The Liar in the Library. Simon Brett

we had an affair, the answer is very definitely no.’

      ‘That wasn’t what the Sergeant was asking,’ said Rollins in a manner that was definitely a put-down to him. ‘We are merely trying to get as much background to the case as we can.’

      ‘“Case”?’ echoed Jude. ‘Then you do think there was something suspicious about—’

      ‘I was guilty of using the wrong word,’ responded the Detective Inspector blandly. ‘I should not have said “case”, I should have said “incident”.’

      ‘I see.’

      ‘So. Background,’ Rollins went on. ‘Had you kept in touch with Burton St Clair since the days when you spent time with him and his wife … some fifteen or twenty years ago?’ The way she echoed the words seemed to carry the implication that Jude was not necessarily a very reliable witness.

      ‘No, not really.’

      ‘What do you mean by that?’

      ‘I mean that I haven’t been regularly in touch with him. I heard a bit about what he was up to from mutual friends …’

      ‘Did you know that his first marriage had broken down?’ asked Detective Sergeant Knight.

      ‘I heard about that, yes. Then, obviously, I saw media coverage of the success of Stray Leaves in Autumn …’

      Rollins picked up the conversational baton. ‘And was that why you decided you would go and hear him speaking last night at Fethering Library? You saw in the local paper that he would be there and you thought you’d go and re-establish contact with an old friend?’

      ‘It wasn’t exactly like that.’

      ‘Oh?’ The Detective Inspector’s manner made it very difficult for Jude not to sound guilty. Though, of course, she told herself, there was nothing that she needed to sound guilty for.

      ‘Burton contacted me, said he’d be in Fethering, and suggested I might like to come along to the library.’

      ‘So you had kept in regular touch?’ said Detective Sergeant Knight accusingly.

      ‘No. He contacted me through Facebook. I don’t use it a lot, but I do have an account. For some of my clients it’s their preferred means of communication.’

      ‘Clients?’ Rollins reminded herself. ‘Oh yes, of course. You’re a healer, aren’t you?’

      Jude was well used to the layers of scepticism that could be lathered on to that particular word. ‘Yes, that’s what I do.’

      ‘So … until this approach through Facebook, you hadn’t had direct contact from either Burton or his first wife Megan for fifteen … twenty years …?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘And you hadn’t made contact with them?’

      ‘No.’ Jude suddenly remembered the previous evening. ‘Well, that is to say …’

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘I did send an email to Megan yesterday.’

      ‘Oh?’ Detective Inspector Rollins’s tone made this sound like a major revelation. ‘Was that after you had left Fethering Library?’

      ‘Yes, when I got back here.’

      ‘And why, after this long break, did you suddenly get in touch with her?’

      ‘There was a query about Burton St Clair’s writing that was raised in the Q & A session after his talk. I wanted to check a factual detail with Megan.’

      ‘I see. Well, we’ll be able to see her emails when we get in touch with her.’

      ‘I can show you the text of what I sent right now,’ said Jude, as near to being rattled as her habitually serene temperament allowed.

      ‘That won’t be necessary,’ said Detective Inspector Rollins. For the first time, she looked down at her iPhone, woke up the screen and consulted some notes she had written there. ‘Now, according to Vix Winter, the junior librarian who found Mr St Clair’s body in the car park this morning, last night, just as she and her boss were leaving, she saw you getting into Mr St Clair’s car. She also said that, by then, all of the other people who’d attended the talk had gone home.’

      ‘Yes. That’s what happened. It was pouring with rain. Burton had offered to drive me back here.’

      ‘But he didn’t drive you back here. The dry patch under his car suggested that it hadn’t moved since he arrived at the library earlier in the evening.’

      ‘That’s entirely possible, yes.’

      ‘So why didn’t he drive you home, Jude?’

      ‘We had an argument.’

      ‘Did you?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘And could you tell me what that argument was about?’

      ‘Very well.’

      ‘In fact, could you tell me exactly what happened last night, from the moment—’ Rollins looked down at her screen to check the name – ‘Di Thompson locked up the library and left in her car with Vix Winter, until you left Burton St Clair in his car … assuming that is what happened?’

      The level of scepticism in the Detective Inspector’s attitude and body language did not lessen as Jude began her narrative. If anything, it increased.

      Jude was punctiliously accurate in her reconstruction of the events inside Burton’s BMW. They were so recent that she didn’t have to dig too deep into her memory. But as she replayed the awkwardness of the encounter, she was annoyed to find herself blushing. And at the end of her narration, she could sense that Rollins did not believe the truth she had just been told.

      Before the Detective Inspector could pass any comment, however, the iPhone on her lap rang. ‘Rollins,’ she said. ‘Ah, Megan Sinclair. Thank you for getting back to me.’

      She rose to her feet. ‘I’ll take this in the hall,’ she announced as she left the room.

      Detective Sergeant Knight and Jude looked at each other. Neither had much to say. The silence felt heavy between them.

      SEVEN

      Burton St Clair’s death was reported on Radio 4’s World at One. It was the last item on the bulletin – one of the ‘and we’ve just had a report that …’ ones – so no details were supplied. Nor was there any trailer to say that his work and legacy would be discussed on the evening’s arts programme Front Row. Burton himself would no doubt have reckoned he deserved such a tribute. The producers maybe did not think that one successful novel qualified him for that kind of accolade.

      All the one o’clock news report did say was that he had been found dead in his car in Fethering, ‘a village on the South Coast, whose library he had been visiting.’

      Jude listened to the bulletin in the irreproachably tidy environs of High Tor’s kitchen. Carole had rung – characteristically, rather than going next door in person – as soon as the Panda car had departed, and invited her neighbour for lunch.

      The cottage cheese salad that Carole produced did not really qualify under Jude’s description of ‘lunch’, but she was far too polite to mention the fact. Anyway, she was in no state to be assertive. The shock of Burton’s death, followed so quickly by the interview with the two mistrustful detectives, had shaken Jude’s customary equilibrium.

      She felt vulnerable and, in spite of Carole’s assiduous probing, was unwilling to divulge what had been said that morning in the sitting room of Woodside Cottage. After dutifully consuming her cottage cheese salad, she announced that she would go back home to have a sleep.

      Carole