The Fethering Mysteries 03; The Torso in the Town

The Rev Trigwell looked embarrassed, which wasn’t difficult, since he always looked embarrassed. “Well, there were one or two conversations that…”

“What did he talk about?” asked Carole, once again favouring the direct approach.

The vicar reacted as if a godparent had asked him to drown the baby in the font. “Oh, I couldn’t possibly, I mean, there are things I’m not allowed to – ”

“Professional confidentiality,” Donald Durrington offered supportively.

“Exactly, yes.”

“Why, did Roddy talk to you in the confessional?”

“No, no, it was just a friendly conversation.”

“He is Catholic, after all, though, isn’t he?” Carole had decided that she didn’t like any of the people sitting round the dinner table – except for Jude, of course – and she didn’t really care whether or not she was being rude to them. “You’re not a Catholic priest, are you?”

“Good heavens, no.” Thinking his response might have been too vehement, the Rev Trigwell’s face grew blotchier as he immediately started fence-mending. “That is to say, I’ve nothing against the Catholic Church. They do some wonderful work, and in these days of increased ecumenicalism our communities are getting closer all the time. Though obviously my own training and conviction persuades me more towards the Church of England, I still don’t think one should dismiss too easily the – ”

Carole cut through all this. “So you can’t tell me what Roddy Hargreaves talked about to you. Fine.” She turned to her hostess. “You were saying he was in a bad way, and there were problems with his marriage – is that right?”

“All I was saying was that with a man in the state Roddy was in…” Fiona replied darkly, “anything could have happened.”

Once again Carole asked for clarification.

“I’m just saying he might have got into an argument with Virginia…”

“And ended up killing her and dismembering the body?” suggested Jude with characteristic frankness.

Fiona Lister coloured. “No, I didn’t say that. I was just suggesting that…Roddy and Virginia weren’t getting on very well round that time.”

Carole shuddered inwardly at the power of these insinuations. In spite of her denial, Fiona Lister had been virtually implying that Roddy Hargreaves had murdered his wife. His paranoia in the Coach and Horses about the gossips of Fedborough seemed to have been justified. Carole needed to know more. “What was Virginia Hargreaves like?”

This was clearly a subject that their hostess felt much happier with. “Oh, an extremely nice person. Her father was actually titled, you know. Virginia mixed a lot in aristocratic circles as a child, knew the Royals very well. She could have used her own title, if she’d chosen to. But she didn’t…much…very nice and unassuming in that way, Lady Virginia was. Charming. And lovely to look at. Early forties, I suppose when she left Fedborough. Lovely blonde hair…well, blonded probably…and of course beautifully spoken. It’s such a pleasure to hear good vowels, isn’t it?” Fiona Lister somehow contrived to make this another criticism of her husband. “Just so sad that a person of Lady Virginia’s breeding should end up with someone like Roddy.”

Carole thought this was a bit rich, coming from a butcher’s wife. “Roddy seems to have breeding too.”

“Oh yes, I’m sure he went to the right schools and all that kind of thing, but I was talking about character. Virginia never drank to excess.” Fiona flashed another venomous look at her husband.

“And where’s Virginia Hargreaves now?” asked Jude.

“According to Roddy,” Fiona’s words were weighed down with scepticism, “Virginia went up to London when she left him.”

“And when exactly are we talking about here? About three years ago?”

“Yes. End of February.” James Lister gave what he hoped was a winning smile. “Friday the twentieth, I remember. Because you gave one of your most successful dinner parties that evening, Fiona.”

But the attempt at ingratiation cut no ice with his wife. With another shrivelling glance at him, she went on, “Virginia had a flat up in London, I believe. But when I last asked him, Roddy said he thought she was living in South Africa, where apparently she had a lot of friends. But, as I say, that’s only Roddy’s version.”

“Did they have children?” asked Carole.

“No.”

“But they still had a bloody au pair!” The last look from his wife had stung James Lister into raucousness. “Which always seemed a bit excessive to me.”

“You wouldn’t understand, James. Anyway, au pair’s the wrong word. But someone like Virginia Hargreaves had her charity work to do. She couldn’t afford to be bothered with domestic details all the time. Some people are just used to growing up with servants.” Fiona Lister beamed magnanimously at the Rev Trigwell. “As you can imagine, I had to make a few adjustments myself when I got married.”

The vicar smiled weakly. Carole wondered what it must be like inside the Listers’ marriage, how James survived his wife’s constant reminders that she’d married beneath herself. She also wondered how much higher up Fiona had really been in the social pecking order. The implication of having grown up with servants didn’t ring true. The Listers’ was just another battle of one-upmanship within the wafer-thin layers of the middle classes.

“Still, the au pair did all right out of it,” Terry Harper observed languidly.

That got a tart response from Fiona Lister. “If you call marrying Alan Burnethorpe ‘doing all right’. I would have thought it was not an unmixed blessing.”

Jude, who’d met Mrs Burnethorpe, asked, “Oh, was Joke the Hargreaveses’ au pair? ”

Fiona, happy to be back in her role of Fedborough information officer, was quick to reply. “As I said, au pair’s, really the wrong word, because that does imply an element of childcare. Joke had been working as an au pair for another family in Fedborough, but I suppose for Virginia Hargreaves she was more of a…housekeeper and social secretary. Anyway, that’s how Alan met her. He’s been practising as an architect here for years. Has his office on that lovely old houseboat down by the bridge…do you know the one I mean?”

Carole made the connection with the fine refurbished Edwardian vessel James had pointed out on the Town Walk, but Jude, for reasons of her own, said, “No, I’ll make a point of looking out for it next time I’m down that way.”

“Anyway,” Fiona went on. “Alan couldn’t have avoided meeting Joke. He was round Pelling House so much working on the marina plans with Roddy.”

“And they fell in love?” asked Jude ingenuously.

James Lister, caution loosened by wine, let out a guffaw. “Fell in lust, let’s say. Quite a dishy little number, that Joke, isn’t she? I must say I wouldn’t…” He caught his wife’s eye and backed off. “There are a few men round Fedborough who wouldn’t kick her out of bed.”

The blaze in Fiona Lister’s eyes indicated that he hadn’t backed off far enough.

Jude continued to nudge the conversation forward. “But it wasn’t just an affair. They did get married.”

“Oh yes,” her hostess agreed. “A very correct little aspirational Dutch miss, our Joke is. Alan was still married to Karen and just looking for a good time, but Joke wasn’t having any of that.”

“Or he wasn’t getting any of that until he agreed to marry her!”

The look with which Fiona Lister greeted her husband’s joke would have frozen the jet of a hosepipe at fifty metres.

“Always on the lookout for a new woman, though, Alan is,” said Terry Harper, maliciously casual.

“Ooh, you’re so right!” Andrew Wragg agreed gleefully. “We were talking just now about men in Fedborough having mistresses. A lot of tempting singles and divorcees around this place, you know. Positive hotbed of rampant crumpet, Fedborough is. Or so I’ve been told.” He flicked a dark eyebrow in an exaggerated gesture of relief. “Thank God at least I’ll never have that problem.” He smiled coyly at Terry. “Plenty of others, but not that one.”

Jude remembered the excessive pressure of a hand on hers that evening at the Roxbys. “Are you saying that Alan Burnethorpe has mistresses?”

“He may have done while he was married to his first wife. He’s very happy now with Joke, I believe.”