Page 76 of Murder in the Family

HUGO FRASER

(turning to him)

You know, I’ve never understood what Americans mean by that.

BILL SERAFINI

(grinning)

It’s a long pass right at the end of a football game. Basically a last-ditch long shot.

Anyway, what have you been doing all this time while Alan’s been racking up his phone bill?

HUGO FRASER

I, my good sir, have been talking to Caroline’s friends, those of them we could find, to see whether they might have a clue who Mr X was.

BILL SERAFINI

Nowthatsounds like a plan.

CUT TO: Madeleine Downing, sub-captioned as before ‘Friend of Caroline Howard’. In her sitting room this time.

MADELEINE DOWNING

You’re asking the wrong person. I never saw the slightest suggestion she was having an affair.

(laughs)

Why would she need to, with a young fit husband on tap? What was that thing Paul Newman said? ‘Why go out for a burger when you can have steak at home?’

CUT TO: JENNIFER DENNISON, sub-captioned ‘Friend of Caroline Howard’. Dark hair in a French pleat, a patterned silk shirt. She’s in a blue-and-white tiled kitchen with a view of a garden beyond.

JENNIFER DENNISON

She never said anything to me, and I’m pretty sure she would have, if something really was going on.

HUGO FRASER – off

So she would confide in you? You had that sort of relationship?

JENNIFER DENNISON

I certainly confided in her, if that’s what you mean.

(flushes slightly)

Look, if you must know, I was going through something like that myself, back then, OK? I ended up leaving my husband. So I think she’d have said if she was in the same position.

HUGO FRASER – off

Were she and Luke happy?

JENNIFER DENNISON

As far as I know. She never said otherwise. Not to me, anyway.

CUT TO: CARMEL PIPER, sub-captioned ‘Friend of Caroline Howard’. A well-built woman with a long ash-blonde bob and a quilted leather gilet. She’s at a table in a café. There’s abstract art in pastel colours on the walls, fresh flowers on the table, and the coffee is in a blue cup with a saucer; it’s clearly an independent, not one of the big chains.

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