The Corpse on the Court by Simon Brett

it.’
    Her neighbour might have been about to take issue with Carole’s blanket scepticism but, realizing where they were, thought better of it and asked Oenone, ‘When I asked you what made Reggie believe in ghosts, you said you didn’t know, but I got the impression perhaps you do have some idea.’
    The older woman grinned wryly. ‘You’re very perceptive, Jude. All right, I’ll tell you. It’s not something I often talk about because, well, it’s not something I often talk about. The fact is that Reggie and I haven’t got any children, which was something we rarely talked about but which hurt us both very deeply. Oh, we went on through life, we kept busy, we became serial godparents. We went to some wonderful places, we did some wonderful things. But I always carried the sadness with me, and it was only in recent years that I realized how much it had affected Reggie too.
    â€˜I said – quite carefully – that Reggie and I “haven’t got” children. But briefly, very briefly we did have a child. About six months into our marriage, in a very predictable middle-class way, I became pregnant. All seemed fine, normal pregnancy. Went into labour, taken to a nursing home . . . where things didn’t work out as they should have done. Difficult birth, cord round the baby’s neck, she was stillborn. And the process had made such a mess of my insides that the doctor decided on an emergency hysterectomy.’ The very matter-of-factness with which she spoke the words made them all the more moving.
    â€˜Well, I suppose we could have adopted, but . . . and nowadays I read in the papers that there’s surrogacy and . . . But there wasn’t back then. The simple facts were that I had lost a child and there would never be another one. I was soon fit and healthy again and Reggie just . . . didn’t want to talk about it, really. He did say how much simpler our life would be, how much more we’d be able to travel and . . . I was very hurt by his attitude at the time, but . . .’ Oenone Playfair sighed. Although she wasn’t showing much emotion, the narrative was taking its toll on her.
    â€˜Anyway, as I say, in a very British way Reggie shut things in, continued to make lots of money, continued to play lots of real tennis, but all the time the sadness was niggling away inside him. And then, about eight years ago I suppose, he told me that he’d seen Flora’s ghost.’
    â€˜Flora?’ prompted Jude.
    â€˜Our daughter’s name. She didn’t live long enough to be christened or anything, but to us she was Flora.’
    â€˜And where did he see the ghost?’ asked Carole.
    â€˜Everywhere. He said he kept seeing her. Not as the baby that we saw for such a short time, but as a grown woman. I told him that it was just imagination, that I’d experienced something similar. It’s inevitable. You see a girl whose hair’s the same colour as yours and you think, maybe that’s what my daughter would look like if she were still alive. She’d be over fifty now if she’d lived, but I still see women who make me think of Flora.
    â€˜Anyway, I put that to Reggie, but he said no. He pointed out that I kept telling him he had no imagination, so his mind wasn’t going to invent things like that. What he was seeing must be Flora. Or rather Flora’s ghost. To cut a long story short, that got him into reading books about ghosts and . . . he sort of became obsessed by the idea.’
    â€˜Well, the obvious question to ask,’ said Carole, ‘is: are there any ghosts connected with the Lockleigh House tennis court? Might ghost-hunting explain your husband’s appearance there the night before last?’
    â€˜That’s a thought.’ Oenone was clearly taken with the idea. Perhaps simply because it was more palatable than her other imaginings. ‘Somewhere in the back of my mind that does