“He does that all day,” said Debbie softly. “Except when he dozes off to sleep. Then as soon as he wakes up, he starts again. Sometimes it makes him very angry that he can’t get it right. The staff say he has become violent. They tried taking the bricks away, to see if that’d make things better, but he nearly went berserk then, so they gave them back to him. Still, he’s usually calm when Mum’s here.”
As Carole and Jude watched the scene, the same image was in both their minds. It was of a younger Stanley Franks, proud in the hygiene and efficiency of his shop, obsessively piling and repiling his grocery stock on the shelves.
Carole decided it was time for some serious talking. Though Jude had subsequently pooh-poohed the idea, she had been in real danger the night before. What had happened could not be left unexplained – or even unpunished.
“You said you talked to your mother last night, Debbie…”
“Yes. And how. All night. A lot was said that probably should have been said a long time ago.”
“She said a lot to me too,” murmured Jude.
“And did you believe all of it?”
“No.”
“What?” asked Carole sharply. “I thought we’d got the explanation to everything – how Virginia Hargreaves died, how the body was disposed of…” She saw with some annoyance that Debbie and Jude were both shaking their heads. “Well, then what did happen? Is there information you’ve been keeping from me?” she asked, in a moment of instinctive paranoia.
“No,” Jude reassured her. “I got a feeling for the truth last night, and I’m sure it’ll be confirmed by things Billie said to Debbie.”
“Yes,” Debbie agreed.
Again Carole’s nose felt out of joint. Jude and Debbie hadn’t been having secret conversations behind her back. They understood each other without speaking. Telepathy really did make her feel excluded.
“Your father killed Virginia Hargreaves, didn’t he?” asked Jude softly.
“Yes.” Debbie Carlton’s chin sank wearily on to her chest as the tension in her relaxed. “I didn’t know till last night. I didn’t know any of it. First suspicion I had was when you mentioned salmonella, Carole, at Alan’s, because I knew Virginia Hargreaves did most of her shopping at our shop. Suddenly I got an inkling of what might have happened. But then last night Mum told me everything.”
“So the story she gave me was all true,” asked Jude, “if we recast your father in the role of murderer?”
“Well, they were both involved. He in the murder…”
“And she in the disposal of the body.”
“Yes. Dad had been getting very absent-minded the last year they were in the shop. We didn’t realize, but it was the start of this…” She gestured towards the conservatory, which seemed to sum up all the pain of her father’s illness. “He was starting to make mistakes in the buying from his suppliers, getting details of orders wrong, and cleanliness standards were slipping because he’d forget basic hygienie measures.
“Mum tried to take some of the burden off him by doing more in the shop, but he hated that. He’d always been a control-freak about the business, an obsessive if you like…” Debbie’s eyes were unwillingly drawn back to the conservatory. What we’re seeing now is only a grotesque parody of the way he always was.
“And if something did go wrong in the shop, Dad would get furiously angry. These terrible, blinding rages he had. So I think when Virginia Hargreaves came in and complained – ”
“In a manner,” Carole contributed, “that, from what one’s heard about her character, wouldn’t have been that sensitive.”
“No. Exactly. So he got her into the smokehouse on some pretext and…”
Jude nodded. “Story as we know it, with change of murderer.”
“So did your mother come in straightaway and find Virginia dead?”
“No. That happened the next morning.”
“And then what?”
“It was Dad who did the first things to the body.” Debbie was almost shuddering. Though she tried to sound very matter-of-fact, what she was talking about was information she had only very recently received and had not had time to process emotionally. “He stripped off the clothes, put the corpse in the bath and partially drained out the blood. And he…” She shook her head briskly to dispel a feeling of nausea. “He put the body in the kiln.”
“The whole body?”
“Yes. Hung up on hooks or…” Another shake of the head. “God knows how. But he lit the oak dust under it and…I can’t imagine what was going through his mind. As I said, he was behaving very oddly round that time.”
“So the next morning…?”
“Mum arrived very early. Always did on a Saturday, because there were deliveries from the farms of eggs and dairy products. Anyway, first thing she sees is that the smokehouse is being used, and she thinks that’s rather odd, and she goes in and discovers…” Debbie couldn’t find the words.
“It must have been ghastly for her.”
“Yes. A half-kippered minor aristocrat,” said Debbie, in an unsuccessful attempt at humour. “So she confronts Dad, and he says he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Maybe he
“Which she took out of the kiln and then joined, to make the job easier.”
“Exactly.” Debbie sighed. She looked as if she was convalescing after a long illness. Turning her head once again towards the oblivious couple in the conservatory, she said in a drained voice, “That’s the story. My father’s a murderer, though whether he’s in a condition to be brought to trial is, I would have thought, unlikely. But my mother, on the other hand…Well, she’s undoubtedly an accessory after the fact or whatever they call it, so I suppose if anyone thought the police should be informed…”
She looked pleadingly at Carole and Jude. Jude automatically deferred to her friend for the verdict.
“I don’t think the police need be involved,” said Carole. “If they find things out by their own efforts…well, that’s fair enough. Nothing we can do about that. But I don’t think we need to give them any pointers.”
“No,” Jude agreed enthusiastically. “If they’re going along with the assumption that Roddy killed his wife and then, when investigations got too close, killed himself…and if they’re happy with that solution…then why upset their apple-cart?”
“Of course,” said Carole in her sensible voice, “we don’t actually know anything about what the police think. They may know the whole story and, even now, be building up their dossier incriminating your father.”
“Well, if they are…” A great load seemed to have been lifted from Debbie Carlton’s shoulders. “…we’ll have to face that problem when we get to it.”
“There is one detail that ought to be explained, though,” said Carole. “Last night your mother told Jude that she had killed Roddy Hargreaves.”
The colour once again drained from the girl’s cheeks. “But it’s all right,” Jude came in with compassionate speed. “She was just saying it to frighten me.”
“Are you sure?” asked Debbie, who looked suddenly as if she couldn’t take any more stress.
“We’re absolutely sure,” Carole replied. “We asked to meet you later this morning, because on our way here we paid another visit to Alan Burnethorpe.”
Debbie looked bemused.
“He was the last person to see Roddy alive. Harry Roxby told me,” said Jude. “He saw the two of them together that Saturday evening. On the towpath opposite Bracken’s Boatyard.”
“So did the boy see what happened to Roddy?”
“No, but Alan did.”
Carole took up the narrative. “Needless to say, hedidn’t want to tell us when we went round this morning. But when I threatened to tell the police about his affair with Virginia Hargreaves, he saw his marriage – amongst many other things – at risk, and so he owned up.”
“Are you saying Alan owned up to killing Roddy Hargreaves?” asked Debbie in disbelief.
“No. They’d met that evening in one of the pubs. Roddy, according to Alan, had been in maudlin mood and
