Fethering 02 (2001) - Death on the Downs by Simon Brett, Prefers to remain anonymous Page B

Helling makes everyone feel unwelcome in Weldisham—because she’s always been made to feel unwelcome there herself.”
    “How did she get her money?” asked Carole.
    “They didn’t like that either. If you live in Weldisham, it’s all right to get money from stocks and shares, or inherit it from Mummeigh and Daddeigh…” Baylis’s jokey manner could not disguise the deep bitterness with which he was speaking. “But Pauline Helling got her money from winning the pools! The pools! Weldisham reckons it’s bad form even to know what a pools coupon is, and actually to win on one…well, that’s the height of vulgarity. So from day one they’d got Pauline marked down as ‘common’.”
    “Were people rude to her?”
    “Not insulting to her face, no. Not like they would be somewhere a bit more honest. In Weldisham you freeze people out with politeness. You smile when you meet them, you give them a nod, but you never invite them into your house.”
    Carole grinned wryly. She’d encountered some of that aloofness in Fethering.
    “So I would imagine,” Detective Sergeant Baylis concluded, “that for the past twenty years the only person Pauline Helling has talked to is her son.”
    “He’s still around?”
    “Brian? Oh yes, he’s still around.” The sergeant spoke as if this was not an entirely satisfactory state of affairs.
    “He isn’t a writer, is he?” asked Carole, with sudden insight.
    “He calls himself a writer, though there doesn’t seem to be much evidence that he’s ever actually written anything.”
    “I think I overheard him in the Hare and Hounds yesterday.”
    “It’s quite possible. Hard not to overhear Brian. He’s always been of the view that everyone within earshot should have the benefit of his conversation. He was like that at school. I was in the same class as him. Nasty sneaky little bastard then, and I don’t think the passage of the years has changed him that much.”
    “What kind of nasty?”
    “Vicious to other kids. And to animals. Most people who grow up round here know how to treat animals. They’re not sentimental about them, but they don’t hurt them deliberately.”
    “And Brian Helling did?”
    “When he was a kid, yes. Killed a couple of cats in a way I still can’t forgive him for. He thought it was a game. The rest of us didn’t play that kind of game.”
    “Oh?” Carole put her next remark as sensitively as she could. “In the Hare and Hounds he did seem to be…a little eccentric.”
    “Eccentric’s generous. He’s a self-appointed eccentric, just as he’s a self-appointed writer. Brian Helling has never been able to hold down a proper job. If his mother hadn’t had the pools money to support him, God knows what he’d have lived on. He’s always been getting into trouble of one sort or another.”
    “Trouble that’s involved the police?”
    “Not often. Occasionally drunk. Reckless driving once, I think.”
    “What about drugs?”
    A shadow of caution crossed the sergeant’s face. “I’m fairly sure he dabbles in drugs, but he’s never been convicted for it. No, he’s not into anything that you’d call major-league criminal. Brian’s always been a bloody nuisance, though—just like he was at school. Always trying to join everyone else’s gang—and nobody wanted anything to do with him, because he was…I don’t know…creepy.”
    “In the Hare and Hounds yesterday,” said Carole, “he was talking about the possibility of there being a serial killer in Weldisham.”
    “Was he?” Detective Sergeant Baylis turned very pale. “Was he really?”

FIFTEEN
    “The bones weren’t Tamsin Lutteridge’s!” Carole and Jude spoke the words simultaneously.
    Baylis had gone and Carole had hurried to answer the doorbell’s summons, hoping it was Jude. She was dying to share her news. And amazed that Jude had the same news to impart.
    “What do you mean? Come in. It’s cold.”
    “What do you mean? How do you know it’s not