“Yes, maybe, but…Just a minute, have the police actually questioned you?”
“We did have a brief conversation. Up in my room in Downside.”
“Why not here?”
“As I may have indicated, my presence here may not conform to every last detail of certain regulations. I wouldn’t wish to add the constabulary’s not inconsiderable workload by forcing them to investigate my circumstances. So I thought it would save trouble all round were I to tell them I had spent very little time here over the Christmas period.”
“So you said you weren’t here the night Gallimaufry burnt down?”
“That was exactly what I told them, yes. They had no reason to disbelieve me.”
“Whereas, in actual fact, you were here?”
“You’re a woman of very acute perception, Carole.”
She knew she was being sent up, but was too excited to let it worry her. “Why did you lie to the police?”
Her question seemed to pain him. “It has been my experience that it is always wise to minimize one’s contact with them.”
Had she been less preoccupied by the details of Gallimaufry’s incineration, Carole might have enquired into the reasons behind his reply, but instead, breathlessly, she asked, “Did you see anything that night, Rupert?”
He gestured once again towards the window, through which the blackened ruins of Gallimaufry were clearly visible. “Hard to miss a major conflagration at this distance.”
“So what did you see?”
He was silent and looked at her. The shrewdness in his eyes was so penetrating she once again had to turn away. “Why should I tell you, Carole?”
“You must have told other people. Surely it’s impossible to talk to any of the Fethering Beach Dog-walking Mafia without the subject coming up?”
“The subject certainly comes up and I’m certainly prepared to listened to other people’s theories about it – mostly the theories of Derek Tallis, it has to be said – but I haven’t as yet contributed much of my own to the debate.”
“But there must have been things you saw that night.”
“I’m not denying it. All I’m saying is that I’m very selective about who I’m prepared to share that information with.” Their eyes locked. Yet again it was Carole who looked away first.
“Why are you so selective?” she asked meekly.
“Because the stakes are quite high, aren’t they? When there might be a murder involved. I mean, say I have information that could send someone down for life?”
Carole couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Have you?”
“Let’s keep our discussion in the world of hypothesis for the moment, shall we? But say I did have such information. Whether I share it or not raises rather a substantial moral dilemma.”
“There’s really no dilemma. Relevant information should be passed on to the investigating authorities,” said Carole with the pious rectitude of someone who’d spent all her working life in the Home Office.
“No, I’m sorry, I don’t hold with moral absolutes like that. The question I ask myself is: ‘Who’s likely to be harmed by my passing on this information?’ Is it someone who I think deserves to suffer, or is it someone for whom I feel sympathy?”
“You mean someone who you feel you should protect?”
“Yes, Carole, exactly. That is the question that is currently exercising my mind – and my conscience, and – ”
“But if you actually saw – ”
“And”, he continued firmly, “I haven’t yet decided whether my instinct to protect someone is stronger than the call of my civic duty.”
“But can’t you at least tell me who you’re feeling the instinct to protect?”
“Oh, Carole…” He shook his head pityingly. “You’ll have to do better than that. Were I to tell you the name of the person who might need protection, you’d know almost the whole story, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, but a young woman has died here and everyone has a moral duty to – ”
Her appeal was interrupted by a brisk rapping on the hut door. As they looked towards it, Piers Duncton entered, the habitual cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He reacted with a narrowing of the eyes to Carole’s presence, but his words were for the benefit of Old Garge – or maybe Rupert Sonning.
“I’ve just come from Lola’s,” he said. “The police are on their way to interview you.”
Twenty-Five
As she drove to the vet’s, Carole tried to find explanations for what had happened at the beach hut after Piers’s arrival. She had been unceremoniously sent on her way, and, when she left, the young man was also chivvying Old Garge to gather up his belongings and leave. The actor raised no objections, evidently as keen as Piers was that he should get out of the place. Presumably the reason for his departure was to avoid further interrogation from the police. And he had dropped that clue about trying to minimize his contact with the constabulary – was that because he’d had uncomfortable experiences with them in the past? Everything that had happened in Pequod again raised the intriguing questions of how much Old Garge knew and whom he was trying to protect. Carole, having come so close to hearing the actor’s account of Gallimaufry’s burning-down, felt acutely frustrated at being denied her breakthrough on the case.
She didn’t see Saira Sherjan at the vet’s. Gulliver was brought out by one of the green-clad nurses while Carole paid the receptionist the usual eye-watering bill. The dog seemed none the worse for his hospitalization, and greeted his mistress with heart-warming enthusiasm. She was advised that he should have no adverse reactions to the surgery, but she should try for a week to keep him from eating dried food and chewing bones or sticks, to give the gum a chance to heal.
Gulliver seemed very pleased to be back in High Tor and wolfed down the plate of (soft) dog meat that Carole put in front of him. He then sat up, his tail thumping on the floor, with an expectant look which she knew well. The dog was telling her that he hadn’t had a decent walk in the last twenty-four hours, and she had a moral duty to rectify that state of affairs as soon as possible.
Carole was sorry to disappoint him, but telling Jude about her morning’s encounters was a more pressing priority. So pressing that she even went round to Woodside Cottage without ringing first to say she was coming.
Jude tapped her chin thoughtfully. “I wonder…”
“What?”
“Well, it’s fanciful…and it would probably be too neat to have happened in real life…but wouldn’t it be great if we found out that Rupert Sonning was Ricky Le Bonnier’s father?”
“He admitted that he and Flora had worked together,” said Carole cautiously.
“Yes, though as we well know, women don’t have babies by all the men they work with. Even in the theatre, where a certain laxity of moral standards has always been the norm. But the timing could be about right.” And Jude told Carole about the relevant movie history she had read in One Classy Lady. “You say Old Garge mentioned being in some Gainsborough costume movies after the war. Late nineteen-forties – that’d be about the time Ricky was born. Hm…Pity you didn’t ask whether he and Flora had ever been an item.”
“I virtually did, though not at the time realizing quite how important the question might be. I wasn’t contemplating the possibility that he might be Ricky’s father. Anyway, the only answer I got from him on the subject was a diplomatic one, which admitted nothing.”
“Oh, it’d probably be too much of a coincidence.” Jude sounded almost dispirited. “But it all comes back to Fethering, somehow. Ricky was brought up around here by an aunt. He went to school here, which is where he met Kath. And now he comes back to live near here. Then you say Old Garge also has long-term connections with the place. What about Flora? She must have come here sometimes to visit Ricky as a child. And if the aunt who looked after him was her sister…”