Free The Shooting in the Shop by Simon Brett Page A

talk to
me.’
    ‘What, you as a healer?’
    ‘No, no. Me as someone who gave a party which
Polly attended. Piers is desperate to work out what
happened to his girlfriend in the hours before she
died. He wonders whether she might have said anything
to someone she’d seen at the party, somethingthat might give a clue to what she was feeling, or what
she was planning to do.’
    ‘It’s funny, I was just thinking the same myself.’
    ‘Well, anyway, I said fine, he was welcome to
come here and ask me anything he wanted. Lola
sounded so relieved. I gather things are pretty tense
up at their place – one of the kids, Mabel, the little
girl, is laid up with an ear infection, one of the
Dalmatians has just had puppies – and Piers may be
just one extra complication she could do without right
now. So he’s on his way.’
    Carole, hypersensitive to any imagined slight,
immediately thought that she was being excluded.
‘Very well,’ she said shortly. ‘Let me know if he tells
you anything interesting, won’t you?’
    ‘Carole . . .’ Jude lengthened the name in mild
exasperation. ‘What I was going to say was why don’t
you come round and talk to Piers as well? You spent
at least at much time at my party with Polly as I did,
probably more.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Carole. ‘That’s true.’

    He was tall, gangly, with big ears and a big mouth.
What would be called ‘a mobile face’. There was no
surprise that he worked in comedy. But he wasn’t
smiling that afternoon. He looked tense and was
sucking on a cigarette as though his life depended
on it.
    Piers Duncton refused Jude’s offer of an alcoholic
drink, opting for a black coffee instead. But she hadsome Chilean Chardonnay left from her party (the
booze never did run out), and she poured glasses for
herself and Carole.
    ‘We were desperately sorry,’ Jude said, ‘to hear
about what happened to Polly.’
    ‘Thank you.’ Nicely spoken, clearly went to the
right schools before Cambridge. ‘I still can’t really
believe it. I feel so guilty about the whole thing. I
mean, I had a text from Polly yesterday afternoon,
saying she was going to catch the seven thirty-two
train to Victoria . . . and now . . . this.’
    He sat uneasily on one of Jude’s over-draped
armchairs, tense as a cat testing out an unfamiliar
surface. She found a glass dish for him to use as an
ashtray and said, ‘Please, do ask us anything you
want. If there’s something we can do to help, then
just say what it is.’
    ‘Thank you . . . Jude. was it?’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘And I gather Polly came to a party here on
Sunday . . . ?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘With her dad?’
    ‘And her famous grandmother.’
    The boy nodded. Clearly he’d already encountered
the formidable Flora. ‘Had you met Polly before?’
    ‘No.’
    In response to his quizzical look, Carole said, ‘Nor
had I.’
    ‘Did you talk to her much?’
    Jude shook her head. ‘Only really to say hello. I
was busy looking after my other guests.’
    ‘Yes, of course.’
    ‘I had quite a chat with her,’ Carole volunteered.
    ‘What did you talk about?’
    ‘Her family, a little bit. She mentioned you too,
and the fact that you’d be spending Christmas with
your parents in Gloucestershire.’
    His face registered a new pang of suffering as he
said, ‘God, I haven’t told them what’s happened yet.
It’s like I’m pretending it’s all a mistake, like the
body in Gallimaufry has been indentified wrongly, and
Polly’s about to come through that door any minute.’
    Emotion seemed momentarily to rob him of
words, so Carole thought she might as well continue.
‘She also told me that she was an actor – which is, I
suppose, what I would call an actress – and that she
was finding work hard to come by.’ Piers nodded
acknowledgement of this. ‘She said that you were a
comedy writer, and that she was writing something
too.’
    ‘Ah. So she mentioned the