loose ends untied.”
“Like what?”
“Well, where the body’s arms and legs went, for a start.”
“You’re right. Trouble is, Harry, we don’t have access to police files. Who knows, the limbs may have been found a long time ago, and the cops only needed the torso to match them up.”
“Perhaps.” He sounded even more despondent. “Why would someone cut off a body’s arms and legs?”
“Well, if we put aside sadism or a psychopath getting a cheap thrill…”
“Yeah.” A bit of interest crept back into his voice. “I saw a video about a guy who did that. Somebody I knew in London had this great collection of that kind of stuff.”
Jude didn’t want to go up that alley. “As I say, putting sadism on one side, the most usual reason for dismembering a body would be ease of disposal.”
“Oh, I get you. So someone – perhaps the woman’s husband – killed her, cut her up, and got rid of the arms and legs…Where do you reckon he’d have done that?”
“Lots of places around here. Bury them up on the Downs. Chuck them in the sea. Or the Fether, maybe. When the tide’s going out, they’d get swept out into the Channel in no time.”
“Yes.” Harry was more enthusiastic. Now he felt he was back being an investigator. “But if that’s what happened, why didn’t he get rid of the torso too?”
“Maybe he was interrupted? Someone got suspicious of him?”
“Frustrating not knowing more, isn’t it? I think it’s unfair that the police keep all the information to themselves.”
“The full details would usually come out later in court…but of course that’d only happen if someone was charged with the murder. If the gossip’s right and the police do reckon Roddy Hargreaves killed his wife, then the whole story’ll never be known.”
“No…” The boy was cast down again.
“But the police may not be right,” said Jude encouragingly. “There may still be something to investigate. So, Harry, I’m relying on you to keep thinking about the case and listening to what people say. You might come up with that vital detail that turns the whole thing on its head. You might be able to prove that the police were wrong, and that Roddy Hargreaves wasn’t a murderer.”
“You’re right.” Now she’d given him his role back, Harry Roxby sounded positively perky. “Don’t worry, Jude. My investigation of the case continues.”
“That’s what I like to hear, Sherlock.”
On the Sunday morning Carole and Jude went for a walk on Fethering Beach. As if apologetic for the recent rain, the day was exceptionally fine, the sky a gentle blue, and the beige sand stretched for miles. Gulliver circled ecstatically around them. He appreciated having the attention of two people, and he loved the intriguing smells of the low tide flotsam and jetsam. A late June day scampering across the pungent sand, with infinite sniffing detours, was his idea of dog heaven.
The two human beings with him were less cheerful. The sadness of Roddy Hargreaves’s death, and the unsatisfactory way in which it might tie up the mystery of his wife’s death cast a pall over both the women.
“I don’t want to leave it like that,” said Jude.
“But how else can we leave it?” asked Carole. “We have no information. We don’t even know for sure that the police do think Roddy killed her.”
“No, and we probably never will know.” Jude picked up a stone and threw it into the retreating sea. Her mood was uncharacteristically despondent. “I don’t think he did kill her, though.”
Carole was silent for a moment, before saying, “Nor do I”
“But why do we think that? Given how little hard factwe’ve got about the case, why are we both convinced Roddy didn’t do it?”
“I suppose…”
“It’s because we liked him, didn’t we? We met him, and though we could recognize he was an alcoholic and a man with problems, we both had a gut instinct that he wasn’t the kind of man who’d commit a murder.”
Carole, reluctant to admit to such an irrational impulse as ‘gut instinct’, had nonetheless to admit that Jude had a point.
“So, just for a moment, let’s pretend that our gut instinct is right.”
“Why?”
“Because in my experience gut instincts usually are.” Carole awarded that a rather frosty harrumph. “Come on, if Roddy didn’t do it, who did?”
“We’re back to the same thing, Jude. We have no idea. We don’t have enough information.”
“Then we’d better get some more information, hadn’t we?”
“About what? About whom?”
“Roddy’d be a good person to start with. If we find out more about him, maybe we can actually prove he didn’t do it.”
“All right. So who do we know who can tell us about Roddy?”
“James Lister, I suppose. If we can talk to him without the dreadful Fiona present.”
“Yes. Or…” A smile irradiated Carole’s thin features. “There’s someone else.”
“Hm?”
“At the dinner party on Friday, Jude, don’t you remember? Someone admitted he’d had ‘one or two conversations’ with Roddy Hargreaves round the time Virginia disappeared.”
“Yes.” Jude smiled too as she nodded agreement.
“You know,” said Carole Seddon, “I think I might go to church in Fedborough this evening.”
? The Torso in the Town ?
Twenty-Three
It was a long time since Carole had been to any kind of church service, and even longer since she had been to Evensong. The liturgy sounded unfamiliar and awkward. She must have gone to church a few times since the Prayer Book had been modernized, but it was the rhythms of the older version that had stayed with her from schooldays, when non-attendance had not been an option.
The biblical readings were even worse. Again, she had grown up with the King James Bible, and its rolling cadences were deeply etched on her subconscious. The version that was now being used had clearly been assembled by people with no sense of rhythm at all, and every clumsy phrase just made her aware of the perfect symmetries it had replaced.
The language might have been more effective if presented with conviction, but the Rev Trigwell’s tremulous delivery suggested that he himself was uncertain of the text’s validity. Idly, as she listened, Carole wondered whether it was possible for a Church of England vicar to show conviction. As a religion, Anglicanism was so wishy- washy. A passionate Anglican was an oxymoron, and the idea of an Anglican fundamentalist simply laughable.
She tried to think back to a time when she had had faith, and couldn’t find it. Till her mid-twenties she had been a regular church-goer, but that wasn’t the same thing at all. Attendance had been a social convention, a polite ritual which had nothing to do with belief.
And, looking round the congregation in All Souls Fed-borough that June evening, Carole Seddon didn’t see much evidence of passionately held faith there either. The turn-out was better than most churches had come to expect in the first decade of the twenty-first century. At least two-thirds of the pews were full, but all with the same kind of people, respectable matrons with dutiful, suited husbands in tow. No ethnic diversity, and no children. Perhaps there was a Family Service on Sunday mornings, Carole reflected; there might be more of an age range on show in the church then.
The congregation were mostly regulars. At least they were very prompt on belting out the liturgical responses, all of which were different from the ones preserved in the amber of Carole’s memory.
And they certainly knew the hymns, which again weren’t ones she recognized. She wouldn’t have minded giving ‘Rock of Ages’ or ‘O God our help in ages past’ a good seeing-to, but since the words were unfamiliar, she had to fall back on the silent and inaccurate lip-synch she’d relied on in her early days at school. Mouthing
