us on Friday?”
“Yes, I did. A terrible tragedy.”
“Mm.”
“It must be dreadful for you, James.”
“Why?” He sounded instantly suspicious.
“Well, to lose one of your regular drinking mates.”
“Oh, yes. Well, that happens, I’m afraid. Increasingly, these days.”
“But it won’t stop you using the Coach and Horses?”
“Good Lord, no.” He let out a heartily masculine laugh. “Death’s a tragedy, but stopping going to the pub would be an even worse tragedy.”
“So you’ll still be there on a regular basis?”
“You bet, young lady. Six o’clock on the dot every weekday evening. Erm, except Fridays, that is, because, erm…well, as you know, Fiona gives her dinner parties then.”
“Of course. Well, James, thank you again for last week…”
“From you and Jude, yes.”
“…and I’ll hope to see you in the Coach and Horses one of these evenings.”
“That’d be splendid,” said James Lister, not realizing he had just made a definite appointment.
But he didn’t look surprised when Carole and Jude appeared in the Coach and Horses shortly after six that evening. In fact, he was delighted to see them. James Lister was alone at the bar. His cronies hadn’t turned up. One of them would never turn up again. Maybe the others wouldn’t appear at all that evening. The women saw him before he saw them; he looked old and forlorn.
But he perked up the minute he caught sight of them. “Well, this is a double pleasure. Fiona will be so interested to hear that I’ve met up with you again. So what brings you here?”
Carole gaped. She hadn’t thought to prepare a cover story.
“Oh, we’re just stupid, Jimmy,” said Jude smoothly. “I’d got it into my head that this Art Crawl thing, you know, that Terry Harper was talking about at your dinner party…well, I thought it started today.”
“No, that’s Friday. Third of July. Well, most of the Private Views are on Thursday evening. Fiona and I will have to put in an appearance at a few of those.” His tone of voice didn’t suggest he’d had an overnight conversion to the joys of visual art. “But the Crawl proper opens to the public on Friday afternoon.”
“I know now. I’ve seen the posters all over the town. Anyway, since we’d come here on a wasted journey, we thought we’d have just a quick drink before we went back to Fethering.”
“Your mistake is my gain,” said James Lister with elaborate courtesy.
“Stupid of me.” Jude shook her head pitifully.
He responded to the dumb blonde routine. “Women, eh? Can’t be trusted out of the kitchen. Or the bedroom.” He cackled. Carole and Jude resisted their instinctive responses to his words and smiled winsomely. They weren’t going to put this information opportunity at risk. “Now come on, let me get you pretty little things a drink.”
Skittishly, Jude requested a white wine. Carole did the same, although she was less good at being skittish.
When they were supplied with glasses, Jude looked around the bar and sighed. “Sad to think last time we were in here we were talking to Roddy Hargreaves.”
James Lister looked suitably reverent. “Yes. Poor bugger – pardon my French. I knew he was in a bad way, but I didn’t ever imagine he’d go and do that.”
“Do what?” asked Jude innocently.
“Well, jump in the river.”
Carole joined in the questioning. “Is everyone in Fed-borough assuming it was suicide?”
“Obviously. What’s the alternative?”
“He might just have fallen in. He drank a lot. Very unsteady, I would imagine, when he was walking around.”
“Oh yes, but he knew the riverbank well. He wouldn’t have fallen in by accident.”
“Someone might have pushed him in,” Jude suggested innocently.
“Why would they do that?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Well, I’m sorry, my lovely young thing…” James Lister took the opportunity to give Jude’s shoulder a more than avuncular pat. “…but I’m afraid the truth is poor old Roddy topped himself.”
Jude continued to play the innocent. “Why would he do that?”
“Once the police had identified Virginia’s body, he knew it was only a matter of time before they arrested him. He couldn’t face that, so…”
“Are you saying he murdered his wife?”
“That’s what everyone in Fedborough’s saying.”
“Is everyone in Fedborough usually right?” asked Carole.
“About most things, I’d say, yes. Once you hear a rumour in this town, nine times out of ten it’ll turn out to be true.”
Neither woman believed this, but they both nodded, unwilling to stop his flow.
“Poor old Roddy.” James Lister shook his head lugubriously. “Must’ve been nursing that ghastly secret all these years. Probably what drove him to drink.”
“But I thought he drank a lot while his wife was still around,” Carole objected.
“Yes, but he was worse after she’d gone. Now we know why.”
“How long ago was it all this happened?” asked Jude, still playing the ingenue.
“Three…three and a half years. I know that, because it was my last year in the business. I sold out…I suppose about six months after Virginia disappeared.”
“Must’ve been a wrench for you after all that time, giving up the family business.”
“Well, in some ways it was. In a lot of other ways I was pleased to be shot of the whole thing. Butchery’s changed, you know, not the profession it was. When I started, Fed-borough could support two butchers. There was my dad’s, and old Len Trollope on the corner of Dauncey Street. And both of them thought their business would be passed on from father to son for all eternity.
“But now every supermarket has its own meat counter, it’s hard to make a living as the old traditional local shop. And butchers nowadays have all this Brussels and BSE nonsense to deal with…I think I got out at the right time. Didn’t do too badly out of it, either. Property prices in Fedborough have gone up very satisfactorily, you know.”
“Good,” said Carole, reckoning that was the required response.
“Oh yes.” He nodded, pleased with his business acumen.
“So were you one of the last people to see Virginia Hargreaves alive?” asked Jude breathlessly.
The idea of being part of the drama appealed to him. “Yes, I suppose I was.”
“Ooh, how horrid,” said Jude, continuing to play daffy. “Do you remember when it was exactly?”
He smoothed his white moustache with the effort of recollection. “Let me see. I think it was late on the Friday afternoon before she vanished…”
Neither Carole nor Jude made any reaction, but the same thought was in both their minds: when Roddy was already on the ferry to France.
“Mm, because I remember, just before closing time, I’d dropped into Stanley Franks’s shop next door…”
“The grocer’s?”
“That’s right. He sold up round the same time I did. But we were still both in business then…”
“I gather he’s now very ill,” said Carole.
“Yes, poor bugger – pardon my French again. Physically in very good nick, I gather, which means he’ll probably last for years. But the mind’s totally gone. Very sad. He used to be so good at what he did. All right, I know running a shop’s not the most glamorous of professions…” (a fact of which his wife had left him in no doubt over the years of their marriage) “…but there’s a lot of skill involved in doing it well, and the best people inthe retail trade really take a pride in their work. I like to think I was one of those, but I couldn’t hold a candle to Stanley Franks. He was a real perfectionist, ran that shop like a finely oiled machine. Spotlessly clean, all the best produce,
