Poisoning in the Pub, The. Simon Brett

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      ‘Next time we’re in the Crown and Anchor,’ said Jude with a grin, ‘we ask him.’

      ‘Oh.’ Carole’s expression showed that she regarded this as far too frontal an approach. Once again she was glad to move the conversation along. Particularly glad to be moving it on to the one important gobbet of news she had been hoarding till it would have its fullest dramatic impact. ‘I did actually find out something else at the pub at lunchtime …’

      ‘Oh?’

      And Carole told Jude about Ray having been unmonitored in the kitchen while Ted, Ed and Zosia had shifted the beer barrels in the Crown and Anchor’s cellar.

      ‘You say Ted didn’t mention that to the Health and Safety people?’

      ‘No. He suddenly got all protective about Ray. Almost crusading about how society treats people like that. I must say, it was a side of Ted I had never seen before.’

      ‘Not even when you and he—?’

      ‘Never,’ said Carole, firmly stopping that train of thought in its tracks.

      ‘Well, it sounds like we ought to speak to this Ray.’

      ‘If we can find him. Ted wouldn’t give me his address.’

      ‘No, but we know he lives in a flat in a block for other people with special needs. And there can’t be many of those in Fethering.’

      ‘So you think you could track him down, Jude?’

      ‘I’m sure I could. Fortunately I have very good contacts in the local social services. If I could just use your phone, I’ll try—’

      But that line of enquiry was at least temporarily postponed by the sound of High Tor’s front doorbell.

      Both women recognized the man whom Carole ushered through into the back garden, though neither of them had ever met him socially. It was impossible to live in Fethering for any length of time without knowing who he was. He was present at every public event, and more weeks than not there was a photograph of him in the Fethering Observer. The place was not big enough to have a mayor, but it did have a village committee, and the chair of that was Greville Tilbrook.

      Like Carole Seddon, he was a retired civil servant, though she knew from contacts within the organization that he’d never reached even as high up the system as she had. But he was one of those men whose entire life seemed to have been waiting for the blossoming that would attend retirement. For some years while still employed he had been a Methodist lay preacher, but when he gave up the day job he was soon climbing other local hierarchies. He was a leading light of the Conservative Association, on the committees of Fethering Yacht Club, the Fethering Historical Society and the local Probus Club (for retired professional and business people).

      He was a living warning, an embodiment of the truth that a colleague had told Carole before she moved permanently to Fethering: ‘If you live in the country, never volunteer for anything, or you’ll end up doing everything.’ It was advice she had stuck by, and it had served her well.

      But of course Greville Tilbrook’s personality was very different from hers. He positively loved civic responsibility. In retirement he was having the time of his life.

      He was dressed that evening in his uniform of pale-grey … well, they could only really be called ‘slacks’ … and soft brown loafers. As a gesture to informality and the July weather, he had removed his blue-striped seersucker jacket and swung it roguishly over his shoulder in distant recollection of some photograph he’d seen of Frank Sinatra. This revealed a short-sleeved pale-blue shirt, round whose neck was a neatly knotted tie bearing the insignia of one of the many organizations he belonged to. Under his jacket-carrying arm he nursed a leather document case.

      Though coming from very different backgrounds and values, Carole and Jude had both, before meeting Greville Tilbrook, thought he would turn out to be a right pain. And so it proved.

      In all his various committees, Greville Tilbrook dealt with a lot of mature women, whom he treated with a gallantry that bordered on the flirtatious. Though there was a Mrs Tilbrook somewhere locked away in a secure marriage and pension, her husband did see himself as a bit of a non-practising ladies’ man. And he set out to exercise his self-defined fatal charm on the two women in the garden of High Tor. (The two women in question, it should be mentioned, found themselves strangely impervious to that charm.)

      ‘I’m so sorry to disturb you ladies,’ he said after he had been introduced to Jude and refused the offer of a glass of wine, ‘on an evening of such exceptional beauty – not to mention two ladies of such exceptional beauty – but I’m sure you, like me, as residents of this delightful village of Fethering are as committed as I am – well, possibly less committed than I myself am, due to the nature of the official positions which, for my sins, I represent within this community – but still committed to the maintenance of the loveliness of the region – to call it “God’s own acre” might be by some thought to be excessively poetic, and yet why not be poetic when one has the good fortune to live within the environs of such a delightful area …’

      God, both women thought as he droned on, does he actually know how to finish a sentence?

      And then suddenly they were both aware of silence. Greville Tilbrook was looking at them quizzically. He must finally have got to the end of his sentence and asked a question.

      ‘I’m sorry? What did you say?’ asked Carole and Jude together.

      ‘I said: “Is that what you want to happen to Fethering?”’

      After a unison ‘Umm …’ Carole had the presence of mind to ask, ‘But do you think it’s likely to?’

      ‘I think it could be the beginning of the, as it were, thin end of a very slippery slope, and I feel it’s my civic responsibility, with my Fethering-Village-Committee hat on, to alert my fellow residents to this menace.’

      Short of admitting they hadn’t been listening, neither woman could think of an appropriate supplementary question, but fortunately Greville Tilbrook was not the kind of man who needed prompting to continue his monologue. ‘And I’m not speaking now with my Methodist-lay-preacher hat on – though I could be – but I’m sure there are some residents of this delightful village who would have objections on religious grounds, because the Sabbath, even in these benighted times, is, I am glad to say, still respected by some as a special day – and do we really want that special day to be tarnished by blasphemy and filthy language?’

      Carole and Jude, still clueless as to what he was talking about, agreed that they didn’t want the Sabbath tarnished by blasphemy and filthy language. But Greville Tilbrook’s next words did make the purpose of his visit absolutely clear. ‘It’s not the first time that there has been cause to complain about goings on at the Crown and Anchor, because although I am in no way a killjoy – I enjoy the benefits of fellowship just as much as a pub-goer does, though my personal preference is to conduct such conversations over a cup of tea or coffee rather than anything stronger, the fact remains that the unbridled consumption of alcohol can lead to a certain amount of rowdiness – I’m sure you’ve read in the papers about the modern curse of “binge-drinking”, particularly amongst the young, and that kind of thing can easily spread in the, as it were, environs of a public house … and there have been complaints from residents about the noise at closing time, drunken shouting, the slamming of car doors and so on …’

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