Guns in the Gallery (3 page)

‘No,' Jude replied with a grin. ‘That's not the only way I meet people, you know.'

‘Of course not. Well, I met her this morning.'

‘For the first time?'

‘For the first time when we exchanged names, yes.'

Jude couldn't resist another grin. She never failed to be amused by her neighbour's social subterfuges.

‘So what do you know about her?' Carole went on.

‘Just that she's run the Cornelian Gallery for many years. I think she'd trained at the Slade a long time ago and worked full-time as an artist. At some point she got married and had a son, maybe there was another child, I'm not sure. And the husband . . . I can't remember . . . she either got divorced or was widowed and I think it was round then she started the gallery.'

‘I met the son this morning. Do you know him?'

‘I've met him casually.'

That was the way Jude met most people. Complete strangers found themselves suddenly in conversations with her. She was very easy to talk to, a good listener, so genuinely interested in other people that she very rarely needed to volunteer much information about herself. Carole Seddon felt a familiar pang of envy. She couldn't think of any occasions in her own life when she'd done anything
casually
.

‘What do you know about him?'

‘About Giles? Not a lot. Had some high-flying City job, got made redundant a few months back. And I think his marriage broke up round the same time. Local gossip has it that he's moved back in with his mother on a temporary basis.'

Again Carole felt peeved that she didn't seem to hear the same quality of local gossip as her neighbour did. But she supposed that to access it she'd have to change the habits of a lifetime and start talking to people she hadn't been introduced to. The kind of people to whom she gave no more than a ‘Fethering nod' on her morning walks with Gulliver.

‘Where does Bonita live then?'

‘In the flat over the shop.'

Carole pictured the High Street frontage of the Cornelian Gallery in her mind's eye. ‘Can't be much room in there for two of them.'

‘No, I gather it isn't an ideal arrangement.'

Carole was alert to the implication. ‘You mean they don't get on?'

‘I wouldn't say that, but I can't think it's an ideal situation for any mother in her sixties suddenly to have a son in his thirties around all the time.' Her neighbour waited patiently, sensing that Jude had more to tell. ‘Also I gather Giles has plans to work with Bonita in the business.'

Carole pointed to the invitation on the table. ‘Hence this?'

‘I'd say so, yes. Denzil Willoughby is rather different in style from the artists Bonita usually exhibits.'

A nod from Carole, as she looked at the twisted images on the invitation and mentally compared them to the innocuous watercolours she had seen on display in the Cornelian Gallery. ‘Well, you seem to know quite a lot about them,' she said, an edge of sniffiness in her tone.

Jude smiled. ‘I could tell you some more.'

‘Oh?' Carole didn't want to sound too eager.

‘There's another reason why Giles Green wants to be down here. His new girlfriend lives near Chichester.'

‘Do you know her too?'

‘I've met her. Girl called Chervil. I know her sister Fennel better.'

‘Chervil? Fennel? What happened? Did their parents have an accident with a spice rack?'

Jude giggled. ‘I don't know. There's certainly something hippyish about them. The parents, Ned and Sheena Whittaker, demonstrate that other-worldliness which only the very rich can afford. They have this big estate near Halnaker. Butterwyke House. And they're always experimenting with the latest ecological fad. Solar panels, wind turbines, organic gardening, they've done the lot. But, as I say, they can afford it, so good luck to them.'

‘Is it inherited money?' Carole was always intrigued by the very basic question of what people lived on.

‘No. The Whittakers made their pile in the nineteen-nineties' dot-com boom, and were lucky enough – or possibly shrewd enough, though I think it was luck – to get out before the whole thing went belly up. The result is they've got shedloads of money.'

‘And did you meet them through your healing?'

‘Yes. Ned put Fennel in touch with me.'

‘Ah. Right.' Carole didn't expect any more details. Jude was always very punctilious about client confidentiality. And while she continued to see Fennel Whittaker, a beautiful and talented artist with a crippling medical condition, she would never divulge the secrets of the sessions the two of them had shared in the front room of Woodside Cottage.

