by Simon Brett
The Fethering Mysteries 03; The Torso in the Town
( The Fethering Mysteries - 3 )
Simon Brett
Amateur sleuths Jude and Carole take on their third case when a terrible discovery is made in the cellar of a grand old house. Grant and Kim Roxby had hoped that their first dinner party at Pelling House would make an impression with their new neighbours. And the next day it’s certainly the talk of the town of Fedborough. For their guests – including the couple’s old friend Jude – had been enjoying a pleasant meal before they were rudely interrupted by a gruesome discovery. A human torso hidden in the cellar. Jude races home to Fethering and her friend Carole with the news. And soon the pair are back in Fedborough, questioning the locals. But they can’t help but wonder why a town so notoriously distrustful of outsiders is proving so terribly amenable to their enquiries…
Simon Brett
The Torso in the Town
The Fethering Mysteries #3
2002, EN
Amateur sleuths Jude and Carole take on their third case when a terrible discovery is made in the cellar of a grand old house. Grant and Kim Roxby had hoped that their first dinner party at Pelling House would make an impression with their new neighbours. And the next day it’s certainly the talk of the town of Fedborough. For their guests – including the couple’s old friend Jude – had been enjoying a pleasant meal before they were rudely interrupted by a gruesome discovery. A human torso hidden in the cellar. Jude races home to Fethering and her friend Carole with the news. And soon the pair are back in Fedborough, questioning the locals. But they can’t help but wonder why a town so notoriously distrustful of outsiders is proving so terribly amenable to their enquiries…
∨ The Torso in the Town ∧
One
“The other thing about Fedborough,” said Grant Roxby that evening before the torso was discovered, “is that everybody mixes together. There are no social divisions.”
What? thought Jude. He’s got to be talking about somewhere else.
Fedborough was a country town some eight miles inland from where the River Fether reached the sea at Fethering. The town’s considerable architectural splendours attracted tourists throughout the year; in the summer its streets were clotted with the elderly contents of coaches and adolescent foreign language students, wandering around looking for something to do. Most ended up in the antique dealers, tearooms and gift shops. Fedborough was the perfect venue for someone trying to buy an antique brass bedpan, a cream tea or a china figurine of a ballet dancer; less suitable perhaps for those in search of basic groceries.
The assertion by her host that the town had no social divisions suggested to Jude the truth – that Grant Roxby hadn’t lived in Fedborough very long. Her own life had more important priorities than where she stood in any social hierarchy – she judged people by their inner qualities rather than their backgrounds – but she could still recognize that Fedborough was riddled with class-consciousness.
The town’s inhabitants, mostly well-heeled, cosseted by sensible pension arrangements and private health insurance, knew to a nicety where they stood in the middle-class pecking order. The people up the road had public school education and inherited money, so they were upper-middle-class. The people opposite had money from retail trade and no taste, so they were lower-middleclass. The couple in the next road, who seemed to have no money, but dressed in worn well-cut tweeds and spoke in patrician accents of relatives in the House of Lords, must be lower-upper-middle-class. And the people on the council estate were common.
What made these rules of Fedborough society even more complicated was that no two residents of the town saw them in exactly the same way. People whom the neighbours on one side would condemn as lower-uppermiddle-class might be seen by their neighbours on the other side as upper-lower-middle-class. In England at the beginning of the twenty-first century the much-vaunted ideal of a classless society remained as far off as ever.
The permutations became more intricate still if you factored in the self-images of the individuals involved. As always in life, how the individual people of Fedborough saw themselves and how the world saw them were very different. The void between those two views led to much of the town’s humour (from the viewpoint of an outside observer). And also to much of its tragedy.
Jude had often found herself in the role of an outside observer, particularly since she had moved to Fethering. A comfortably rounded woman in her fifties, she hadblonde hair piled up in a random coil on her head, and a predilection for layers of floaty garments in a haphazard mix of colours and patterns. The resulting image should have been a mess, but somehow contrived to be stylish.
Jude had done many things in her life, but in conversation didn’t volunteer much detail about any of them. She rarely got the chance. People found her easy to talk to, there was a warmth about her that invited confidences; on very brief acquaintance, total strangers frequently found themselves telling her their life stories. So they never got round to asking about hers. Which suited Jude very well.
She had met Grant Roxby and his wife Kim on a holistic holiday in Spain. He had made an indecent amount of money in computers, and the Roxbys had at the time been ‘looking for some dimension in our lives beyond the material’. The couple – particularly Grant – had embraced the various therapies, counselling and soul journeys available on the holiday with enormous butterfly enthusiasm. He had the ability – which must have been invaluable in his business career – to get completely caught up in the moment. His self-belief was total, and so was his belief in a new idea. The fact that the next day he could believe in an opposing idea with equal conviction never dented the self-belief. He liked to think that he went as deeply into everything as the very soul of his being; in fact, he went as deeply into everything as the sole of his shoe.
Grant Roxby’s enthusiasms were infectious. His past was scattered with the husks of lifestyle options he had snatched up and discarded without recrimination or rancour. Jude wondered whether moving out of London to the country was just the latest in this series.
