The Body on the Beach Read Online Free

she would have appeared standoffish. And, though standoffish she undoubtedly was, she had no wish to appear so. She found her hand and face doing a
little mime of ‘I’ll come out and say hello.’
    ‘My name’s Carole Seddon. Welcome to Fethering. If there’s anything I can do to help out, please don’t hesitate to tell me.’
    ‘Thanks very much.’ Carole found her hand grasped and firmly shaken. ‘My name’s Jude.’
    ‘Yes . . .’ Carole awaited the gloss of a surname, but wasn’t given one. ‘You’ll find we’re a friendly lot round here,’ she lied.
    ‘Good.’ Jude chuckled. It was a warm, earthy sound. ‘I get along with most people. Most people do, don’t they?’
    Carole granted this alien concept a thin smile. ‘Well, if I can tell you where things are . . . shops, dry-cleaners, you know . . . I’m only next door, so just
ask.’
    ‘Thanks. I’m sure I’ll find my way around pretty quickly.’
    ‘Mm . . .’ Carole found the openness of Jude’s dreamy brown eyes slightly disconcerting.
    ‘Equally,’ her neighbour said, ‘if there’s anything I can do to help you out, you’ll say, won’t you?’
    Carole nodded this offer token gratitude, however incongruous might be the idea of her suddenly turning for assistance to someone she didn’t know. The woman had only just moved to
Fethering, for goodness’ sake. Any support being offered should go from the established resident to the newcomer, not the other way round.
    Surely Jude didn’t imagine her neighbour was about to confide in her? Carole was hardly likely suddenly to start spilling the beans to a stranger about what she’d seen on the beach.
But even as she had the thought, she was surprised how much she did want to talk about the shock she had received that morning. And there was something in those brown eyes that invited
confidences.
    ‘Anyway –’ Carole shook herself back on track – ‘better get on. Things to do.’
    ‘Yes.’ Jude grinned easily. ‘Me too. House is crammed full of boxes. God knows how long it’ll take me to sort it all out.’
    ‘Moving’s always a nightmare.’
    ‘Still, I can do it at my own pace. No hurry.’
    Carole smiled as if she endorsed this view. But she didn’t. Of course there was a hurry. One couldn’t live in mess. One had an obligation to get one’s house tidy as soon as
possible. If people weren’t aware of the necessity for hurry in life, society would break down completely.
    ‘See you soon then.’ Jude gave a relaxed wave and hefted her besom for a renewed assault on the carpet.
    ‘Yes. Yes,’ said Carole, turning in slight confusion back towards her front door.
    Inside the house, she berated herself for how little solid fact she had got out of the conversation. She wasn’t that interested, of course, but there were things one ought to know about a
new neighbour.
    She hadn’t even elicited a surname, for goodness’ sake. Jude. Just Jude. That wasn’t very satisfactory. And then again, what was the woman’s status? What was her age? Was
she married, single, divorced? Was there a regular man on the scene? Carole realized that, uncharacteristically, she hadn’t even checked out Jude’s ring finger. Something compelling
about those big brown eyes made it difficult to divert one’s gaze elsewhere.
    Did Jude have a job? A private income? A pension? Carole knew none of these things. Not that she was interested, but it was the kind of information that might be important at some stage.
    Good heavens, Carole realized, she hadn’t even found out whether or not Jude came from ‘the North’.
     
Chapter Three
    ‘So why were you walking on that part of the beach, Mrs Seddon?’
    Carole didn’t like Detective Inspector Brayfield’s tone. She was the one who’d reported the body, after all. If anything, she deserved congratulation. Certainly not this hint
of suspicion in her interrogator’s voice.
    Also, why were there two of them? Not just the