“But once the police had identified the remains and started investigating Roddy, you knew your secret was at risk again. If his alibi could be proved, then suspicions were going to move elsewhere, weren’t they?”
“Hm?” Billie Franks sounded distracted now.
“So you killed him too, did you?”
“What?” It was an effort to pull herself back from the depths of thought. “Yes. Yes, of course. Roddy had to die too. Anything to save Stanley…” She corrected herself: “Stanley’s reputation.”
She looked down at the boning knife, as if surprised to find it still in her hand. “And now, of course, it’s you… Jude.” She savoured the unfamiliar name. “You’re the current threat to Stanley’s reputation.”
“But I’m not going to tell anyone,” said Jude cosily. “I don’t believe in justice as an abstract concept.” Which was absolutely true. “From all accounts, Virginia Hargreaves wasn’t a very admirable person. Her death doesn’t seem to have left the world much impoverished. Why don’t we agree to forget about the whole thing?”
There was a silence. Billie Franks appeared to be considering the proposition.
Jude pushed home her advantage. “Anyway, even if you managed to keep me quiet, I’ve still got friends who’ll be trying to find me. I’ve still…” The words tapered away, as Jude realized what a foolish change of direction she’d taken.
The old woman shook her head, almost with regret. “That’s the argument for killing you, I’m afraid, Jude. You and everyone else who threatens Stanley’s reputation. However many there are.”
She’d moved suddenly forward and seized Jude’s wrist. The grip was surprisingly strong, considering her age. Jude tried to break free, but stopped when she felt the prick of the knifepoint in the softness under her jaw.
Billie Franks leaned against the glazed doors, which gave instantly. They’d been unlocked all the time, probably opened throughout the day to let in the July sunlight.
But now all outside was blackness. Jude could hear, rather than see, the rushing flow of the Fether, very close now.
“I’m sorry.” Billie sounded genuinely apologetic. “I can’t take the risk of you staying alive.”
She nudged Jude forward on to the sill of the doors. Encountering resistance, the point of the knife was pushed more firmly into the soft neck.
“I can swim,” said Jude desperately.
“Not in the Fether. The tide’s too strong. No one survives in the Fether – particularly if they’re unconscious when they go in.”
The moment Jude felt her wrist released, she saw Billie Franks’s arm rising up with a bottle in its grasp. It reached the top of its arc, and she waited for the inevitable concussion.
“Mum…”
The monosyllable was spoken softly, from the doorway to the towpath. Billie Franks froze at the sound of her daughter’s voice.
“Mum, put that down. And the knife. That’s not going to help Dad.”
There was a stillness on the houseboat. The rushing chatter of the Fether sounded louder than ever.
Then Jude felt the easing of pressure from the knife-point under her chin. The woman, suddenly older and more bent, turned towards her daughter. The bottle and the boning knife dropped, making loud clatters on the polished wood of the floor.
In the doorway, framing Debbie Carlton, Jude could see Carole and Ted Crisp.
Never had there been a more welcome sight.
? The Torso in the Town ?
Forty-Two
The Elms which had given the home its name were long gone. They had succumbed to Dutch Elm Disease in the seventies, and the house still looked a little exposed without them. Set back from the road that ran along the sea front in Rustington, it had been built as a substantial Victorian family home, with space for a small army of servants. Generations of children in changing fashions of swimwear, with their impedimenta of buckets, rakes and spades, must have scampered down to the garden gate, carefully crossed the road and then luxuriated in the freedom of the pebbles and the sand and the sea.
But it was a long time since any of The Elms’ current inmates had been on the beach. A long time since any of them had been beyond the garden walls, or since most of them had been out through the front door.
The Sunday morning was fine, promising the continuity of summer, and there was a lot of traffic. Everyone in England seems to have an elderly relative in Angmering, East Preston or Rustington-on-Sea, and summer Sundays witness an invasion of the area by the dutiful, the concerned, the well-wishing and the will-hungry.
Carole and Jude had followed Debbie Carlton’s instructions exactly. The night before, drama had soon settled into normality. To Debbie’s relief, nobody had suggested calling the police for her mother. They had all realized the irrelevance in that situation of official enquiries. The problems that had been revealed required emotional, not judicial, resolution.
¦
Soon after Jude’s rescue, she and Carole had been in Ted Crisp’s car on the way back to Fethering. He had insisted on driving them straight to the Crown and Anchor, where they’d indulged in a little illegal – but extremely necessary – late-night drinking.
And Debbie had stayed on the houseboat and talked to her mother. She promised to ring them at ten the next morning. Which she duly had done, asking if they could meet her at The Elms. They agreed on eleven-thirty, because Carole and Jude had to go via Fedborough. There was one more person they needed to talk to.
The interior of the home was as clean and cheerful as such a place could be, but the many vases of flowers on display could not quite smother the pervasive smells of disinfectant, urine and age. The neatly uniformed staff members were all extremely friendly and recognized Debbie as a regular visitor.
She met them at the main door, still wearing the T-shirt and sweatpants she had thrown on to cover her nakedness at Alan Burnethorpe’s the night before. Her near-white hair looked yellowed, too flat, in need of shampoo, and there were arcs like bruises underneath her eyes. She hadn’t slept at all since she last saw them.
She led Carole and Jude through into a large sitting room, off which a conservatory reached into the extensive, well-kept garden.
There were not many people in there. An old man, somehow contriving to look military in a blue-and- redstriped towelling dressing gown, sat up straight on theedge of an armchair, a Sunday newspaper held resolutely in front of him. But, Jude noted, the newspaper was three weeks old and his eyes did not seem to be moving across the page.
On a sofa an old woman was stacked awkwardly, like a broken deckchair. Her head lolled back, mouth open in a sleep that mimicked death and would soon be replaced by the real thing.
In a corner of the room, unwatched, a muted television flickered.
Debbie found three high-backed chairs and arranged them in a semi-circle, facing the conservatory. She did not need to point for Carole and Jude to see why she had brought them there.
Billie Franks was unaware of their arrival. She sat upright on the side of a lounger, looking with pride and infinite fondness at the man beside her.
Stanley Franks was, as she had said, ‘still as strong as an ox’. Though his hair was white, under his blue checked shirt his shoulders swelled menacingly.
But there was no menace in his face. Only a vagueness, tinged by anxiety, as he looked down at his task.
On the table in front of him was a selection of children’s building blocks. Plastic, in primary colours, not the kind that can be stuck together. And these the old man kept piling on top of each other, trying to make some structure of perfect symmetry.
But he was never satisfied. However carefully he placed the bricks, whatever adjustments he made to their alignment, the result always fell short of his expectations. With a shrug of annoyance, he would knock his edifice down. If some of the bricks fell on the floor, with practised ease Billie would put them back on the table. Then Stanley Franks would start once again on his doomed building project.
