“Lola didn’t mention it. But I assume that would have been destroyed in the blaze too.”
“She would have had it with her?”
“Oh God, yes. Never went anywhere without her mobile. She kept it in one of those phone sock things. Hideous fluorescent pink.”
Remembering this personal detail about the dead girl once again threatened his fragile emotional equilibrium, so Jude moved quickly on. “Piers, when we last spoke, just before Christmas, you had just heard about Polly’s death…”
“Yes, that’s why I came down here to Fethering.”
“But then you hadn’t heard how she died. At that time, presumably, you thought she’d been killed by the fire in Gallimaufry. Of course, we now know she had been shot.”
He shook his head, as though trying to dispel the image her words had created. “Which really means we can rule out an accidental death. We are talking about either suicide or murder. Piers, you probably knew Polly as well as anyone did. Would you say she was capable of killing herself?”
There was a long silence before he replied. “I just don’t know. You can be very close to someone, think you’re sharing every thought, every emotion, and then something happens which makes you realize you never knew them at all. And that’s a bit how I’ve been feeling since Polly…since she died. That there are whole areas of her personality that I never knew at all.”
Jude remembered Lola using almost exactly the same words about Ricky. Was it just coincidence, or could it mean that she and Piers had discussed the situation? She listened carefully as the young writer continued, “I know Polly hadn’t been happy in recent months…well, for years, possibly. I think she’d expected that finding acting work would prove easier than it did. Maybe she thought her famous surname – even though she’d only got it through her mother’s remarriage – would give her an entrée to the West End, but it certainly didn’t. And I guess there were other things that might have been upsetting her.”
“Like her relationship with you?”
“Well…”
“Piers, you told Carole and me last time we met that you were just about to break off with Polly, as soon as Christmas and the New Year were out of the way. She must’ve had an inkling that something was in the air. Weren’t there any rows or disagreements between you?”
“A few, yes.”
“About what?”
“Mostly about the fact that we were doing less things together. My work was taking me away a lot of the time, so Polly was having to spend more and more evenings in the flat on her own. She didn’t like that, so sometimes when I got back late we’d have fights – particularly if I’d been drinking, and, given the nature of the work in which I’m involved, I usually had been drinking. Television’s a very sociable business,” he pleaded in mitigation.
“When you talk of having ‘fights’,” asked Carole sternly, “do you mean actual physical violence?”
“God, no,” Piers protested. “I’d never hit anyone – and certainly not a woman.”
“Did Polly know about your new girlfriend, the one from the sitcom?”
“No, I’m sure she didn’t.”
“She wasn’t even suspicious that you had someone else?”
“I don’t think so.” But he didn’t sound very sure about it.
Jude picked up the interrogation, moving off on a sudden tangent. “Presumably Ricky and Lola know more about the progress of the police enquiry than you or I do?”
“Probably, yes. They certainly seem to have spent a lot of time talking to various detectives.”
“But have they passed any details on to you?”
He shrugged. “Bits and pieces. Lola usually tells me most things.”
As soon as he’d said the words, he wished he hadn’t, but Jude didn’t pick him up on them. “Has she said whether the police have found the gun which killed Polly yet?”
“I don’t think so. I can’t recall her mentioning it. Why would that be important?”
For someone with a Cambridge education, Piers Duncton could sometimes be surprisingly dense. Or so wrapped up in his own concerns that he couldn’t see the bigger picture. “Because,” Jude explained patiently, “if they did find a weapon, then the death could be either suicide or murder. If they didn’t, suicide becomes much less likely. It’s quite tricky to dispose of a gun after you’ve shot yourself.”
Piers acknowledged the truth of this, then said, “Oh yes, I think Lola did mention something about the police having found a gun in the ruins of the shop.”
Jude found this sudden access of memory somewhat suspicious and her scepticism didn’t decrease as Piers went on, “Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think Polly may have taken her own life. There were signs in the last few months, signs I can only recognize in retrospect. God, if only I’d picked up on them and got help for her, Polly might still be alive today!”
His outburst of emotion also seemed suspect to Jude. “So why do you think she killed herself?”
He shrugged hopelessly. “Depression. It’s a very cruel illness. Insidious. And Polly had suffered from it all her life.”
He now seemed to be echoing exactly what Ricky Le Bonnier had said about his daughter’s death. “Just a minute,” Jude remonstrated. “Only a few days ago, you sat here in this very room telling me Polly was always talking about how happy her childhood had been.”
“I know,” said Piers. “But when I said that I was thinking she had died in an accident, and I didn’t think I needed to tell comparative strangers about her history of depression. Now, though, now that we know she committed suicide, we don’t have to maintain the pretence anymore.”
We don’t know she committed suicide, thought Jude, but no amount of further argument would shift Piers Duncton from his stated belief that his girlfriend had killed herself. Jude felt certain he was behaving like that because he suspected murder and was trying to protect the person who he thought might have done it.
She also was beginning to think that Ricky had supported the suicide theory for exactly the same reasons.
And that the person they both wanted to protect was Lola.
Nineteen
Now knowing that Piers Duncton shared everything with his ex-lover, Jude was unsurprised the next morning, the Monday, to have a call from Lola Le Bonnier. But the reason for her making contact had nothing to do with Polly’s death. She wanted Jude’s help in her professional capacity.
“It’s Flora,” said Lola. “You know she’s been in a terrible state since…since what happened.”
“Yes. Has she taken a turn for the worse?”
“I don’t really know. But she’s now manifesting physical symptoms, which she wasn’t before. Basically, her back’s packed in and she doesn’t seem able to get out of bed.”
“Have you called the doctor?”
“That was my first thought, but Flora won’t hear of it. She doesn’t trust ‘those damned money-grabbing quacks’.” Lola’s impersonation of her mother-in-law was uncannily accurate. “She’s always relied on what are now called ‘alternative therapies’ – long before they were fashionable. In London, she’s got a network of acupuncturists and reiki healers, but down here…”
“I’m the nearest thing to an alternative therapist?”
“Exactly.” There was a slight giggle in Lola’s voice. Again Jude felt strong empathy with the girl, an attitude that clashed uncomfortably with the suspicions she’d been harbouring overnight. “I know it’s supposed to be holiday time, but would you mind coming to have a look at Flora?”
“Of course. I’ll be with you in as long as it takes.”