Certainly their relocation had had nothing to do with her. She hadn’t even lived in Fethering when she’d met Grant and Kim, but they’d quickly followed up on her change of address card when they moved into the area.
The Roxbys had, as ever; done the thing in style. Pelling House, the Fedborough mansion they had instantly settled on after one viewing, was a tall, late Georgian oblong, red brick in the best sense, with three storeys and a cellar. The frontage boasted a classical white portico, and stone steps led down to Pelling Street, one of the town’s most exclusive residential addresses. The rooms were high, with tall windows, which had folding shutters on the inside. There were two staircases, a rather grand one in the hall, and another at the back of the house, used in the past for invisible domestic stage management by the servants. The previous owners of Pelling House had made a start on renovating the property, but there was no doubt that Grant Roxby’s computer-generated millions would soon be employed to complete the job to an even more exacting standard.
On the evening of the dinner party, any suggestion that moving to Fedborough had been a mere whim would have been condemned as sacrilege. Grant and his wife were totally caught up in their new dream. “It’s going to be so great for the children,” Kim enthused. She was a thin, blonde woman in her early forties, dressed down in designer-hippy, expensively cut jeans and mock-snakeskin cowboy boots. Grant, sleek with success, his hair an unlikely chestnut, wore Levi’s, a blue fleece and leather moccasins. Their clothes struck a more casual note than those of their guests, except for Jude.
<
br /> The two couples who’d been invited demonstrated the extremes of Fedborough fashions, and the resolutionof the dilemma which must have faced them earlier in the evening: what level of dress do you think these new people expect? Donald and Joan Durrington had opted for the traditional. It wasn’t difficult for him. As one of the local doctors he wore the uniform of a double-breasted pin-striped suit. If his bleeper summoned him he would look appropriate at a patient’s bedside – or even deathbed. Because he was potentially on duty, Donald Durrington was drinking only mineral water, but his wistful air as he watched others’ wine glasses being filled suggested he’d rather not be on duty.
His wife, who was also on the mineral water, had perhaps overdressed for the occasion, but only by comparison with the host and hostess’s jeans. She was wearing a little black cocktail number; decorated round the top with spangly black beads. The chest revealed by the décolletage was freckled and slack; its depth suggested greater confidence than did her uneasy blue eyes. Her hair had been recently and neatly cut; also recently blonded. Given the thinness of her frame, her face was surprisingly broad, puffy under heavy make-up. Though she hadn’t contributed much to the general conversation, earlier in the evening Joan Durrington had spoken with trepidation of her approaching sixtieth birthday. Trepidation, indeed, seemed to be her dominant emotion. She kept looking nervously at her husband, as though fearful she might in some way let him down.
The Burnethorpes, Alan and Joke, were at the more casual end of the clothes spectrum. He, trying to look younger than his late forties, wore a collarless black shirt and black jeans, with a rough-knit grey sloppy cardigan on top. She, fabulously toned and twenty-eight, wore what looked like a track suit in burgundy crushed velvet. Her English was excellent, her Dutch origins betrayed only by a tendency to say ‘dat’ and ‘dere’ for ‘that’ and ‘there’. On introduction, Jude had been told that the name was pronounced ‘Yo-kah’, though, as Alan said with practised ease, ‘the spelling’s a joke’. Then, in case she hadn’t got it, he’d spelt out, “J-O-K E”
It had been established early in the evening that he was an architect whose office was a converted houseboat near Fedborough Bridge, and that this was his second marriage. Joke had been working in Fedborough, they had met and fallen in love, so the first Mrs Burnethorpe and two children had been put out to grass. Joke, in her turn, had quickly produced two children; her conversation was dominated by their skills and charms. Alan, having been through the process before, seemed less ecstatic about their growing family. But he was clearly still obsessed by his young wife. His eyes hardly left her during the evening. He looked capable of deep jealousy.
On the other hand, he still had an eye for other women. On being introduced to Jude, he had repeated her name and looked deeply into her brown eyes. His hand had held hers that moment too long and too tightly, immediately identifying him as one of those men who believe themselves to be irresistible to the opposite sex.
The eighth member of the party, matching Jude’s single state, was the local vicar, the Rev Philip Trigwell. Of thinning hair and blotchy complexion, he’d reached the stage of unattractiveness that comes with age, and gave the impression that he’d never gone through the stage of attractiveness that can come with youth. Being of the school of clergy that doesn’t believe in thrusting religion down people’s throats, he wore an ordinary collar and tie, and spent the entire evening avoiding mention of hisprofession. He also seemed deeply aware of potential flashpoints in Fedborough society, and on any subject expressed no opinion which was not immediately counterbalanced by the opposite opinion. If the Roxbys are matchmaking and have lined up the Rev Philip Trigwell for me, thought Jude, they have seriously wasted their time.
The dinner party could not have been described as ‘sticky’, but then again nor was it particularly relaxed. Dinner parties were not Jude’s favourite social events under any circumstances and, with the Roxbys having only just moved, they had assembled an ad hoc guest list for the occasion.
