Guns in the Gallery

‘So that’s what you think, is it?’ Gray Czesky spat out the words.

‘Yes, that’s what I bloody think. And if you want to make something of it—’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, will you all shut up!’

The words were spoken in a shriek, and it took a moment before the spectators could believe that they had issued from the lips of Bonita Green. They turned in amazement towards the diminutive figure of the gallery-owner as she went on, ‘This entire evening has been ruined! Probably the Cornelian Gallery has been ruined by all this shouting and insults and accusations.’

She moved towards the back of the shop with considerable dignity. ‘I am going upstairs to my flat. And when I come down here tomorrow morning, Giles, I am relying on you to have all the rubbish in here cleared out.’

‘Just a minute,’ said Denzil, cheated for the moment of one fight but eager to find another. ‘When you use the word “rubbish”, do you—’

‘Yes, Mr Willoughby,’ said Bonita Green rather magnificently as she left the room, ‘I do include your work.’

NINE

‘I think we should go glamping,’ Fennel Whittaker announced, as Jude brought the Mini to a neat halt on the gravel in front of Butterwyke House.

‘I think we should get you to bed,’ said Jude, trying not to sound too much like a nanny.

‘Fine, but why not to bed in a yurt?’

‘Well . . .’

‘Go on. I want to.’ It was the urgent pleading of a small child.

‘But Walden opens tomorrow.’ Jude looked at the girl shrewdly. ‘This isn’t a plan to mess up Chervil’s big day, is it?’

‘No, of course it isn’t. I wouldn’t do anything like that. I’ve got nothing against Chervil.’

‘You seemed to have back at the Private View.’

‘What? When I . . .’ Her hand shot up to her mouth in consternation. ‘Oh my God! Did I actually slap her?’

‘Yes, you did. Surely you remember?’

‘It’s all a bit of a haze. I was so determined to be articulate in what I wanted to say to Denzil that I didn’t notice much else that was going on.’

‘You had also had far too much to drink,’ said Jude severely.

‘Yes, you’re right. I had,’ agreed Fennel, for a moment a contrite schoolgirl. But the mood didn’t last for long. Waving the nearly empty bottle she had brought from the Cornelian Gallery, she cried, ‘And now I need some more!’ She opened the passenger door and tottered out on to the gravel. ‘I’ll just go and raid Daddy’s wine cellar . . . and then . . . I’ll go and sleep in a yurt!’

Jude was for a moment uncertain what to do. She knew that, in her current mood, Fennel would not take kindly to being coerced into bed. But she also knew the fragility of the girl’s temperament. The high Fennel was on was a big one and when she came down from it she was going to have a nasty hangover, both alcoholic and emotional.

Jude decided the best thing she could do was to stay with the girl, try to be there to help when the mood changed, as it inevitably would. And if that meant spending a night in a yurt . . . well, she’d never spent a night in a yurt before and Jude was always up for new experiences. She hadn’t got transport back to Fethering, anyway.

She took out her mobile to tell Carole what she was doing, but was prevented by the return from the house of a meandering Fennel, clutching a wine bottle in either hand. It was the same Argentinian Malbec that they’d been drinking at the Private View. Jude got out of the Mini to greet her.

‘Forward!’ cried Fennel in the manner of a valiant crusader. ‘To the yurts!’

Carole got back to High Tor, her mind buzzing with everything that had happened at the Cornelian Gallery. She was very glad she had finally agreed to go to the Private View. She wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

But while Gulliver welcomed her return with his usual display of undiscriminating affection, there was still something that nagged at Carole. Where was Jude? Landline and mobile were checked, but there was no message or text.

Carole felt sure it was a man. Quite when her neighbour had had the opportunity to meet a man at the Private View and to go through the minimum conversation required before an agreement to sleep together, Carole didn’t know. But that remained her strongest suspicion.

She remembered how bad she had felt the other time when Jude had gone off on a one-night stand, that awful teenage sensation of having been abandoned by a best friend. Carole went to bed that night with a mix of emotions, half disapproval, half envy.

Jude woke with a head as fuzzy as the sheets of felt that covered the lattice framework of the yurt. She was still dressed in yesterday’s clothes, but she’d slept deeply and her surroundings were surprisingly comfortable. The thread count of the bedding was luxuriously high and all the other fittings were straight from the top drawer. Since glamping seemed to bear no relationship to the sodden indignities of real camping, Jude thought she could quite get used to the idea.