Guns in the Gallery

‘Of course.’ Jude semaphored across to the bar that she’d be back shortly. Carole started to semaphore back a supplementary question, but Jude and Ned Whittaker had already gone.

They sat in another of the Butterwyke House fleet of Prius hybrids. With the moon nearly full, it was a surprisingly clear night.

‘Fennel’s funeral is set for Wednesday week,’ Ned announced.

‘Yes, I heard that from Kier. I’ll try and make it.’

‘Don’t. It’s just going to be family. We’ll probably do a party for her later at Butterwyke, a kind of celebration of her life.’

‘That’d be good. Let me know when.’

‘Of course.’ There was a silence. Jude felt pretty sure that the funeral wasn’t what he really wanted to talk to her about. ‘Listen, Jude, you keep your ear pretty close to the ground round Fethering, don’t you?’

‘I hear things, yes. It’s a small community.’

‘Mm.’ Ned still wasn’t finding it easy to broach his subject. Then he leapt in. ‘Look, have you heard any people saying that Fennel was murdered?’

Inexplicably – and uncharacteristically – Jude felt guilty. She tried to think to whom, apart from Carole, she had confided her suspicion. Sam Torino, maybe . . . Except really it had been Sam who had raised the topic, rather than her.

She fell back on a platitude about people gossiping more than was good for them.

‘And what about you, Jude? Has the thought crossed your mind?’

Again this was awkward. ‘Ned, we’ve had this conversation before. When you came to see me at Woodside Cottage the Monday after Fennel’s death. We went through the whole thing.’

‘Yes, but I just wondered whether your thoughts on the subject had changed since then . . .?’

‘Not a lot, Ned. All I keep coming back to is the fact that when I last saw her, Fennel wasn’t behaving in the manner of someone about to kill herself. She positively said to do so would be a waste. And then again there was the matter of her missing mobile. Did you hear any more from the police about that?’

Ned Whittaker shook his head. ‘The police seem to have given up on the case. Apparently a suicide verdict suits them very well. Less paperwork, I guess. And they’ve released Fennel’s body for the funeral. So I would assume that means any investigations they’re undertaking are at an end. Probably just as well. The last thing I need at the moment is the cops trampling over my family with their insensitive hobnail boots.’

Jude thought back to her encounter with Detective Inspector Hodgkinson. ‘Insensitive hobnail boots’ was the last attribute she would have applied to that particular member of the police force. And in fact, if she were ever to find proof that Fennel Whittaker had been murdered, she would have had no hesitation in re-contacting Carmen Hodgkinson. Which had to be a first in Jude’s dealings with the police.

‘Anyway, Jude,’ Ned continued awkwardly, I guess why I wanted to talk to you was to ask . . . if you do have any further thoughts about Fennel having been murdered . . . could you keep them to yourself?’

Finally he’d come out with it. That had been the reason why he’d wanted to talk to her on her own, perhaps the only reason why he’d come over to the Crown and Anchor to witness Spider’s Elvis Presley act.

‘But I haven’t been spreading any rumours like that,’ Jude protested. ‘Who did you hear that from? Was it Sam Torino?’

Ned denied the allegation hotly, but Jude didn’t believe him. She couldn’t think of any other person he might know with whom she’d shared her suspicions. And she began to wonder even whether Ned had set up Sam Torino deliberately to sound out her views of Fennel’s death. She remembered the card the supermodel had given her. A call to that private mobile number at some point might be in order.

‘I’m not just saying this on my own behalf,’ Ned Whittaker volunteered. ‘I’m speaking for the whole family. We don’t want any gossip. Sheena’s particularly insistent on that.’

‘So is it Sheena who’s put you up to this – you know, warning me off?’

That suggestion was denied with equal vehemence, but again Jude got the feeling that she might have stumbled on the truth. Sheena Whittaker remained enigmatic, her only identifiable emotion seeming to be relief at her daughter’s death. Jude reckoned she and Carole should try to find out more about the dead girl’s mother.

She tried to get more out of Ned Whittaker, but without success. From his point of view, discouraging her from suggesting his daughter might have been murdered was the sole aim of their meeting. Why he was so worried about that happening he did not reveal. But, given the fact that the police had concluded their investigation, he seemed disproportionately anxious about the matter.

Which suggested to Jude that Ned had suspicions that someone he knew might be implicated in his daughter’s death. But who that person was, she had no idea.

TWENTY-FOUR