The Torso in the Town

by Simon Brett

  Joan Durrington’s wavering assertiveness returned. ‘Roddy was certainly in a very bad state round the time Virginia disappeared.’

  ‘What do you mean by “a bad state”?’ asked Carole.

  But the direct question frightened the doctor’s wife. ‘Oh, I don’t know . . . just . . . well . . .’

  Fiona Lister saw an opportunity to go back on to the attack. ‘Roddy was falling apart. He’d got all these marina plans that Alan Burnethorpe had done for him, and he’d started work on them, but he was running out of money fast.’

  ‘Didn’t his wife have any money to bail him out?’ asked Jude.

  ‘I’m sure she did,’ Fiona replied. ‘She came from an aristocratic background, after all. But she must’ve realized that giving money to Roddy would be tantamount to pouring it down a drain. He just didn’t face up to things at all. I’m sure he could have got his affairs back in order, but he hid away from reality . . . in a whisky bottle, or in the Coach and Horses.’ The look she darted at her husband showed that not only did she dislike her husband’s friend, she also disapproved of their meeting place.

  James tried to salvage some justification for Roddy’s behaviour. ‘Oh, he didn’t just drink round that time. He was trying to sort himself out. He talked to you about it, didn’t he, Philip?’

  The Rev Trigwell looked embarrassed, which wasn’t difficult, since he always looked embarrassed. ‘Well, there were one or two conversations that . . .’

  ‘What did he talk about?’ asked Carole, once again favouring the direct approach.

  The vicar reacted as if a godparent had asked him to drown the baby in the font. ‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly, I mean, there are things I’m not allowed to—’

  ‘Professional confidentiality,’ Donald Durrington offered supportively.

  ‘Exactly, yes.’

  ‘Why, did Roddy talk to you in the confessional?’

  ‘No, no, it was just a friendly conversation.’

  ‘He is Catholic, after all, though, isn’t he?’ Carole had decided that she didn’t like any of the people sitting round the dinner table – except for Jude, of course – and she didn’t really care whether or not she was being rude to them. ‘You’re not a Catholic priest, are you?’

  ‘Good heavens, no.’ Thinking his response might have been too vehement, the Rev Trigwell’s face grew blotchier as he immediately started fence-mending. ‘That is to say, I’ve nothing against the Catholic Church. They do some wonderful work, and in these days of increased ecumenicalism our communities are getting closer all the time. Though obviously my own training and conviction persuades me more towards the Church of England, I still don’t think one should dismiss too easily the—’

  Carole cut through all this. ‘So you can’t tell me what Roddy Hargreaves talked about to you. Fine.’ She turned to her hostess. ‘You were saying he was in a bad way, and there were problems with his marriage – is that right?’

  ‘All I was saying was that with a man in the state Roddy was in . . .’ Fiona replied darkly, ‘anything could have happened.’

  Once again Carole asked for clarification.

  ‘I’m just saying he might have got into an argument with Virginia . . .’

  ‘And ended up killing her and dismembering the body?’ suggested Jude with characteristic frankness.

  Fiona Lister coloured. ‘No, I didn’t say that. I was just suggesting that . . . Roddy and Virginia weren’t getting on very well round that time.’

  Carole shuddered inwardly at the power of these insinuations. In spite of her denial, Fiona Lister had been virtually implying that Roddy Hargreaves had murdered his wife. His paranoia in the Coach and Horses about the gossips of Fedborough seemed to have been justified. Carole needed to know more. ‘What was Virginia Hargreaves like?’

  This was clearly a subject that their hostess felt much happier with. ‘Oh, an extremely nice person. Her father was actually titled, you know. Virginia mixed a lot in aristocratic circles as a child, knew the Royals very well. She could have used her own title, if she’d chosen to. But she didn’t . . . much . . . very nice and unassuming in that way, Lady Virginia was. Charming. And lovely to look at. Early forties, I suppose when she left Fedborough. Lovely blonde hair . . . well, blonded probably . . . and of course beautifully spoken. It’s such a pleasure to hear good vowels, isn’t it?’ Fiona Lister somehow contrived to make this another criticism of her husband. ‘Just so sad that a person of Lady Virginia’s breeding should end up with someone like Roddy.’

