met at six in Fethering’s only pub. Later in the year that might have been the time when Carole would be walking her Labrador, Gulliver, but in January it was virtually dark by four o’clock.
There was no doubt, from the minute the two of them walked in, about what the Crown & Anchor’s main topic of conversation was going to be that evening. The first words they heard from the shaggy-haired and bearded landlord Ted Crisp were, ‘So, either of you two know anything about this stiff up at the library?’
‘Why should we?’ asked Carole.
‘Well, you two are more in the range of literary types than me, aren’t you? Ex-stand-up comics don’t go in so much for the reading lark.’
‘I know no more than what we’ve heard on the radio.’
‘Ah. And does your intonation imply, by any chance, Carole, that, while you know no more, Jude perhaps does know more.’
‘That wasn’t what I meant to imply.’ But Carole still looked at her neighbour expectantly, as if prompting some revelations.
The uncomfortable moment was interrupted by an accented voice saying, ‘For heaven’s sake, Ted. Are you forgetting what a landlord’s job is? You are meant to ask your customers what they would like to drink.’
It was his Polish bar manager Zosia, of permanent blonde pigtails and normally permanent smile. Jude noticed, however, that that evening the girl’s usual sparkle was absent. There was a sadness in her pale blue eyes. Jude, a creature of instant compassion, made a mental note.
Zosia had arrived in Fethering following the murder of her brother Tadeusz, and had become a fixture as bar manager of the Crown & Anchor. It was her efficiency, together with the culinary skills of the chef, Ed Pollack, which had transformed a shabby local into one of the go-to destinations on the South Coast. The hostelry had even been described by some online travel guides, in a term Ted Crisp loathed, as a ‘gastropub’.
‘I don’t have to ask these two what they want to drink,’ the landlord protested. ‘It’ll be a couple of large Sauvignon Blancs, won’t it?’
‘Well, if you know what they’re going to drink, there’s nothing to stop you pouring them out, is there?’ Zosia tutted and sighed in a mock put-upon manner. ‘I’ll do it.’ She reached for a bottle from the ice-filled tub on the counter.
The diversion had given Jude a moment to plan her response. Still feeling the shock of what had happened, she had no desire once again to go through the events of the night before. So, with a convincing giggle, she said, ‘You shouldn’t be asking us, Ted. We are, after all, in the Crown & Anchor, a much more efficient source of rumour and conspiracy theories than Facebook or Twitter. Compared to that, we know nothing. I’m sure you heard a few speculations about the death at lunchtime.’
‘You’re not wrong there. Yes, everyone had their own view of what had happened.’
‘I’m surprised they even knew about it,’ said Carole. ‘We heard the news on The World at One.’
Jude flashed a quick smile of gratitude at her neighbour, who could easily have opened a whole can of worms by saying how the information had come into Woodside Cottage. But Jude knew she only had a brief reprieve before all Fethering would know about her connection to Burton St Clair. The news of the body’s discovery had spread quickly, no doubt originating from Vix Winter, Di Thompson or someone else working at the library. It was only a matter of time before the knowledge of who had joined Burton in his BMW at the end of the evening was also revealed to the village.
For the time being, though, Jude knew she had to maintain her mask of insouciance. ‘So, give us the headlines, Ted,’ she said. ‘Don’t bother with the really wacky ones. Just tell us what Fethering’s current theories are about the death?’
‘Well, obviously, it’s a murder …’
‘Why “obviously”?’ asked Carole.
‘Because that’s the way the good citizens of Fethering think. Basically, they’ve watched too much television. They’ve already named the case “The Body in the Library”.’
‘Oh, bad luck,’ said Jude. ‘I think they’ll find that title’s been used.’
‘And, anyway,’ Carole picked up, ‘it’s inappropriate. The body was not found in the library. It was found outside the library.’
Seeing that Ted was about to ask how her neighbour knew that, Jude came quickly in with, ‘Doesn’t have the same ring, does it? “The Body Outside the Library”? Anyway, who does Fethering reckon committed this ghastly crime?’
‘Oh, they wheeled out the usual suspects. Russian intelligence agents, Romanian drug traffickers, Chinese triads from Brighton … And, of course, there were the regular moans about travellers and migrants – legal or illegal.’
Jude noticed a tiny reaction to Ted’s last words from Zosia, who was standing behind him. She hoped that didn’t indicate the bar manager had suffered any recent slights about her nationality. Though the nice middle-class people of Fethering liked to think of themselves as liberal and tolerant, the undercurrent of racial feeling in the village could all too easily come to the surface. Antisemitism sometimes reared its ugly head, and discussions of immigration could all too quickly lead to a kind of kneejerk xenophobia … though of course in Fethering all such thoughts were expressed in the best possible taste.
‘So,’ asked Carole, ‘no theories about the death that sounded vaguely plausible?’
‘Ah now, I didn’t say that. There were a couple of very interesting theories put forward, of course unimpeded by any knowledge of the facts …’
‘… as is customary in the speculations of Fethering …’
‘Exactly, Carole, yes. Well, a theory that was put forward quite convincingly by one of the lunchtime regulars – don’t think you know him, tends to spend his evenings in the Yacht Club. Anyway, he said that the victim, whoever he was, was a writer—’
‘That’s true.’
‘And he’d just had a big success with some book …’
‘Stray Leaves in Autumn.’
‘Title doesn’t mean anything to me. I’m not much of a reader. Anyway, this Hercule Poirot of the Yacht Club, he reckoned that the murder must’ve been done out of jealousy by a less successful author. He says that kind of thing’s always happening in literary circles.’
‘And he doesn’t base this on any inside knowledge?’ asked Carole.
‘No inside knowledge, no outside knowledge, no knowledge of any kind – like I said, as usual in Fethering.’
‘Yes.’
‘You mentioned “a couple of theories”,’ said Jude. ‘What was the other one?’
‘Right. This was some American woman sounding off.’
‘Did you know her, Ted?’
‘Never seen her before in my life. Anyway, she said that this kind of murder is almost always domestic, and it always
