‘If you’re not writing scripts in the Writers’ Group, what do you write?’
‘Very little. Or, to be more accurate, nothing. I went to a few meetings, but it wasn’t really for me. Full of old biddies who thought they could write poetry. Though actually I should be careful who I describe as “old biddies”. In this day and age, the phrase is no doubt sexist. What’s more, the people I’m referring to are probably the same age as I am.’
‘Is it the Writers’ Group who organized this evening with Al … Burton?’ asked Jude.
‘No, that’s the library staff. The Writers’ Group actually no longer exists. Apparently, got too expensive. Funding cuts, you know, hitting libraries hard. Places like this have to rely increasingly on volunteers.’
‘Like you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I saw you dutifully folding up chairs.’
‘Yes, and I came early to put them out too. Least one can do. Anyway, I think, once they couldn’t use the library, the Writers’ Group started meeting in people’s houses. Whether they still do, I don’t know. I rather lost interest. But the former members certainly knew all about this evening.’ He looked round. ‘There are a lot of them here.’ He focused his attention back on Jude. ‘You called him “Burton”. Does that mean you know him?’
‘I was a friend of his first wife’s. Used to see a lot of them at one point. We’re talking twenty years ago. I haven’t seen either of them for a while.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t think he needs other female friends now he’s got the immaculate Persephone.’ The man spoke with sly cynicism, and his words ambiguously contained the possibility that Jude’s relationship with the author might have been more than friendly.
Jude instantly picked up on that. ‘As I said, it was Megan who was my friend. I only met Burton through her.’
‘And are you saying he never came on to you?’
‘No, I’m saying that when he did come on to me, I gave him a very immediate and firm brush-off.’
‘Hm.’
‘The way you talk about him … I’m sorry, I don’t know your name …?’
‘Oliver. Oliver Parsons.’
‘I’m Jude.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Oh?’
‘Come on, we both live in Fethering. Almost everyone in the place knows the names of all the others, even if they’ve never actually met.’
‘True. So I’m surprised I don’t know yours. And surprised we haven’t met before. Or even seen you round the place before.’
‘I used to travel a lot when I was directing. And now maybe I keep myself to myself. My wife died a couple of years back. I think she must have been the social one in our partnership.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
He shrugged. ‘One recovers.’
‘Anyway, what I was going to say, Oliver, is that the way you talk about him, it sounds as if you know Burton.’
‘I don’t know him, but I know a lot about him.’
‘Oh?’
But he didn’t take the cue to open up as much as Jude had hoped. ‘As you may have gathered from my questions,’ he said, ‘I’m very interested in crime fiction.’
‘Yes.’ Jude didn’t feel inclined to admit at that moment what she knew about Burton’s earlier writing, probably under the pseudonym of Seth Marston. She still had some residual loyalty to him. She’d wait and see where Oliver Parsons was going with the subject.
‘I’ve made a bit of a study of the Golden Age,’ he went on. ‘You know, Twenties, Thirties …’
‘Christie, Sayers, that lot …’
‘Exactly. And some of the less well-known ones. Yes, I got quite caught up in it, the research and so on, at the start. Some of the murder methods and things are quite ingenious, but …’ The tailing-off of his words suggested that the appeal of the Golden Age was fading for him.
At this moment, further conversation was prevented by the arrival of Di Thompson, who had just emerged from the staff room, clutching a sheaf of printed sheets. ‘Sorry, forgot these,’ she said in a rather flustered manner. ‘Evaluation forms. If you could just fill them in to say what you thought of the evening …?’
‘Are we allowed to be honest?’ asked Oliver Parsons sardonically.
‘Well, of course,’ Di replied, clearly not skilled in picking up when someone was joking. ‘That’s the aim of the exercise. If you need a pen, Vix has got some over at the drinks table.’
‘No, it’s fine, I’ve got one.’ Oliver reached into his tweed jacket.
The just-mentioned Vix was now sidling over, trying to attract her superior’s attention. Jude noticed that, as well as the green hair and piercings, a red snake tattoo was crawling up the girl’s neck. Her voice was local West Sussex, whiny and slightly put-upon. ‘Di, don’t know what I should do. There’s this feller who keeps just filling up his wine glass and they’re only supposed to get one—’
‘I can’t be bothered with that now, I’m busy!’
The sharpness of the reaction surprised Jude. When she had introduced Burton at the beginning and then thanked him at the end, Di Thompson had seemed a mild, rather benign personality, but her mood had certainly changed. Or maybe Vix, the junior librarian, had always got on her boss’s nerves. There was a recalcitrance about the girl’s body language which suggested she might not be the easiest person in the world to work with.
But even as Jude had this thought, another explanation offered itself. The star of the evening, Burton St Clair, came out from the same door as Di and, as he insinuated his arm around her waist, said, ‘Well, how about a drink for me? I think I’ve deserved one.’
The way the librarian flinched, and the speed with which she disconnected herself, asking a sharp ‘Red or white?’, suggested that, however well he’d gone down with most of his female audience, here was one Fethering woman Burton St Clair had failed to charm.
FOUR
Burton St Clair asked for red wine and there was a moment of confusion while Vix Winter explained to her senior that there wasn’t any left on her table and she’d have to go back to the staff room to get some. Di, apparently unwilling to spend more time with the evening’s guest than she had to, said she’d come and help.
Burton St Clair directed at Jude what he would probably have defined as ‘a roguish smile’. ‘Long time no see. I’m so glad you made the effort to come to hear my modest presentation.’
‘No worries. I live just down the road.’
‘Funny. When we used to see a lot of each other, in what feels like another life, it never occurred to me you might end up in a backwater like Fethering.’
Jude shrugged. ‘It suits me very well.’
‘And what are you doing now? When we last met you were a restaurateur … or was it a model?’
‘I did a bit of both back then.’
‘And are you still …?’
His look suggested that Jude’s fuller figure might not now be so much in demand for fashion