  Carole thought this was a bit rich, coming from a butcher’s wife. ‘Roddy seems to have breeding too.’

  ‘Oh yes, I’m sure he went to the right schools and all that kind of thing, but I was talking about character. Virginia never drank to excess.’ Fiona flashed another venomous look at her husband.

  ‘And where’s Virginia Hargreaves now?’ asked Jude.

  ‘According to Roddy,’ Fiona’s words were weighed down with scepticism, ‘Virginia went up to London when she left him.’

  ‘And when exactly are we talking about here? About three years ago?’

  ‘Yes. End of February.’ James Lister gave what he hoped was a winning smile. ‘Friday the twentieth, I remember. Because you gave one of your most successful dinner parties that evening, Fiona.’

  But the attempt at ingratiation cut no ice with his wife. With another shrivelling glance at him, she went on, ‘Virginia had a flat up in London, I believe. But when I last asked him, Roddy said he thought she was living in South Africa, where apparently she had a lot of friends. But, as I say, that’s only Roddy’s version.’

  ‘Did they have children?’ asked Carole.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But they still had a bloody au pair!’ The last look from his wife had stung James Lister into raucousness. ‘Which always seemed a bit excessive to me.’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand, James. Anyway, au pair’s the wrong word. But someone like Virginia Hargreaves had her charity work to do. She couldn’t afford to be bothered with domestic details all the time. Some people are just used to growing up with servants.’ Fiona Lister beamed magnanimously at the Rev Trigwell. ‘As you can imagine, I had to make a few adjustments myself when I got married.’

  The vicar smiled weakly. Carole wondered what it must be like inside the Listers’ marriage, how James survived his wife’s constant reminders that she’d married beneath herself. She also wondered how much higher up Fiona had really been in the social pecking order. The implication of having grown up with servants didn’t ring true. The Listers’ was just another battle of one-upmanship within the wafer-thin layers of the middle classes.

  ‘Still, the au pair did all right out of it,’ Terry Harper observed languidly.

  That got a tart response from Fiona Lister. ‘If you call marrying Alan Burnethorpe “doing all right”. I would have thought it was not an unmixed blessing.’

  Jude, who’d met Mrs Burnethorpe, asked, ‘Oh, was Joke the Hargreaveses’ au pair?’

  Fiona, happy to be back in her role of Fedborough information officer, was quick to reply. ‘As I said, au pair’s, really the wrong word, because that does imply an element of childcare. Joke had been working as an au pair for another family in Fedborough, but I suppose for Virginia Hargreaves she was more of a . . . housekeeper and social secretary. Anyway, that’s how Alan met her. He’s been practising as an architect here for years. Has his office on that lovely old houseboat down by the bridge . . . do you know the one I mean?’

  Carole made the connection with the fine refurbished Edwardian vessel James had pointed out on the Town Walk, but Jude, for reasons of her own, said, ‘No, I’ll make a point of looking out for it next time I’m down that way.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Fiona went on. ‘Alan couldn’t have avoided meeting Joke. He was round Pelling House so much working on the marina plans with Roddy.’

  ‘And they fell in love?’ asked Jude ingenuously.

  James Lister, caution loosened by wine, let
out a guffaw. ‘Fell in lust, let’s say. Quite a dishy little number, that Joke, isn’t she? I must say I wouldn’t . . .’ He caught his wife’s eye and backed off. ‘There are a few men round Fedborough who wouldn’t kick her out of bed.’

  The blaze in Fiona Lister’s eyes indicated that he hadn’t backed off far enough.

  Jude continued to nudge the conversation forward. ‘But it wasn’t just an affair. They did get married.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ her hostess agreed. ‘A very correct little aspirational Dutch miss, our Joke is. Alan was still married to Karen and just looking for a good time, but Joke wasn’t having any of that.’

  ‘Or he wasn’t getting any of that until he agreed to marry her!’

  The look with which Fiona Lister greeted her husband’s joke would have frozen the jet of a hosepipe at fifty metres.

