between stilted butterflies, in her customary careless ripple of drapery.
“It’s your friend, yes.”
“She’ll be going up to the Coach and Horses. I said I might be in there.”
“Oh. Do you want me to go out and ask her to join us?” he asked unwillingly.
“No, no, don’t worry. She’s probably doing some more of the Art Crawl. We’ve fixed to meet later. It’s fine.”
James Lister relaxed visibly, drained his beer and asked Jean-Pierre for another. Then, remembering his manners, he asked if Carole would like more wine.
She agreed to another glass. The cosier they got together, the easier it might be to ask the questions she had in mind.
“Presumably,” she embarked, “everyone in Fedborough’s been talking a lot about the Hargreaves…?”
“Not that much, really. I mean, all kinds of rumours were going around before, but once Roddy’s body was found…there wasn’t much room left for speculation, was there? Besides, everyone’s got caught up with the Fedborough Festival starting and…you know, things move on.”
“Yes.” Carole warmed to her task. “So the theory is…Roddy killed her that February weekend three years ago…Why?”
“Why?”
“Why did he kill her?”
“Well…We’ve just been saying it’s difficult to see inside a marriage, that things look different on the outside…Presumably, he killed her because they were married.”
Not an entirely satisfactory answer, but that wasn’t what Carole was there to talk about, so she moved on. “All right. If we accept that, then we must also accept that Roddy was the one who cut up her body. And then ask the question: why would he do that?”
“To make it easier to dispose of.”
Everyone seemed to be agreed on that point. Carole nodded thoughtfully. “Makes sense. So somehow he disposed of the arms and legs and then…why didn’t he dispose of the torso?”
“Someone was suspicious of him? He was afraid of being seen getting rid of it? I don’t think we’ll ever know the full details.”
“No. And yet, aware that a large part of his wife’s body was hidden in the cellar, Roddy Hargreaves then sold Pelling House to Francis and Debbie Carlton. Doesn’t that seem strange behaviour to you?”
James Lister shrugged. “Roddy was a strange chap. Pissed – sorry, pardon my French, drunk – most of the time. He’d forget things.”
Another less than satisfactory explanation. “You saidyou sold your business about three years ago…” He nodded acknowledgment. “And the Frankses next door to you sold up round the same time?”
Another nod. “Stanley had been getting very forgetful. For different reasons, we were both running our businesses down.”
“Terry Harper said the grocery was in quite a state when he bought it.”
“Yes. Our withdrawal at the butcher’s was rather more orderly. Last six months we were moving stuff out of the place, cutting down the amount of goods we stocked.”
“And was Stanley Franks doing the same?”
“The effect was the same, but in his case it was because he was getting so forgetful. He really couldn’t manage any more. I kept offering to help, said he could store stuff in the smokehouse, that kind of thing, but he wouldn’t listen. I think he was very aware of the state he was in, but pretended it wasn’t happening. He got very snappish if anyone suggested anything, offered him help, or criticized him.”
“But you used the smokehouse as a storeroom?”
“You bet. Stopped smoking our own goods more than a year before I retired. You could get the stuff from wholesalers, it saved an awful lot of palaver. And none of the people in the town seemed that bothered. Not much point in making an effort as a small shopkeeper when your customers can get a wider range at the supermarkets than anything you’ve got on offer…”
James Lister’s hobby-horse was threatening to loom into view, so Carole moved quickly to a new question. “You told me and Jude that it would be easy for a qualified butcher to dismember a human body…”
He chuckled knowingly. “Dead easy.”
“What would he use – a saw?”
“No way. 1b do a neat job, you wouldn’t need to cut through any bones. Just use a boning knife round the joints. They’d come away neat and tidy, no problem.”
“But it wouldn’t be such an easy job for someone unqualified?”
He shook his head, enjoying being the fount of knowledge. “No way. Get a real pig’s breakfast once you get the amateurs involved. I’m sure they’d use saws, axes, machetes, cleavers. When it’s done properly, you know, butchery’s a very tidy trade.”
Their steak and omelette arrived. After some coy badinage with Jean-Pierre, James Lister guffawed. “What a subject to be talking about over lunch, eh? When all I want to know is how a pretty little thing like you came to end up in Fethering, of all places.”
Though it went against every instinct she possessed, Carole manufactured an appropriately girlish giggle. “Just one more thing before we eat, though…”
“Mm?” His steak knife was already sawing through the red meat.
“If Roddy Hargreaves had no training as a butcher, how was he able to make such a neat job of dismembering his wife?”
James Lister chuckled. He was bored with this conversation now, and wanted to move on to more intimate topics. “I’ve no idea. Maybe, in an earlier part of his life, he’d trained as a butcher. You’d be amazed the people who’ve got butchery skills tucked away in their past…”
“Really?” Carole leaned closer.
He was enjoying this. Fuelled as he was by the beer, her proximity made him potentially indiscreet, even a little reckless. “I tell you, there’s one very fine upmarketlady of Fedborough who…you’d take your life in your hands if you mentioned it to her…but she used to work as a butcher.”
“Who was that then?” Carole managed to get a teasing, almost sexy, quality into her voice.
“Ooh, I don’t think I should tell you.”
“Go
“Well…Not a word to a soul, but I’m talking about Fiona. My wife.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes. Early days of our marriage, before the kids came along, she used to help in the shop with me and my old dad.”
“Well, well, well…”
“Bloody good butcher she was too.”
And certainly still knows how to put the knife in, thought Carole Seddon. But her only words were, “Was she?”
? The Torso in the Town ?
Thirty-Four
Jude had done as Carole surmised, and taken in some more of the Art Crawl. She had found the quality of the art mixed. Works in one or two exhibitions she liked a lot, others she loathed. She was relieved that she saw nothing she liked better than the watercolour she had bought from Debbie Carlton.
She wanted to talk to Carole about Debbie. And the appearance of Alan Burnethorpe in her flat. Jude had no wish to succumb to the knee-jerk reactions of Fedborough’s gossips, but it was hard to put an entirely innocent interpretation on his presence there. And it did open up a whole new range of interesting possibilities…Yes, she needed to discuss the case with Carole.
In the meantime, even where she couldn’t enjoy the art, she could enjoy the private view of Fedborough’s houses. The Art Crawl, as Debbie Carlton had said, was a Snoopers’ Charter, and Jude enjoyed a good snoop as
