lovers. There were many more paintings on the walls than there had been before. All were in the same style, evoking drowsy afternoons in Italy, but they demonstrated infinite subtle variations. Debbie Carlton fully justified Terry Harper’s description: ‘one of the few genuinely talented artists in Fedborough’.
“This is Jude, my neighbour. I’ve been going on so much about your paintings, she was desperate to come and have a look.”
Jude slipped easily into the slight exaggeration. “You bet. And from a quick look I can tell Carole was absolutely right. Wonderful stuff.”
Debbie Carlton glowed. Though she claimed to be suffering from a hangover following her Private View the night before, she looked very pretty that afternoon, casual in clown-like dungarees, almost beautiful, and totally relaxed. Carole was even more aware of the tension that her ex-husband’s presence had engendered.
“You’re my first visitors. I’ve been sitting here for the last hour wondering if anyone was going to come, and wondering if I dared go off to the loo, in case someone did.” –
“Feel at liberty to do so now,” said Carole. “We’ll guard your premises against international art thieves.”
Debbie grinned. “The urge has gone away. Just nerves, I expect. This is a different kind of tension for me. I got terribly nervous yesterday before the Private View, but then at least I knew everyone was going to arrive at about the same time. Waiting around like this is a sort of extended torture.”
“Well, I hope our arrival has taken the curse off it,” said Jude, whose eyes were darting round the paintings on the wall.
“Yes, I think it has.”
“Ooh, I love that one!” Jude swooped towards a small close-up of a terracotta urn from which sharp green plant tendrils trailed. “It is for sale, isn’t it?”
“They’re all for sale. Except for the ones with red stickers on. Those were bought at the Private View last night.”
“Great! I’ll have this one! How much?”
Carole Seddon looked on, open-mouthed. What Jude had said was the wrong way round. You didn’t decide to buy something and then ask the price. The correct procedure was to find out the price, assess whether you could afford the object in question and whether it might not be better to consider the decision overnight. If the sums made sense, and you were feeling particularly impulsive, then you might proceed to make the purchase on the spot.
Jude didn’t work that way. On being told the catalogue listed seventy-five pounds, with a cry of ‘Cheap at the price’, she immediately whipped a cheque book from her bag and started writing. Flamboyantly, she ripped the cheque out and handed it to a delighted Debbie Carlton.
This little transaction raised two intriguing questions for Carole. One was an old, recurrent one: where did Jude get her money from, what did she live on? Carole was no nearer to answering that than she had been when her new neighbour first moved in to Woodside Cottage.
The answer to the second question had proved equally elusive. Ridiculous, given the length of time they’d known each other, but Carole still didn’t know Jude’s surname. It hadn’t been volunteered on their first meeting, and the longer time went on, the more difficult for Carole became phrasing the direct question on the subject.
But Jude had just produced a cheque book; and surely printed on her cheques must be her full name. Carole tried, without being too conspicuous, to lean across and read what was on the cheque. But the transaction was tooquick. Debbie immediately placed the cheque in a cashbox she hoped would fill up over the next ten days, and by the time Carole looked back, Jude had replaced the cheque-book in her bag. Carole’s frustration was unrelieved.
Hard on the heels of that annoyance came another troubling thought. If Jude had just bought a painting, shouldn’t Carole do the same? She was the one, after all, who had had more contact with Debbie Carlton. She, if anyone, was Debbie’s friend. Didn’t etiquette demand that she should go against her nature and make a comparable impulse buy? She liked Debbie’s paintings, there was no problem with that, but she couldn’t make a snap decision like Jude just had. And should she go for one at the same price as Jude’s? Though how could she know it was the same price as Jude’s? The prices weren’t marked on the paintings; they were on the set of printed sheets piled up beside Debbie’s cash-box. And if she looked at one of those sheets before deciding on which painting to buy, might her behaviour not – by comparison with Jude’s spontaneity – appear calculating or mean?
This characteristic spiral of thought in Carole’s mind was fortunately interrupted by an equally characteristic direct question from Jude. “You used to live in the house where the torso was found, didn’t you, Debbie?”
“That’s right.”
“I don’t know if you heard, but I was present at dinner with the Roxbys the night it was discovered.”
“How horrible. Did you actually see the thing?”
Jude nodded, and Debbie Carlton smiled sympathy. Carole was once again amazed at her friend’s ease in reaching a state of intimacy with complete strangers.
“Did you know her?” asked Jude.
“Virginia Hargreaves? I knew her to say hello to. Because my parents have always lived in Fedborough, even when I wasn’t living here I’d often come back. So I’d see Virginia in the High Street or in my parents’ shop. They used to run the grocery in the town.”
Jude reacted as if this was new information to her. Then, casually, she asked, “Everyone seems to be assuming the husband killed her. Do you go along with that?”
Debbie Carlton splayed out her hands in a gesture of ignorance. “What else is there to think? I must say I’m surprised, because, from what I’d seen of Roddy, he appeared to be just a fairly harmless piss-artist. Hard to imagine him as a murderer, but…who knows what goes on inside a marriage? People tell me my marriage to Francis looked fine from the outside, so…”
“But was Virginia Hargreaves universally liked?” asked Carole. “We’ve found it difficult to get anyone in Fedborough to say a word against her.”
Debbie Carlton let out a derisive snort of laughter. “Oh, they were just impressed by her title. And now it’s even worse, because ‘not speaking ill of the dead’ comes into the equation. But no, there were a few people who’d had their set-tos with the lovely Virginia.”
“What kind of people?”
“People who weren’t impressed by her title and made no secret of the fact. Or people who tried to be competitive with her socially.”
“Like…?”
“Well, I guess the main one would be a woman called Fiona Lister…don’t know if you’ve come across her…?”
They explained that she had been their hostess for dinner the previous Friday.
“My, you are honoured. I was never granted the dubious pleasure of an invitation to one of La Lister’s
“What?”
“Trade, Carole, trade. My parents’ grocery was right next door to James Lister’s butcher’s. All Fiona’s money may have come from trade, but she didn’t want her social life to do so as well. She aimed for something much more
“And is that why she fell out with Virginia Hargreaves?”
“Spot on. Fiona has always seen herself as the Queen Bee of Fedborough society, and Virginia was a rival for that title.”
“She wasn’t a great entertainer too, was she?”
“No. Rather the reverse. I can’t ever remember Virginia doing any entertaining at Pelling House. But, you see, she didn’t have to. She got invited everywhere simply by virtue of who she was. People in Fedborough fell over themselves to include her in everything. So, without making any effort at all, Virginia Hargreaves was always going to win over Fiona Lister. Virginia was born into the aristocracy and, however much social-climbing effort Fiona Lister made, she would remain, at bottom, the wife of the local butcher.”
“Was there a moment when things came to a head?” Jude asked eagerly. “When the two of them actually came to blows?”