  ‘Always on the lookout for a new woman, though, Alan is,’ said Terry Harper, maliciously casual.

  ‘Ooh, you’re so right!’ Andrew Wragg agreed gleefully. ‘We were talking just now about men in Fedborough having mistresses. A lot of tempting singles and divorcees around this place, you know. Positive hotbed of rampant crumpet, Fedborough is. Or so I’ve been told.’ He flicked a dark eyebrow in an exaggerated gesture of relief. ‘Thank God at least I’ll never have that problem.’ He smiled coyly at Terry. ‘Plenty of others, but not that one.’

  Jude remembered the excessive pressure of a hand on hers that evening at the Roxbys. ‘Are you saying that Alan Burnethorpe has mistresses?’

  ‘He may have done while he was married to his first wife. He’s very happy now with Joke, I believe.’

  The frostiness of Fiona Lister’s response showed that she was not enjoying the directness of her Fethering guests. They were not suitable for one of her famous dinner parties. Who invited them? Once again, poison shot across the table towards James.

  Carole Seddon, who in her Fethering environment would have behaved very differently, was enjoying the insouciant freedom of being discourteous. ‘Oh, did he? How many mistresses?’

  ‘I don’t think we should discuss that,’ pronounced Fiona Lister, all girls’ school headmistress.

  ‘Ooh, but I think we should!’ Andrew Wragg had caught on to the game that Carole and Jude were playing, and wanted to join in. He was also worried that they might be threatening his pre-eminence as the most outrageous person present. ‘For someone whose architectural practice is based here in Fedborough, Alan Burnethorpe does have to do a remarkable number of trips up to London.’

  ‘Are you suggesting he’s got a little mistress tucked away up there?’ suggested Jude, also beginning to have fun for the first time in the evening.

  ‘Why stop at one? He may have dozens,’ Carole contributed. This was most unlike her. She hadn’t even met the man in question and she would never normally have participated in this kind of vulgar gossip. But she was really enjoying it.

  Terry Harper joined in. ‘That’s before you include all the ones he’s got down here. Easy for an architect. You go round to these houses. The husband’s away at work . . . the wife tells him what she wants done . . .’

  There was a chuckle from down the table. Terry’s point had been made, but James Lister couldn’t resist the cue to complete the innuendo. ‘And he does it for her! Or should I say to her!’ In case anyone hadn’t got the joke, he added, ‘He gives her one!’

  His wife’s thin face had turned dusty purple. ‘Please! I must ask you to stop this conversation. At my dinner table I cannot allow my guests to pass around malicious gossip!’

  No, thought Carole, supplying the unspoken final words to Fiona’s speech: Because that’s my job.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The next day, the Saturday, the rain continued, and the promise of a good summer now seemed to have been a false one. Carole and Jude monitored the media all through the day but there was nothing on until the early evening television news.

  The young female presenter, whose smile worked independently of the sense of what she was saying, announced, ‘Police reveal identity of Fedborough corpse,’ and cut to a senior police officer who had long ago had the smile trained out of him. He was at a press conference, where he announced gravely, ‘The limbless body discovered two weeks ago in a house in Fedborough, West Sussex, has been identified after extensive forensic examination. It belonged to Mrs Virginia Hargreaves, a former resident of the town.’

  As the presenter, smiling inappropriately, moved on to the fortunes of the local football teams, Jude crossed the room to turn down the television sound. Carole kept on saying she ought to get a remote control, but that kind of thing was low on Jude’s priorities.

  The two women looked at each other. ‘So the gossips of Fedborough were right,’ said Carole.

  ‘Some of them. I’m sure at least as many had other theories about the torso’s identity and have been proved wrong.’

  ‘Still, at this moment Fiona Lister is no doubt rubbing her hands with glee and waiting to hear the news of Roddy Hargreaves’s arrest.’

  ‘Or is Alan Burnethorpe shaking in his shoes because Virginia Hargreaves was his mistress and he killed her in a fit of jealous passion!’ Jude’s impersonation of Andrew Wragg on the last few words was uncannily accurate.

  ‘They were a strange lot last night, weren’t they?’