‘So Giles Green has a thing going with this Chervil?' asked Carole.

‘Yes. She used to work in the City too, but she's moved back down to Butterwyke House to help her parents in their latest business venture.'

‘Which is?'

‘“Glamping”.'

‘What on earth is “glamping” when it's at home?'

‘The word's a contraction of “glamorous” and “camping”.'

‘There's nothing glamorous about camping,' said Carole with a shudder. She remembered all too well the damp misery of holidays under canvas on the Isle of Wight with her parents. And equally watery experiences in France with David and Stephen, when they made yet another attempt to do things that they imagined normal families did. The awful smell of musty damp canvas came unbidden to the nose of her memory.

‘Well, there's quite a vogue for it now, Carole. Wealthy City folk getting what they imagine to be a taste of country life. Totally authentic experience . . . yurts with wood-fired stoves . . . not to mention gourmet chefs and sometimes even a butler thrown in.'

That prompted a ‘Huh' from Carole. Though she didn't vocalise it, another of her mother's regular sayings had come into her mind. ‘More money than sense'. Amazing how many things that could be applied to in the cushioned world of West Sussex.

‘Would you like to see it?' asked Jude.

‘See what?'

‘The glamping site at Butterwyke House.'

‘Why?'

Jude shrugged. ‘Interest. I'm going up there on Saturday. You're welcome to come if you want to.'

‘Why are you going there?'

‘Amongst the services offered to the happy glampers are a variety of alternative therapies. Sheena asked if I'd be interested in providing some of them. She's suggested the idea to Chervil. So I'm going up there to have a look round, see if it'll be suitable for me.'

‘Do you need the money?' asked Carole characteristically.

Another shrug. ‘One can always use a bit more money.'

This prompted another recurrent question in Carole's mind. What did Jude live on? Her lifestyle wasn't particularly lavish, and she never seemed to be hard up. But was there really that much profit to be had in the healing business? These were things that should have been asked when her neighbour first moved into Woodside Cottage. They now knew each other far too well for such basic enquiries to be made. Whenever she introduced someone new to Jude, Carole was always tempted to prime them beforehand to ask the relevant questions. But somehow it never happened.

‘Anyway, why should I come with you, Jude? You're not proposing I should masquerade as an acupuncturist, are you?'

‘No, I just thought you might want to have a look around.'

‘But how would you explain my presence?'

‘It wouldn't need any explanation. I'd just say, “Carole's a friend of mine. She wanted to have a look round, so she came along with me”.'

‘“Have a look round”? That sounds like snooping.'

‘Only to you it does. Look, Ned and Sheena are running this glamping as a commercial business. For all they know, you're a prospective client. You might want Stephen, Gaby and Lily to stay there at some point.'

‘Oh, I don't think so. Camping and Stephen never really did get along.'

‘Well, as I say, if you want to come with me to Butterwyke House on Saturday, fine. If you don't, equally fine.'

It was far too casual an arrangement to match Carole's standards, typical of her friend's vagueness in social matters. If the owners of Butterwyke House had actually invited Jude to take a friend along, that would have been entirely different. Carole was rather intrigued by the suggestion, though.

‘Anyway, what we need now,' announced Jude, ‘is two more of those large Chilean Chardonnays.'

‘Oh, I don't think we—'

‘Yes, we do,' said Jude as she sailed magnificently up towards the bar.

THREE

C
arole Seddon arrived at the Cornelian Gallery on the dot of ten thirty on the Thursday morning. As she prepared to leave High Tor, Gulliver had got very excited, thinking he was going to get another walk. When it was clear that wasn't on the cards, he went off and lay down reproachfully in front of the Aga. Soon be time to switch that off for the summer, thought Carole. Gulliver wouldn't like his source of warmth being removed either. His lugubrious expression seemed to anticipate future annoyances.

