“It could do,” her hostess riposted. “The kind of man who betrays his wife is capable of all kinds of other moral lapses.”
“I don’t agree with that. You can’t apply the same standards to sexual behaviour and criminal behaviour.”
Fiona Lister turned the beady majesty of her stare on Jude. She was not used to having her opinions challenged, least of all in her own house. Jude, who had never been afraid to express her views on anything, seemed blithely unaware of the beam of disapproval focused on her.
The Rev Trigwell tried to ease the conversation, andregain some of the ground he’d lost by his previous remark. “Very sad that things didn’t work out with Debbie and Francis.”
Fiona Lister was implacable. “Her parents gave that girl too much freedom. Too full of her own opinions, if you ask me. That kind can never make a marriage work. You need discipline. Marriage may not be fun all the time, but you have to stick with it. All our children’s marriages are still intact. Aren’t they, James?”
Her husband, who hadn’t heard the subject that was being discussed, took the safe option of saying that indeed they were.
“It hit her parents very hard when Debbie and Francis divorced,” Fiona went on. “The shock was what started Stanley’s illness, wasn’t it, Donald?”
“Oh, I don’t think one can say that,” the doctor equivocated. “He was deteriorating long before Debbie’s marriage went wrong. Anyway, no one really knows what brings on Alzheimer’s.”
“In Stanley’s case it was Debbie getting divorced.” Fiona Lister would never change an opinion simply because there was an expert on the subject present. “Have you seen him recently, Donald?”
“Couple of weeks back. The Elms is part of my patch, so I do go down and check over the old lot on a fairly regular basis.”
“Any change with Stanley? I met Billie in Sainsbury’s the other week and she said he was improving.”
“I’m afraid there’s little chance of that. Alzheimer’s is a degenerative condition.”
Carole wondered whether the doctor should be talking about one of his patients in this way. Surely even someone in Stanley Franks’s condition had the right to medical confidentiality. She thought how much she would dislike meeting her own doctor socially, sitting down to meals with someone to whom she had entrusted embarrassing physical secrets. But perhaps that was inevitable in a small community like Fedborough.
She was also beginning to wonder why she and Jude had been invited to the dinner party. Once they’d said they came from Fethering, nobody had asked them any further personal details. Fiona Lister wasn’t, as her husband had said, interested in new people; she just wanted to appropriate new people before anyone else in Fedborough got their hands on them.
The assumption seemed to be that the immigrants from Fethering should be deeply honoured to be included in conversations about Fedborough people they didn’t know and were never likely to meet. Jude, having experienced the same at the Roxbys’, had issued a warning in the car on the way over, but Carole had thought she was exaggerating.
And, what’s more, they didn’t seem to be getting any very useful information about the case. The torso had been mentioned, yes, but only surrounded by unsupported rumour.
Even as Carole had this thought, though, Joan Durrington, who had not spoken before, filled the silence with an announcement. “Did you hear that the police have identified who the torso was?”
? The Torso in the Town ?
Twenty
Her husband’s voice rumbled disapproval. “I think I was told that in confidence, Joan.”
“Well, you told me.”
“Yes, but a doctor’s wife…there are certain kinds of accepted obligations that go with the job.”
The way the couple looked at each other suggested that they were digging over an old argument. But the defiance in Joan Durrington’s eyes also suggested to Carole that the doctor’s wife was less mousy and anonymous than her manner might suggest.
“You can’t leave it there, Joan,” said Terry Harper.
“No, you can’t!” Andrew Wragg squealed in agreement. “Come on, give us the name! We want to know which of the fine upstanding pillars of Fedborough society cut his mistress down to size in such an imaginative way.”
This sally didn’t go down well with the assembled company. Carole reckoned the offence was caused, not by the tastelessness of the image, but by the implication that respectable men in Fedborough might have mistresses.
Joan Durrington’s moment of self-assertion had passed. “You’d better ask Donald. He was the one the police talked to.”
Fiona Lister turned her beady eye on the doctor. “Well, don’t keep us in suspense.”
He immediately became formal and professional. “The police consulted me about some medical records…”
“Whose?” demanded Andrew Wragg. “Come on, give us the dirt!”
“Obviously I can’t tell you that.” It was the answer Andrew had been expecting; indeed, to get that answer had been the only reason he’d asked the question. Terry Harper’s eyes rolled heavenwards in fond despair at the incorrigible nature of his partner.
“And in the course of conversation they told me there would soon be a press conference when the identity of the deceased would be announced.”
“Has the press conference happened yet?” asked Carole.
“I don’t think so. The implication was that it’ll be tomorrow.”
“Hm…” James Lister stroked his moustache thoughtfully. “I wonder if that’s why Roddy isn’t here tonight…?”
“What do you mean by that?” his wife snapped. “I was just thinking, if the body does turn out to be Virginia…”
Fiona was not persuaded by this idea. “Nonsense, that has nothing to do with it. The reason Roddy isn’t here is the usual one. He’s drunk. It’s his birthday, for heaven’s sake, probably been celebrating all day. He’s lost the few manners he ever had.” Carole thought that was unfair. Roddy Hargreaves was certainly a drunkard, but he had seemed to her almost excessively courteous.
Fiona was returning to a theme she’d started on earlier in the evening, when it became clear that Roddy wasn’t going to turn up. He was very inconsiderate, and had ruined her seating plan. Everything had been arranged for ten people; nine was a much less convenientnumber. She’d been persuaded – against her better judgment – to invite Roddy because it was his birthday and – as ever – he’d disgraced himself. There was no doubt where the fault lay: where it always lay in their marriage. James shouldn’t have issued the invitation.
Joan Durrington’s wavering assertiveness returned. “Roddy was certainly in a very bad state round the time Virginia disappeared.”
“What do you mean by ‘a bad state’?” asked Carole. But the direct question frightened the doctor’s wife. “Oh, I don’t know…just…well…”
Fiona Lister saw an opportunity to go back on to the attack. “Roddy was falling apart. He’d got all these marina plans that Alan Burnethorpe had done for him, and he’d started work on them, but he was running out of money fast.”
“Didn’t his wife have any money to bail him out?” asked Jude.
“I’m sure she did,” Fiona replied. “She came from an aristocratic background, after all. But she must’ve realized that giving money to Roddy would be tantamount to pouring it down a drain. He just didn’t face up to things at all. I’m sure he could have got his affairs back in order, but he hid away from reality…in a whisky bottle, or in the Coach and Horses.” The look she darted at her husband showed that not only did she dislike her husband’s friend, she also disapproved of their meeting place.
James tried to salvage some justification for Roddy’s behaviour. “Oh, he didn’t just drink round that time. He was trying to sort himself out. He talked to you about it, didn’t he, Philip?”
