The frostiness of Fiona Lister’s response showed thatshe was not enjoying the directness of her Fethering guests. They were not suitable for one of her famous dinner parties. Who invited them? Once again, poison shot- across the table towards James.
Carole Seddon, who in her Fethering environment would have behaved very differently, was enjoying the insouciant freedom of being discourteous. “Oh, did he? How many mistresses?”
“I don’t think we should discuss that,” pronounced Fiona Lister, all girls’ school headmistress.
“Ooh, but I think we
“Are you suggesting he’s got a little mistress tucked away up there?” suggested Jude, also beginning to have fun for the first time in the evening.
“Why stop at one? He may have dozens,” Carole contributed. This was most unlike her. She hadn’t even met the man in question and she would never normally have participated in this kind of vulgar gossip. But she was really enjoying it.
Terry Harper joined in. “That’s before you include all the ones he’s got down here. Easy for an architect. You go round to these houses. The husband’s away at work…the wife tells him what she wants done…”
There was a chuckle from down the table. Terry’s point had been made, but James Lister couldn’t resist the cue to complete the innuendo. “And he does it for her! Or should I say to her!” In case anyone hadn’t got the joke, he added, “He gives her one!”
His wife’s thin face had turned dusty purple. “Please! I must ask you to stop this conversation. At my dinner table I cannot allow my guests to pass around malicious gossip!”
No, thought Carole, supplying the unspoken final words to Fiona’s speech: Because that’s my job.
? The Torso in the Town ?
Twenty-One
The next day, the Saturday, the rain continued, and the promise of a good summer now seemed to have been a false one. Carole and Jude monitored the media all through the day but there was nothing on until the early evening television news.
The young female presenter, whose smile worked independently of the sense of what she was saying, announced, “Police reveal identity of Fedborough corpse,” and cut to a senior police officer who had long ago had the smile trained out of him. He was at a press conference, where he announced gravely, “The limbless body discovered two weeks ago in a house in Fedborough, West Sussex, has been identified after extensive forensic examination. It belonged to Mrs Virginia Hargreaves, a former resident of the town.”
As the presenter, smiling inappropriately, moved on to the fortunes of the local football teams, Jude crossed the room to turn down the television sound. Carole kept on saying she ought to get a remote control, but that kind of thing was low on Jude’s priorities.
The two women looked at each other. “So the gossips of Fedborough were right,” said Carole.
“ Some of them. I’m sure at least as many had other theories about the torso’s identity and have been proved wrong.”
“Still, at this moment Fiona Lister is no doubt rubbing her hands with glee and waiting to hear the news of Roddy Hargreaves’s arrest.”
“Or is Alan Burnethorpe shaking in his shoes because Virginia Haig’ eaves was his mistress and he killed her in
“They were a strange lot last night, weren’t they?”
“Do you think, to an outsider, they’d seem any stranger than a group of Fethering locals?”
“Maybe not.” Carole narrowed her pale blue eyes with concentration. “So clearly, to solve this case, we have to concentrate on the period round Virginia Hargreaves’s disappearance.”
“If the case still needs solving.”
“What do you mean, Jude?”
“I’d have thought, now the police know who it was that died, they’d be pretty close to knowing how she died.”
“And who – if anyone – caused her death.”
“Even if she wasn’t murdered,” Jude reminded her friend gently, “someone cut off Virginia Hargreaves’s arms and legs.”
“Yes…” Carole shook her head slowly from side to side. “Things don’t look very good for Roddy.”
¦
Later that evening she found out that things looked even worse for Roddy. Debbie Carlton rang with the news that his dead body had been found floating in the Fether.
? The Torso in the Town ?
Twenty-Two
And, so far as Fedborough was concerned, that was it. The mystery was solved. Three and a half years previously, Roddy Hargreaves had killed his wife, dismembered her, and hidden her torso in the cellar of their home, Felling House. When he knew the police were close to identifying the body, he had taken his own life. Case closed, so far as Fedborough was concerned.
On the Saturday evening Jude received a phone call that could have suggested this was the official view as well. Harry Roxby was on the line, elaborately conspiratorial, living up to the hilt his role as private investigator. “The police came again today,” he whispered.
“Oh?”
“They took the seals off the cellar door.”
“The ones you’d sawn through?”
“Yes.”
“Did you get into trouble over that?”
“No. I was dead lucky. One of the cops was all set to bawl me out, but Mum sort of smoothed it over. She said I’d been very traumatized by what had happened and I was in a fragile emotional state…”
“Are you?”
“Well…” He giggled nervously.
“Sleeping better?”
“Yes. What you said was good. Now I’m thinking of the case as something that needs investigating, I sort of feel more, I don’t know, further away from it…”
Excellent, thought Jude. That was the aim of the exercise. “So the cop backed off, did he? Didn’t bawl you out any more?”
“No. After what Mum said, he didn’t seem that bothered. Just removed the remains of the seals, and said we could use the cellar again like normal.”
“Which might suggest the police have concluded their investigation.”
“Yes.” He sounded wistful at the thought of his detective game ending. “So they reckon that this Mr Hargreaves killed his wife?”
“I can’t be certain what the police think, but I’ll bet that’s what a lot of people in Fedborough are saying.”
“Mm,” he mumbled gloomily. “I haven’t even met Mr Hargreaves, which makes me feel, I don’t know, sort of cheated over the case. Like I haven’t got the whole story.”
“Happens a lot in police work.” Jude was joking, but there was sympathy in her voice too.
“I don’t know,” said Harry disconsolately. “Even if the police have got the right solution, it still leaves a lot of