The gallery door had a sign on it saying ‘OPEN' and it gave when Carole pushed, but there was no one inside. Everything looked exactly the same as it had on the Monday. Maybe the odd Monet pencil sharpener had been sold, but all of the framed artworks were still in place on the walls. It was a long time, Carole began to think, since business had been brisk in the Cornelian Gallery.

She looked more closely at the Piccadilly snowscape on the wall and wondered why it intrigued her. The buses struggling up Regent Street were old-fashioned double-deckers, and the clothes of the red-faced people in the streets suggested the work had been done some thirty years before. There was something unusual about the sludginess of the scene, a quality which should have been depressing, but was perversely uplifting. She noticed the painting was signed in the corner with the initials ‘A.W.'

Carole waited, not quite sure what to do. Had there been a bell on the counter, she would have rung it. Someone more relaxed than Carole Seddon would probably have called out ‘Hello!' or ‘Anyone there?' or even ‘Shop!', but she only aspired to a couple of loud throat-clearings. There was no response.

The silence wasn't total, though. Sounds emanated from the closed door at the back of the gallery. Presumably Spider was there, working longer hours than his employer. Really, Carole reasoned, it was him she needed to see rather than Bonita. Spider was the one who was actually framing her photograph, after all, so it'd make sense for her to collect it from him.

Carole moved forward and tapped on the connecting door. The sounds from the other side abruptly ceased, but there was no answering voice. She tapped again, then boldly pushed the door open and stepped forward into the framing workshop.

It was a large space, probably twice the size of the gallery in front, full of machinery most of whose functions Carole could only guess at. The one she could identify was a huge guillotine mounted at the end of a large table. Fixed to one wall was a cabinet making a grid of deep pigeon holes, containing lengths of different framings. Against another different grades and sizes of glass were stacked. Like Spider's overalls, every space was splattered with paint and glue. There was a haze of white dust and a mixture of smells, among which newly cut wood predominated.

In the centre of the workshop stood the considerable bulk of Spider. The expression on his face suggested he didn't like having his inner sanctum invaded. He said no word of greeting to the intruder.

‘I'm Carole Seddon. I was in here on Monday with a photograph to be framed. Bonita said it would be ready today.' He still said nothing. ‘Is it ready?'

After a silence, he conceded two words to her. ‘It's ready.'

‘Well, Bonita doesn't seem to be around, so if I could just pick it up and sort out what I owe you . . .'

‘I don't deal with the money,' said Spider slowly. ‘Or the packing. Bonita does that.'

‘Oh, I don't need the photograph packed. I only live just up the High Street.'

‘Bonita does the packing,' Spider repeated. ‘I don't, like, want the responsibility. If something gets broken.'

‘I'm sure the photograph won't get broken between here and where I live? I wonder, could I see it . . .?'

Spider gave this proposition a long moment's thought. Then, apparently unable to see any harm in obeying it, he bent down to a rack of his recent work and extracted the framed photograph.

He had done a brilliant job. Lily looked wonderful. Carole couldn't wait to have the picture hanging in pride of place on her sitting room wall.

‘Oh, that's terrific! Thank you so much. Are you sure I can't just settle up with you and—'

‘Bonita deals with the money,' he insisted. His tone was not aggressive, but it couldn't be argued against. Carole wondered for a moment whether it was just she who prompted this reticence in the framer. But, though normally ready to detect the smallest slight, she quickly decided that it was just Spider's manner, a form of shyness perhaps, that he would display to whoever he met.

His body language made it clear that he wanted to be alone, but Carole lingered. Rather than asking her to leave, Spider turned pointedly back to his work. He picked up two pieces of wooden frame whose ends had been cut diagonally and lined up their edges together on one the bench-mounted machines. He depressed a foot pedal and a slight thump was heard. Then he picked up the two pieces of frame, now conjoined into a right angle.

‘Sorry, but what is that machine?' asked Carole.

‘Underpinner,' came the minimal reply.

‘And what does it do?'

‘Underpins,' replied Spider with, for the first time, a slight edge to his voice. Carole continued to look expectantly at him, so he provided a reluctant explanation. ‘Fixes the joint, like, with vee-nails.'