Guns in the Gallery

As Carole stopped to reattach his lead, she noticed that there was a large removal van outside the Cornelian Gallery. Was it possible that Bonita Green was moving out? Fortunately the route back to High Tor went directly past the gallery, so Carole was able to observe without appearing to snoop.

As she got closer it was clear that what was being removed into the van was not Bonita Green’s goods and chattels, but Denzil Willoughby’s artworks. The invitations to the Private View had made it clear that the exhibition was scheduled to continue for the next four weeks. Clearly the change of plan which Bonita Green had announced at the Private View was being put into practice. She’d told her son she wanted Denzil Willoughby’s exhibits out on the Saturday and two days later she was getting her wish.

By serendipity, just as Carole and Gulliver were passing the gallery door, Bonita came out to supervise the loading of the final pieces. Now that they’d been properly introduced, she merited much more than a ‘Fethering nod’, and Carole was by her standards almost effusive as she greeted Bonita and thanked her for the Private View.

The gallery-owner harrumphed. ‘Not a huge success, so far as I was concerned.’ She gestured to the van. ‘As you see, there goes the last contact between Denzil Willoughby and the Cornelian Gallery.’

‘Mm, I suppose the scene there did rather put a damper on the evening . . . I mean, with all those accusations flying back and forth.’

‘What accusations?’ the gallery-owner asked sharply.

‘What Fennel Whittaker said.’

‘Oh, of course. Yes.’ The removals van started up and moved slowly on the road towards London. ‘Good riddance!’ said Bonita Green with some venom. Then a shrewd look came into her black-rimmed brown eyes. ‘I’m dying for a cup of coffee. You wouldn’t care to join me, would you, Carole?’

There were two places for coffee in Fethering – it was reckoned too small to have succumbed to the invasion of a Starbucks or a Costa – but Bonita did not lead the way toward the Seaview Café on the beach. Instead she moved instinctively towards Polly’s Cake Shop, only a few doors along from the Cornelian Gallery, and the manner of her greeting there left no doubt that she was an extremely regular customer.

The waitress knew Bonita’s order would be a large Americano without milk, and Carole asked for ‘just an ordinary filter coffee, black’. Bonita, confessing that she hadn’t had any breakfast, also ordered a pain au chocolat. Carole, who had long nurtured an atavistic taboo against eating between meals, said that she had had breakfast.

‘Did you know that girl well, Bonita?’ she asked, ‘the one who threw the scene on Friday?’

‘No. First time I’d met her. She’s the sister of Giles’s current girlfriend.’ The way she said the last two words did not suggest she was a great enthusiast of Chervil Whittaker, nor indeed that she expected the relationship to last very long. Carole also noticed her use of the present tense when referring to Fennel. So perhaps she didn’t yet know about the girl’s death. If that were the case, Carole had no intentions of being the person who told her the news.

‘Could you make head or tail of what the girl actually said?’ asked Bonita.

‘Not really. Clearly she had had a relationship with the artist, Denzil Willoughby, and it had ended badly.’

‘Yes. I pieced that much together.’

Carole was wary of admitting she knew more about Fennel and her family background. She’d bide her time until she found out how much Bonita Green knew. After all, it was the gallery-owner who had initiated their meeting. She was the one who’d suggested coffee, so maybe she had some agenda of her own. Carole was content to play a waiting game.

‘I think,’ Bonita went on, ‘that Denzil is one of those artists who regards mistreating women as part of the job description.’

‘He certainly gave that impression.’

‘No lack of them around in the art world,’ said the gallery-owner with a harshness that could have been born of personal experience. ‘Though it’s rather a pity in Denzil’s case because when I first knew him, he was quite a sweet boy.’

‘I didn’t realize you’d known him a long time.’

‘My husband and I knew his parents. Denzil and my son Giles have been friends since school. They were at Lancing together.’ Now Carole understood the all-purpose accent Denzil Willoughby had used to disguise his upper-class vowels. ‘Thick as thieves, they were. Shared everything. Even girlfriends, I think, at one stage. And when they went their separate ways, Giles to Leeds to read Economics and Management, Denzil to St Martin’s – that’s St Martin’s College of Art – they still stayed in touch.

‘Even at school, though,’ Bonita went on, ‘Denzil did have an amazing talent for art.’

‘What, you mean proper art?’ Carole couldn’t help asking. ‘Painting things that looked like things?’