Jude touched the smooth old wood of the carved Tudor rose. “This one?”
“Yes. Daddy turned it and there was a little Hiding Things place.”
Jude turned it. The mechanism moved smoothly. A section of dark skirting board projected into the room, revealing a drawer about the size of a shoebox.
Inside, as anticipated, was Woolly Monkey.
But beneath him was something Jude could not have anticipated – a fluorescent pink mobile phone sock.
Thirty-Two
Carole had dropped Jude a little way up the road from the Le Bonniers’ house. She didn’t want to be seen as she delivered their babysitter. Driving back to Fethering in the Renault she was weighed down by a deep sense of frustration. She felt sure the secrets that might unlock the case lay with the inhabitants of Fedingham Court House, and she feared she was being excluded from a vital stage of the investigation.
Back at High Tor Gulliver, the eternal optimist, looked up at her in hope of a walk, but he was unlucky. His mistress didn’t seem even to see him as she sat with a coffee at the kitchen table, her brows furrowed with concentration.
It wasn’t that she didn’t have another lead to follow up. Jude’s conjecture in the car meant that the next port of call had to be Kath. The idea that Ricky’s loopy ex-wife was harbouring Old Garge in her flat might be nonsense, but all other investigative routes passed through Fedingham Court House. Jude might well be making great advances there, but, for Carole, Kath offered the only way forward.
Short of sitting in the Crown and Anchor every lunchtime on the off-chance that the woman might turn up, the only potential contact they had was through Kath’s work at Ayland’s. And was there anyone in this idle and benighted country, thought Carole, who still worked on New Year’s Day?
On the other hand, though very few people worked between Christmas and New Year, Ayland’s bookkeeper had been there on the Monday. Keen sailors would need access to the boatyard on New Year’s Day – indeed, it might be quite busy on a public holiday – so there was a reasonable chance that Kath might be on duty again. The problem was: what cover story could Carole invent to justify her enquiries? This worried her, because the only solutions she could think of involved lying, and Carole Seddon didn’t have her neighbour’s glib facility in that dark art.
Still, if it came to a choice between lying and making no further progress on the case…All she needed was the woman’s address. Carole picked up the phone.
Her luck was in, at first. The phone at Ayland’s was answered, and it was answered by a woman. We haven’t talked to each other, so she won’t recognize my voice, Carole reassured herself. A ‘Kath’ must be short for Katherine, mustn’t it? But it might not be, so safer not to take the risk. From Jude’s reports of the woman’s continuing attachment to her ex-husband, she was bound to have kept his surname. Carole took a deep breath and went into unfamiliar lying mode.
“Is that Mrs Le Bonnier?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry to trouble you on a public holiday…”
“Don’t worry. As you can gather, I’m in at work.”
“Yes.” Time for the big lie (though it was something that had once been true). “I’m from the Home Office…” Time for the even bigger lie – “and I’m running a check on an asylum seeker.”
“I don’t know any asylum seekers.”
“No, I thought you probably wouldn’t, but I’m running this check because the man in question, who comes from Somalia, has given your address as where he will be staying in the UK.”
“That’s absurd. I’ve never met anyone from Somalia. How on earth would he have got my name and address?”
“From the phone book. It’s quite a common trick. They just pick a name and address in the area where they hope to settle. Some chancers got away with it a few years back, but we’re wise to them now.” Carole sighed wearily. “But we still have to run these checks. Even on public holidays.”
“Well, as I say, I have never offered shelter to an asylum seeker – from Somalia or anywhere else. Is that all you need me to say?”
“Yes, thank you. All I have to do now is confirm your address.”
“Flat two, seventy-three River Road, Fethering. I can never remember the post code.”
“Don’t worry. I can check that out to complete the paperwork. Well, thank you very much for your co-operation, Mrs Le Bonnier. And may I wish you a happy New Year.”
She’d done it! She’d lied at least as successfully as Jude would have done. Now a trip to River Road was in order.
Ignoring Gulliver’s pathetic pleas to be taken with her, Carole went into the hall to get her coat. Replacing the handset on the telephone table, she had a thought. If a fictional Somalian asylum seeker could find Kath’s address in the phonebook…
‘K Le Bonnier’ and her address were listed in the Worthing telephone directory. As she left High Tor Carole Seddon felt rather sheepish.
River Road, as its name might suggest, ran along the side of the Fether. Though defended by a highly embanked towpath, the roadway occasionally got flooded at times of heavy rain and freak tides. Acknowledging this danger, some of the houses had protective low stone barriers across their front gateways.
Carole eased the Renault into a parking space a little way away from number seventy-three, and looked across at the building. It had a thatched roof, and many layers of whitewash had smoothed the irregularities of what were almost definitely flint walls. The building was very low and Carole was struck by how cramped the two flats into which it had been divided must be. Fine, perhaps, for Kath, who was very short, but less comfortable for people of standard size.
As she had this thought, she saw the shadow of someone cross in front of one of the cottage’s tiny upstairs windows.
The question Carole hadn’t considered was, if Old Garge was in Kath’s flat, was he there of his own volition or was he a prisoner? The windows looked too small to let a grown man’s body through, so maybe he was locked in.
Only one way to find out. She got out of the Renault, wrapped her coat firmly round her, and marched across the road to the entrance of seventy-three River Road. Stepping over the flood defence, she found herself faced by two identical black doors, both with well-polished brass knockers. She raised the one belonging to Flat Two and heard the reverberations of her summons echo through the cottage.
There was a long silence, so long that she thought maybe her quarry had been given instructions to lie low. But then she heard the creaking thud of heavy footsteps coming down the stairs. The door opened and Old Garge stood facing her.
“Carole, we meet again. Am I to assume that you want our conversation to pick up from when we were so rudely interrupted?”
“If that’s agreeable to you, Rupert,” she said, deciding that she’d had enough of the Old Garge business.
“That would rather depend, Carole, on the reason for your interest.”
“What do you mean?”
“I would be breaking the terms of my residence here if you were anything to do with the police.”
“I can assure you I have nothing to do with the police.”
“I was assuming that was the case, but I had to be certain.” He backed away from the small doorway, through which he could not have passed without stooping, and gestured to Carole to precede him on the way upstairs.
Going through the open door of the flat and a small hall, she found herself in a low, black-raftered room which seemed to be a shrine to Ricky Le Bonnier. The walls were covered with blown-up photographs of him, but not of the Ricky Le Bonnier of recent years. All of them dated back to the late sixties, the time when he had been married to Kath, the time of her greatest happiness, the time in which she had been stuck ever since. For the first time, as she looked around that room, Carole thought her joking reference to Miss Havisham might not be so far from the truth.