  ‘Do you think, to an outsider, they’d seem any stranger than a group of Fethering locals?’

  ‘Maybe not.’ Carole narrowed her pale blue eyes with concentration. ‘So clearly, to solve this case, we have to concentrate on the period round Virginia Hargreaves’s disappearance.’

  ‘If the case still needs solving.’

  ‘What do you mean, Jude?’

  ‘I’d have thought, now the police know who it was that died, they’d be pretty close to knowing how she died.’

  ‘And who – if anyone – caused her death.’

  ‘Even if she wasn’t murdered,’ Jude reminded her friend gently, ‘someone cut off Virginia Hargreaves’s arms and legs.’

  ‘Yes . . .’ Carole shook her head slowly from side to side. ‘Things don’t look very good for Roddy.’

  Later that evening she found out that things looked even worse for Roddy. Debbie Carlton rang with the news that his dead body had been found floating in the Fether.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  And, so far as Fedborough was concerned, that was it. The mystery was solved. Three and a half years previously, Roddy Hargreaves had killed his wife, dismembered her, and hidden her torso in the cellar of their home, Pelling House. When he knew the police were close to identifying the body, he had taken his own life. Case closed, so far as Fedborough was concerned.

  On the Saturday evening Jude received a phone call that could have suggested this was the official view as well. Harry Roxby was on the line, elaborately conspiratorial, living up to the hilt his role as private investigator. ‘The police came again today,’ he whispered.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘They took the seals off the cellar door.’

  ‘The ones you’d sawn through?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you get into trouble over that?’

  ‘No. I was dead lucky. One of the cops was all set to bawl me out, but Mum sort of smoothed it over. She said I’d been very traumatized by what had happened and I was in a fragile emotional state . . .’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Well . . .’ He giggled nervously.

  ‘Sleeping better?’

  ‘Yes. What you said was good. Now I’m thinking of the case as something that needs investigating, I sort of feel more, I don’t know, further away from it . . .’

  Excellent, thought Jude. That was the aim of the exercise. ‘So the cop backed off, did he? Didn’t bawl you out any more?’

  ‘No. After what Mum said, he didn’t seem that bothered. Just removed the remains of the seals, and said we could use the cellar again like normal.’

  ‘Which might suggest the police have concluded their inv
estigation.’

  ‘Yes.’ He sounded wistful at the thought of his detective game ending. ‘So they reckon that this Mr Hargreaves killed his wife?’

  ‘I can’t be certain what the police think, but I’ll bet that’s what a lot of people in Fedborough are saying.’

  ‘Mm,’ he mumbled gloomily. ‘I haven’t even met Mr Hargreaves, which makes me feel, I don’t know, sort of cheated over the case. Like I haven’t got the whole story.’

  ‘Happens a lot in police work.’ Jude was joking, but there was sympathy in her voice too.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Harry disconsolately. ‘Even if the police have got the right solution, it still leaves a lot of loose ends untied.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, where the body’s arms and legs went, for a start.’

  ‘You’re right. Trouble is, Harry, we don’t have access to police files. Who knows, the limbs may have been found a long time ago, and the cops only needed the torso to match them up.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ He sounded even more despondent. ‘Why would someone cut off a body’s arms and legs?’

  ‘Well, if we put aside sadism or a psychopath getting a cheap thrill . . .’

  ‘Yeah.’ A bit of interest crept back into his voice. ‘I saw a video about a guy who did that. Somebody I knew in London had this great collection of that kind of stuff.’

  Jude didn’t want to go up that alley. ‘As I say, putting sadism on one side, the most usual reason for dismembering a body would be ease of disposal.’

  ‘Oh, I get you. So someone – perhaps the woman’s husband – killed her, cut her up, and got rid of the arms and legs . . . Where do you reckon he’d have done that?’

  ‘Lots of places around here. Bury them up on the Downs. Chuck them in the sea. Or the Fether, maybe. When the tide’s going out, they’d get swept out into the Channel in no time.’

  ‘Yes.’ Harry was more enthusiastic. Now he felt he was back being an investigator. ‘But if that’s what happened, why didn’t he get rid of the torso too?’