The mix was, she reflected, pretty standard for newcomers to a town. She was the one old – though not close – friend, met somewhere else. The Roxbys would have encountered the local vicar and the local doctor in the natural course of events – being visited by the one as part of his parochial duties, registering with the other. And she’d put money on the fact that Alan Burnethorpe was the architect Grant and Kim had consulted about the extensive alteration plans they had for the old house that was new to them.
So the Roxbys had made their first social foray in Fed-borough predictable enough, while the long-established principle of reciprocal entertainment would ensure that they soon met other locals and, presumably in time, came across some they got on really well with.
The established Fedborough residents – the Durringtons, the Burnethorpes and the Rev Trigwell – all knew each other, and most of their conversation revolved around mutual acquaintances whose foibles and background they kept having to explain to the newcomers.
For the Roxbys, characteristically enthusiastic to immerse themselves in the new community, presumably these explanations were relevant, but they failed to hold Jude’s attention. There is something stultifying in being constantly told ‘he’s a character’ about people one is unlikely ever to meet, particularly when the accompanying illustrative anecdote suggests that the person in question has very little character at all. Jude was beginning to get the impression that not a lot happened in Fedborough.
“Yes,” Kim Roxby was saying now, “kids can breathe when they get out into the country.”
“I’d hardly call Fedborough ‘country’,” objected Alan Burnethorpe. “I was brought up here and it’s very definitely a town.” Lacking the professional restraint imposed on Donald Durrington, he was letting himself go with Grant Roxby’s excellent choice of Chilean and New Zealand wines.
“But country’s so readily accessible from here. All of the South Downs to walk on, and you can follow the Fether for miles, you know. And then all those beaches to wander over Still, I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. You know. You must spend all your spare time taking walks like that.”
Kim’s pronouncement prompted a slightly embarrassed concert of throat-clearing. It had marked her out irredeemably as a ‘townie’. Few people who actually live in the country ever walk further than they have to, and then only if they’ve got dogs.
“But also the health factors,” she persevered. “London – all big cities – are so choked with pollution these days. I feel happier knowing my children will be out breathing healthy country air. There are so many less allergies in the country.”
“I wish that were true,” said Donald Durrington with professional gloom. “The number of kids I see through my surgery with asthma and similar complaints…you wouldn’t believe. It’s partly the pesticides and other pollutants out in the country. Then, of course, living in centrally heated houses and being ferried around in cars all the time doesn’t help. Compared to ours, the next generation are incredibly vulnerable to infections.”
“Oh.”
Kim was cast down for a moment, and Joke Burnethorpe muscled in to shift the conversation. “How many children do you have, Kim?”
“Three.”
“For our sins; Grant threw in meaninglessly.”
“What ages?”
“Harry’s fifteen…”
“With all that that entails,” Grant added darkly. “Tina’s thirteen…”
“Going on twenty-five.”
“And Grace is eleven…”
“And she can twist all of us round her little finger.” Grant chuckled.
Joke Burnethorpe looked across at the empty laid-up place at the dinner table. “I thought you said Harry was going to join us.”
“Ye-es.” Grant Roxby looked flustered.
Kim came to his rescue. “You’ve just got the two kids?” Her question was completely gratuitous. Since she’d arrived, Joke Burnethorpe had talked about nothing else.
“That�
��s right. Caspar and Linus.”
“Ah.”
Donald Durrington cleared his throat. His wife watched him nervously, as if afraid he was about to reveal some deeply protected secret.
But he didn’t. All he said was, “Have you thought about schools at all yet?”
Oh dear, thought Jude, is it going to be one of those dinner parties?
But it didn’t develop that way. Joke Burnethorpe, who Jude had already assessed as a very strong-willed young woman, persisted with her line of questioning. “So where is Harry?”
Grant again seemed embarrassed by the question, and a moment of marital semaphore passed between husband and wife. “He must’ve got caught up in…you know what they’re like at that age…some computer game…something on the internet – ”
“Or just exploring the house,” Kim cut in; and then, as though such a pursuit were somehow more respectable than computer games or the internet, she went on, “All the children are fascinated by history, you know, and this house is full of history.”
“So’s all of Fedborough,” said the Rev Trigwell, pausing for a moment to check that this statement had not been controversial. Reassured, he continued, “You must get James Lister to take you on one of his Town Walks. He’s a real character, James…though of course in the nicest possible way,” he concluded weakly.
“Oh yes, a great character,” Donald Durrington agreed. “I tell you, it was very amusing during the Fedborough Festival a couple of years back when…well, let’s say the drink had flowed liberally in the Sponsors’ Tent and Jimmy had indulged rather more than his wife Fiona would have approved of and – ”
But the anecdote which was to detail James Lister’squalification as ‘a character’ would have to be wheeled out some other time. A child’s scream was heard from downstairs. Seconds later, Harry Roxby burst in through the dining-room door. He carried a large rubber-covered torch, which was switched on. His face was so red Jude could hardly see the spots which had been prominent earlier, and his eyes were staring.