Simon Brett - The Stabbing in the Stables

“Yes, I suppose it might.” But Carole was desperate to find out more about the circumstances of Walter Fleet’s death. A murder investigation was the only thing that promised to take her mind off the subject of Stephen’s marriage. “I’m just so intrigued by it all.”

“Me too. Mind you, no doubt we’ll soon hear that the police have made an arrest and the case is solved.”

“Well, we haven’t heard it yet, have we?”

“No.”

“Oh, but there was something. On the news.” And Carole related what she had heard about the Horse Ripper’s activities near Horsham. “It’s such a horrible crime. Why do people do it, Jude?”

“I don’t know. I’m quite interested in it, though.”

“What a disgusting thing to be interested in.”

“Maybe. But human behaviour fascinates me, what brings people to do the things they, and particularly the appalling things. I’ve been making a note of the dates for these local horse mutilations and collecting the newspaper cuttings. I must get the Fethering Observer — it’s sure to report this latest one.”

“But why are you doing it?”

“I’m just getting data together, trying to see if any pattern emerges.”

“What kind of pattern?”

“I don’t know. Responses to the lunar cycle, international events…anything that might make sense of the senseless.”

“But horses…horses never do anyone any harm. Why on earth do these people do it?”

“There are as many theories as there are psychologists. Some researches have suggested there’s a link to paedophilia. Personally, I find that quite convincing.”

Carole shuddered. “There are some disgusting people about, aren’t there?”

“Oh yes.” But Jude was always going to take a less rigid view of such matters. “There are also a lot of people about who suffer enormously from instincts that the world finds unacceptable, and over which they themselves have very little control.”

“What-are you making excuses for paedophilia?”

“I’m not making excuses for it. I’m just saying it must be very difficult to go through life with feelings the entire world despises.”

“Huh.” Although Carole was a Times reader, there was, at bottom, a lot of Daily Mail in her.

But she was still hungry for the displacement activity of investigation. “Isn’t there anyone else we know who’s got something to do with the Long Bamber Stables set-up? Don’t we have any other contacts?”

“Don’t think we do, I’m afraid. We could ask Ted Crisp. A lot of people come and go through the Crown and Anchor. He might have heard something.”

“Yes…”

“Or, of course, we do know where we can find Imogen’s mother.”

“Oh, really? How do we know that?”

“Sorry, I forgot to tell you. Imogen told me that her mother works at the checkout at Allinstore.”

Carole’s knee-jerk reaction was characteristically snobbish. “Really? I thought, from what you’d said, that they were a nice middle-class family.”

“Divorce has unfortunate effects even on nice middle-class families. I gather Imogen’s mother is doing it for the money.”

“But it’s an extremely public way of earning money. I mean, everyone in Fethering sees you sitting at a checkout. It’s very humiliating.”

Jude thought about this. From what she’d heard of Hilary Potton, she wouldn’t be surprised if she’d sought out that kind of humiliation, a public martyrdom to show all of Fethering the straits to which her husband’s behaviour had reduced her. She shared the thought with Carole. “Anyway,” she concluded, “Mrs. Potton, so far as we know, has only the most tenuous of links to Walter Fleet. I mean, her daughter rides at Long Bamber, but that’s about it.”

“Maybe, Jude, but tenuous links are all we seem to have at the moment.” Carole rose and picked up her handbag. “Anyway, as it happens, there are a few things I need from Allinstore. I’m going straight down there.”

The building must have been converted from something else; it couldn’t have been designed as a supermarket, unless by an architect who was either incompetent or had a wicked sense of humour. The large pillars that supported the roof seemed to have been placed where they would cause maximum obstruction to the smooth flow of shoppers. Some vindictive expert in space management had elected to put the tills directly behind two of them, so that most people seemed destined to make their purchases sideways.

An equally dead hand was in charge of the supermarket’s stock. Shelves were either overloaded with the things nobody ever wanted, or empty of the products everyone required. Carole Seddon used Allinstore infrequently. Her major shopping was done in one weekly foray to Sainsbury’s. She only resorted to the local supermarket when she had run out of something. And, given the strict way in which she organised her life, she very rarely did run out of anything. Jude, amongst whose priorities housekeeping took a much lower rank, was a more regular visitor to Allinstore.

Still, there are certain rules of domestic life. You can never have too many tins of chopped tomatoes on your shelves. And an extra pack of kitchen rolls never goes amiss. More important, these were both products that could be little harmed by the supermarket’s erratic buying policy.

Carole put a four-pack of each into her basket and then, in a fit of wild spontaneity, added a bottle of fizzy spring water. It wasn’t a brand she had heard of, but it was commensurately cheap.

Identifying Hilary Potton was not too challenging a task. Only two of the tills were manned, and there was no way the spotty teenager with variegated hair and a nose stud had given birth to Imogen. So, even though the girl’s queue was shorter, Carole deliberately took her basket to the other one. Once there, the polite middle-class tones she heard as totals were announced left her in no doubt that she was on the right track.

Hilary Potton was strong-featured with thick, carefully shaped eyebrows and black hair cut fashionably short, the kind of woman to whom the words “striking” and “handsome” rather than “beautiful” would be applied. The blue Allinstore tabard didn’t do her any favours, but in a suit or well-cut leisurewear she would have looked very good.

There was only one customer in front of her before Carole, angling herself awkwardly around a pillar, had a little moment of panic. What was she going to say to this woman? What possible advance in her tenuous murder investigation did she hope she was going to achieve? Jude should have come; she’d be much better at creating a conversational bond. Why on earth had Carole decided to come to Allinstore in the first place?

Of course it didn’t matter. If she made her purchases without a word being exchanged, nobody would think anything odd. That was why people went into supermarkets. On the other hand, she wouldn’t have any trophy of information to take back in triumph to Jude. And Carole’s hypersensitive nature was beginning to think that Jude was already having the lion’s share of this investigation.

The other customer had left. Carole placed her basket in the bay designed for it and said fatuously, “Just essentials.”

“Ah, but those are the very things that are essential,” Hilary Potton responded.

This was promising. Not only a response, but one with an element of levity in it. Must build on this start.

“Mind you, I can never find all the essentials I need in here.”

The words came out stilted, and Carole regretted them as soon as they were spoken. Criticising the supermarket was probably not the best way of engaging in conversation with one of its employees.

Serendipitously, however, she had managed to say exactly the right thing. “Tell me about it,” said Hilary Potton, raising her eyes to heaven as she scanned Carole’s purchases. “I’m afraid I hardly ever shop here-can never find the stuff I want.”