Vix Winter was issuing with his long-awaited glass of wine. She too was serenely pretending the recent scene hadn’t happened, but, as the girl passed, Jude heard her whisper to Di Thompson, ‘I’ll clear it up.’
‘Thanks,’ her superior hissed back. ‘Thank God we haven’t got a carpet in there.’
And Vix Winter scuttled through into the staff room.
‘Anyway, cheers!’ Burton St Clair raised his glass to Di. ‘Many thanks for making me so welcome in Fethering Library.’
He sounded sincere, but Jude knew him well enough to know just how patronizing he was being. ‘Never forget the little people’ – that’s what his mind was saying.
‘I think maybe we should call it a day,’ said Di Thompson. It was nearly half an hour later and she looked exhausted. The evening had gone on longer than expected and she had the demeanour of someone who desperately wanted to get home. Through the library windows, a sheet of sudden rain was illuminated by the moonlight.
‘Yes,’ said Jude. By then most of the audience had melted away. The only others still there were Burton, Di and Vix. The junior librarian was looking even more keen to get away than her boss, but apparently Di was going to give her a lift home, so she had no alternative but to wait.
‘How long will it take you to drive back to London?’ asked Di pointedly.
‘Oh, hour and a half I should think, this time of night. Fortunately, Barnes is on the right side of the river. And the Beamer can really open up on the A3.’
Jude didn’t think it was worth pointing out that Burton had had far too much wine to drive safely, since he was clearly going to do it anyway. He had form on the drinking. She remembered from way back that he always had a hipflask of whisky about his person or in the glove compartment of his car. Defiantly, at the end of a boozy evening, he would take a swig from it before driving home. She wondered whether he still did that, or had life with the saintly Persephone cured him of such antisocial habits?