The Poisoning in the Pub Read Online Free PDF

‘Never seen him before. I didn’t understand what he was saying about television.’
    ‘He’s a comedian.’
    ‘Ah.’ Zosia seemed grateful to have an explanation for the man’s presence. ‘That explains it. Ted had said he was meeting someone about the possibility of starting a
comedy club in the pub.’
    ‘Well, it’s Dan who’s doing this gig on Sunday . . .’
    ‘Ah.’
    ‘. . . but I didn’t know Ted was thinking of setting up a permanent comedy club.’
    ‘He’s talked about it.’
    ‘Really?’
    Something in Jude’s intonation made Zosia ask, ‘Why? Wouldn’t you like the idea of a comedy club?’
    ‘ I’d like the idea quite a lot. But I’m not sure that Fethering would.’
    When she returned to Woodside Cottage, Jude rang through to next door with some trepidation, remembering how ghastly her friend had been feeling earlier in the day. But, to her
surprise, Carole sounded completely recovered. And characteristically, now she was better, she didn’t want to admit even that her illness had existed. Fulsomely overassertive in her recovered
health, she announced that she was really hungry. ‘Could quite fancy a pub lunch.’
    ‘Well, you’re out of luck. The Crown and Anchor’s closed till further notice.’
    ‘I wasn’t thinking of the Crown and Anchor – not after what happened on Monday. Let’s go somewhere up on the Downs. Might be more breeze up there than there is down here.
And Gulliver could do with a walk.’
    Carole, in efficient no-of-course-I-haven’t-been-ill mode, said the ideal pub to go to would be the Hare and Hounds at Weldisham, and Jude, amused by the sudden change in her friend, did
not argue with the proposal.
    Gulliver was stowed on the back seat of the Renault and the two neighbours drove up into the Downs.
    Though they hadn’t been there since their involvement in an investigation in the village, both had a very clear recollection of the Hare and Hounds in Weldisham. They remembered the decor,
themed round some designer’s idea of a comfortable country house. Old tennis rackets in wooden presses, croquet mallets pinned to the walls, faded nineteen-thirties novels on shelves too high
for them ever to be reached, gratuitous farm implements and saddlery hung from the beams.
    But as soon as the Renault was parked opposite the main entrance, they could see that things had changed. No longer was the pub sign an eighteenth-century hunting scene. It was now a
mulberry-coloured board with ‘Hare and Hounds’ written in grey calligraphy.
    Inside again mulberry and grey dominated the decor. The bar, tables and chairs were again chunky pine. Carole and Jude remembered an interior of small rooms and snugs, but all the partitions had
been removed, and the bar was just one large unbroken space.
    ‘New owners, do you reckon?’ asked Jude.
    ‘Or maybe rebranding by the old owners. I seem to remember that this place was owned by a chain.’
    ‘Which chain?’
    ‘Look, I don’t have instant recall of everything,’ said Carole, rather pettishly.
    At the bar they bought two glasses of Maipo Valley Chardonnay from a girl dressed in mulberry and grey livery, and ordered salads. (It was noticeable that neither went for the seafood option.)
Fortunately they managed to get a table outside the pub, sheltered from the sun by a big umbrella. As Carole had hoped, here some way above sea level, they could feel the gentlest of breezes.
Gulliver, after a big slurp from the dogs’ water bowl by the front door of the pub, settled down comfortably to lie in the shade of their table.
    The setting was stunning. Weldisham nestled into a fold of the Downs, an archetype of the kind of serenity which was expected from an English country village. Of course, as Carole and Jude had
cause to know, the image of serenity could be deceptive. Seething passions lurked beneath that harmless exterior.
    The thought prompted Jude to say, ‘Difficult to be here without remembering the murder we