Guilt at the Garage

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It felt like a personal invasion. Carole Seddon’s white Renault was one of her most treasured possessions. Indeed, had she ever been asked to choose between it and her Labrador Gulliver, she might well have come down on the side of the car. And now the Renault had been vandalized. Someone had smashed in the back window. Granulated glass was scattered over the boot space and upholstery.

Carole was appalled. That something like this should have happened in Fethering, of all places! A village of unimpeachable middle-class propriety, minding its own business in West Sussex on the South Coast of England. She wouldn’t have been surprised had it happened while she still lived in London, but in Fethering … The barbarians really were at the gate.

Under normal circumstances the Renault would have spent the night locked safely in the garage of her house, High Tor. But the evening before, Carole had spent having dinner with her neighbour, Jude, at Fethering’s only pub, the Crown and Anchor. She had not exceeded her customary intake of two large New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs but, though High Tor was on the High Street, less than a quarter of a mile away, the law-abiding conformist in Carole had done the responsible thing by leaving her car on the shopping parade and walking home. Jude, being more laid-back about everything, would have assessed the chances of being stopped by police on such a short trip and driven. But Jude didn’t have a car, anyway, and, of course, Carole was Carole – a woman in her fifties, thin, spiky, with a helmet of sharply cut grey hair and pale blue eyes that blinked from behind rimless glasses.

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