The Fethering Mysteries 03; The Torso in the Town

something and sounding only the occasional final ‘s’ or ‘t’ has been a church stand-by of the unaccustomed and the tone-deaf for centuries.

Still, the respectable people of Fedborough treated the verses on their photocopied sheets as if they were proper hymns and delivered them with great gusto. Behind her, Carole could hear one female voice soaring and swooping over the others. Its owner might once have been a goodsinger, but somewhere along the line had got the idea she could create her own descants to dance around the words, independent of the tune everyone else was singing. She didn’t understand the choral principle of sublimating the individual in the group creativity.

A surreptitious look around brought Carole no surprise. The owner of the voice was Fiona Lister. Beside her, in a stiff suit, stood James, with the expression of a man who’d much rather be slumped in front of the television watching golf.

But in his face there was also a resignation. He had long ago recognized that he couldn’t escape. Church- going was one of the rituals in the freemasonry of Fedborough respectability. If Fiona said it had to be done, it had to be done. James Lister couldn’t perhaps help having been a butcher – though that still remained very regrettable – but in every other way he would have to conform to the middle-class stereotype.

At the end of the service, Carole deliberately dawdled. She had caught the eye of – and been graciously acknowledged by – Fiona Lister, to whom she mouthed a ‘Thank you so much for Friday night’ She also spotted the Durringtons leaving the church some way ahead, but they didn’t see her. Wondering whether the Roxbys might have considered church as a quick route into Fedborough society, she looked around, but saw no sign of them.

As the congregation filed out, they passed the Rev Trigwell in the porch. He did a lot of hand-shaking and feeble laughing, but bonhomie did not come naturally to him. He seemed, as ever, unrelaxed and gauche. A spike of his thinning hair was pointing upwards, and the red blotches on his face looked almost painful.

When Carole reached him, he took her hand in a double handshake of unconvincing heartiness. “Well, goodness me. All the way from Fethering. I’m honoured. Has news of the quality of my sermons travelled so far?”

His words contained the ingredients of insouciant small talk, but seemed to cost him a great effort to produce.

Carole had decided at the Listers’ dinner party that directness was going to be her most effective approach with the Rev Trigwell. “No,” she said. “I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh?”

“About Roddy Hargreaves.”

His second ‘Oh’ was much gloomier. And it was followed by an ‘Oh dear’.

The All Souls vicarage was a large building, but the Rev Trigwell only really lived in two rooms. They gave the appearance of having been furnished from second-hand shops by someone who had no interest in furniture. There were no pictures or personal photographs on the walls or mantelpiece. Philip Trigwell seemed as reluctant to impose his personality on his surroundings as on other people.

“I’m not married,” he announced, as if he had to get that out of the way before they moved on to anything else. “I mean, I don’t mean that I’m…I never have been married. I’m not married.”

“No.”

“Could I get you a cup of tea?”

He seemed relieved when Carole declined the offer. Her refusal was instinctive. The vicarage was not exactly dirty; it just had the feeling of being unused andunvisited. If she had agreed to tea, the Rev Trigwell might have taken some time to find a second cup.

“So…” They were sitting opposite each other in anonymous armchairs. He rubbed his hands together in a manner that anyone else would have made breezy. “Poor old Roddy Hargreaves, eh? Sad business.”

“But presumably the Lord giveth…”

“Sorry?” He looked genuinely puzzled by the words. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Isn’t that how we should think about death?”

The Rev Trigwell nodded his head slowly up and down as though considering a novel idea. “Well, it’s an approach, certainly. I didn’t know you knew Roddy Hargreaves well.”

“I didn’t.”

“Oh.”

“Only met him for the first time last week.”

“Ah. Well, he was a…He had his faults…” Suddenly this sounded too definitive a statement. “That is, not very serious faults. I mean, he was unreliable, and he certainly drank too much…but I like to think his heart was in the right place.”

The vicar sat back, relieved to have achieved a perfect balance, venturing no opinion that hadn’t been cancelled out by its opposite.

Carole was silent, which she somehow knew would make him uncomfortable.

It did. “So if you didn’t know him well…” Philip Trigwell went on awkwardly, “presumably you’re not really here for grief counselling.”

“No.”

“People do come to me for that.” He spoke doubtfully.

“I like to think I give some kind of help, some comfort…but I’m not really sure.”

“Presumably you can recommend the consolations of religion?”

“Oh yes.” He sounded unconvinced by the efficacy of the cure. “I can do that.”

Carole decided it was time to move on. “At the Listers’ on Friday James said that Roddy Hargreaves had talked to you during the time when everything was going wrong for him, when his plans for the marina weren’t working out…”

“Yes, yes. James did say that, yes.”

“Did Roddy come to you…sort of voluntarily…in search of help? I mean, was he a church-goer?”

“No. No, he wasn’t. I’ve never seen him in All Souls. He was a Catholic, as we said. No, he just, erm…”

“So you went to see him?”

“Um…well…I suppose, in a way, yes. That’s sort of how it happened.”

“You just recognized that he was in trouble…? Here was someone who needed help…so you did your Good Samaritan act and went to see him?”

“Well, it wasn’t quite like that, really, because the Good Samaritan actually found the man who fell among thieves injured by the roadside, and Roddy wasn’t really injured in that way…he was just, erm…things weren’t going very well for him…”

Carole began to wonder whether Philip Trigwell was deeply stupid, or whether sounding stupid was just a by-product of his embarrassment.

“But you did decide, off your own bat, that you should go and see him?”

“Well, erm…It was suggested to me that, erm, Ishould perhaps have a word…I wasn’t sure it would do any good, but…”

“Who suggested that to you?”

“Fiona Lister.”

That figured. The Queen Bee of Fedborough, trying to ensure that nothing happened outside her control. It would have been totally in character for her to order the Rev Trigwell to go and see Roddy Hargreaves, regardless of the man’s religion and of how little either would have welcomed the encounter.

“She’s a strong character,” Carole observed.

“Yes, yes, she is. Very strong.” Thinking ‘strong’ might be too strong a word, he immediately counterbalanced the statement. “That is, she’s a very good person, very thoughtful, very concerned for everyone’s welfare, but perhaps she does sometimes…rather impose her views on…I mean, I’m not using ‘impose’ in the sense of putting any pressure on people…Fiona’s a very public-spirited person, and does a lot for charity, but she’s…she’s…well…As you say, she is a strong character,” he finished lamely.

“So when you went to see Roddy Hargreaves, was he receptive?”

“Receptive?”

“Did he take notice of the religious consolations that you offered him?”

“Oh, I didn’t mention religion.” The Rev Trigwell was slightly appalled by the idea. “I didn’t want to cram that