Remembering what Carole had discovered through Wikipedia, Jude rather daringly said, “It has been suggested that the more recent history of the family is also hard to piece together.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“I gather that some newspapers have actually questioned whether you have any connection with the Le Bonnier family.”
It was a bold thing to say, and the icy hauteur with which Flora greeted it would have convinced most people of her aristocratic credentials. “I don’t read newspapers,” she announced imperiously. “I never have. Journalists have no interest in the truth; they look only for character assassination and sensation.”
“But don’t you even read reviews of your performances?”
“No, I never have. What possible benefit can one gain from reading them? A good notice makes you question yourself to such an extent about what it was you did that was worthy of praise that you become self-conscious; while a bad notice depresses you so much that you never want to work again.”
“Ah, right,” said Jude, deciding not to pursue that particular line of enquiry further. “You were talking about the ‘Le Bonnier Curse’…”
“Yes. The suicidal streak, I am glad to say, does not manifest itself in every bearer of the Le Bonnier name. I myself, though occasionally prone to black moods of despair, have generally managed to keep the demon at bay by concentrating on my professional work. Though I have always worried inordinately about being a transmitter of the family curse, my son Ricky, mercifully, seems untouched by it. I sometimes wonder whether he has ever had a negative thought in his entire life and, of course, his robust self-confidence has enabled him to make the enormous success of that life that he has.
“But his daughter Polly, I fear, was not so fortunate. As a small child, she was adorable, a blithe little lass without a care in the world. But as she got older, the shadows of her inheritance began to close in on her. The depression started to take over her life.”
“Just a minute,” Jude objected. “You talk about ‘the shadows of her inheritance’, but Polly has absolutely no connection to the Le Bonnier family. She was Ricky’s step daughter, not his genetic daughter.”
“I know that,” Flora replied patiently. “But I’m talking about ‘the Curse of the Le Bonniers’. It doesn’t just affect people who carry the ‘Bad Blood’ of the Le Bonniers in their veins. It affects everyone who becomes involved in the family.”
Jude’s credulity was being rather stretched by all this. Though Flora Le Bonnier’s narrative carried undoubted dramatic conviction, its contact with logic seemed very tenuous.
“So Polly,” the old actress went on, “became infected with bad luck as soon as she became part of the Le Bonnier clan. The Curse took its toll on her mother, too. It killed her.”
“Polly’s mother died of a drug overdose.”
“That was the means by which she died. What killed her was ‘the Curse of the Le Bonniers’. And then it reached out its tentacles to Polly, crushing her with depression, driving her into madness, and forcing her to follow the awful precedent of Giles Le Bonnier.”
After assimilating this, Jude said quietly, “So you think Polly started the fire at Gallimaufry?”
“What else is there to think?”
There was obviously quite a lot else to think, but Jude wondered whether there was any point in troubling Flora Le Bonnier with any of it. The old actress had made her mind up about her granddaughter’s death and, though the initial shock of her conclusions had hit her hard, she now was on the road to recovery. Until a definitive explanation of what had happened to Polly emerged, was there any necessity to mention the anomaly of the girl’s having been shot before the fire at Gallimaufry had been started? Jude decided that, on balance, there wasn’t. For the time being, she would allow Flora Le Bonnier to go along with her son’s suicide explanation of his stepdaughter’s death.
But as to the business about ‘the Le Bonnier Curse’, Jude didn’t believe a word of it. And, in spite of the compelling way Flora had spoken on the subject, Jude wondered whether the old actress really believed a word of it either.
She looked at the large watch strapped to her wrist by a wide ribbon. It was nearly one o’clock. As ever, when she was performing her healing routines, she had lost sense of time. “I must be off,” she said, rising and looking down at the old woman, whose body lay relaxed on the bed and whose eyelids were drooping. “I think you’ll sleep now. And I think when you wake up, you will feel hungry. Have something to eat then. You need to keep your strength up.”
“I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done.”
“No problem. Pleased to help.”
Flora Le Bonnier raised herself on her pillows and reached across to the bedside table. “Ricky’ll sort out what we owe you. But, please, take this.”
She picked up a copy of her autobiography, One Classy Lady, in two arthritic hands, using them as a seal might use its flippers. “Sadly, I am unable to inscribe this for you. My hands can’t grip a pen these days, which is a source of enormous frustration to me. But if I could write in the book, I would put: ‘To Jude, an infinitely welcome saviour in time of need, with love, Flora Le Bonnier.’”
Jude thanked her and left the room, knowing that by the time she reached the foot of the stairs, the old lady would be asleep.
As ever, when dealing with actors, Jude was aware of the potential for duplicity, and yet by the time she left Fedingham Court House she had become more convinced by Flora’s performance. Talk of ‘the Le Bonnier Curse’ was – to any outside scrutiny – complete nonsense, but the old actress had expressed what she believed to be the truth. In the taxi back to Fethering, however, Jude remembered Ricky warning her against believing Flora’s opinions about Polly’s death. What had he been afraid his mother would say? Something that might betray him?
Because, in spite of their mutual alibi about tending the wakeful Mabel with her ear infection, Ricky Le Bonnier headed Jude’s current list of suspects. And, regrettably, Lola was not far behind him.
Twenty-One
Normally Carole discouraged Gulliver from bringing anything back from Fethering Beach, fearing the introduction of unwanted ‘mess’ into the sacred precincts of High Tor. But the stick he had found that morning, and to which he shown such obvious attachment, seemed a harmless enough trophy. Scoured pale and smooth by long immersion in the sea and about a foot in length, it could have been purpose-built for ‘fetching’ games. Having scrutinized its every surface for the smallest fleck of tar, Carole allowed him to walk proudly home with the stick held in his jaws, and even to lie down and chew it in his favourite spot beside the Aga. Meanwhile, she busied herself around the house removing any motes of dust that might have dared to settle during the previous twenty-four hours.
The whine that brought her hurrying back to the kitchen was more aggrieved than distressed, but the sight that greeted her was not a pretty one. There seemed to be a disproportionate amount of blood over everything and it took her some time to locate the part of Gulliver’s body that was its source. Mopping with tea towels and kitchen roll eventually revealed that the blood was coming out of his mouth, prompting an immediate panic about an internal haemorrhage. This was assuaged when Carole spotted that the wound was actually on his gum, but seeing what had caused it gave rise to renewed anxiety.