by Simon Brett
∨ The Torso in the Town ∧
Twenty-Nine
“I shouldn’t.”
“Oh, come on!”
What they were discussing was a Cream Tea. Cream Teas belong by rights to the West Country, where there is a tradition of meals featuring the local clotted variety. But the tourist industry has never been too picky about geographical exactitude, so all of Fedborough’s teashops offered the speciality, and the Olde Cottage, in which they sat, was no exception. When Jude made the suggestion, Carole had objected that she’d had a perfectly good lunch and tea wasn’t a meal she normally ate. Jude instantly overruled her and gave the order to the eleven-year-old waitress in black dress and frilly pinny.
Carole looked round the teashop with some embarrassment, fearing to see anyone she might recognize. Though certain that she wasn’t lesbian, she worried how deep the misinformation might now be engrained in the communal consciousness of Fedborough.
Jude grinned. She knew exactly what was going through Carole’s mind, but made no comment. Instead, she asked, “So where are we?”
“Well, we’ve ruled out the possibility that Roddy Hargreaves did it, haven’t we?”
“Yes, because that makes for such a boring solution.”
Carole deemed this answer to lack sufficient gravitas. “We have a better reason than that. A witness, the Rev Trigwell, who saw Roddy on to the ferry on the Friday, the twentieth of February, and who later saw Virginia alive in the Franks’s grocery. And another witness, James Lister; who picked Roddy up from Newhaven on the Tuesday, the twenty-fourth of February. Which, assuming our suspect wasn’t bouncing back and forth across the Channel like a yo-yo, would seem to provide him with an alibi for the time of his wife’s death.”
“Yes.” Jude beamed to greet the arrival of the underage waitress with their cholesterol-fest. Tea-pouring and the smearing of scones with cream and jam followed. Once they were settled into their food, Jude went on, “We may have got Roddy’s movements sorted, but we still need more information about what Virginia got up to that weekend. Who actually was the last person to see her…and indeed what was wrong with her? Remember, she was too ill to make her assignation with Alan Burnethorpe.”
“Yes. I must say,” Carole observed, “that the charms of Virginia Hargreaves – or Lady Virginia or whatever she was – seem to diminish with every new detail we find out about her.”
Jude nodded. “Sounds like Roddy got as rough a deal in the marriage stakes as poor old Jimmy Lister. Maybe that’s why they enjoyed drinking together so much, to commiserate about their mutual misfortune. You know, Fedborough’s track record on marriage doesn’t seem very good, does it? We haven’t met any happy couples here, have we?”
“Your friends the Roxbys seem OK.”
“Yes, so long as Kim agrees exactly with everything Grant says, they’re fine. Mind you, they’re new to the place. The creeping Fedborough infection hasn’t got to them yet.”
Carole wiped a crumb of scone from the corner of her mouth. “The one married person I’ve met here who seems absolutely devoted is Billie Franks…Which is rather sad, really…given that her husband doesn’t even know who she is.”
Suddenly Jude tapped her Art Crawl map on the table. “I’ve had a thought!”
“What?”
“We haven’t exhausted the Snoopers’ Charter yet.” She looked at the large face of the watch attached by a ribbon to her wrist. “Can you cope with a bit more art?”
“In the hope that it isn’t like Andrew Wragg’s, yes.”
“At the Listers’ last week Terry said that Alan Burnethorpe would be showing his drawings during the Festival, didn’t he?”
“Yes’ Carole nodded with satisfaction as she got the drift. And Joke Burnethorpe used to be Virginia Hargreaves’s housekeeper.”
“So she might well know about her employer’s movements on the weekend she disappeared.”
And,” said Carole triumphantly, “Fiona Lister also said last week that the Durringtons’ house was part of the Art Crawl. If Virginia Hargreaves had been ill, the local doctor might have known something about it. Whether he’d tell us, of course, is another matter. Hippocratic oath and all that!
“From what I’ve seen of Donald Durrington, medical confidentiality doesn’t seem to be at the top of his priorities. And his wife might be prepared to be indiscreet, anyway. They appear to be another mutually loathing Fedborough couple.”
Carole looked down at her map. “Trouble is, this only lists the artists who’re exhibiting. Doesn’t say who owns the houses.”
“We can nip back into Yesteryear Antiques. Terry’ll know.”
“Yes. Good.” Carole looked at her watch. “Art Crawl finishes at six, doesn’t it?”
“Hm. We’d better split up to save time. I’ll do the Burnethorpes, because I did meet them at Grant and Kim’s, so I’d have some justification for starting a conversation. You do the Durringtons.”
“OK.”
“Besides, better if we’re not seen together too much, eh?” Jude winked and giggled.
Carole didn’t giggle. She still wasn’t finding Fedborough’s error very amusing.
The stuffier, more traditional architects of Fedborough lived up in Dauncey Street. The more Bohemian feel of Pelling Street was entirely appropriate to the image Alan Burnethorpe tried to project, that of the imaginative mould-breaker, the architect as artist. And his home, Number 47, was an excellent testament to his skills.
As with the smokehouse, he had captured the historical essence of the building and enhanced it with the ultra-modern. But the effect was totally different. Andrew Wragg’s studio had started life as a simple shed structure and it was to that bareness of brick and rafters Alan Burnethorpe had returned. 47 Felling Street, on the other hand, had been built as a tribute to the success of an early nineteenth-century merchant, and that was the style which its restoration endorsed.
The long through-sitting-room which had been requisitioned as a gallery for the duration of the Fedborough Festival, was decorated in dark wood colours and purple, contriving to present overtones of a heavily upholstered Victorian parlour. But at the same time there was a sense of space, accentuated now all of the furniture had been removed to make room for art-lovers.
The two chairs and table which did remain were strikingly modern, minimalist confections of exposed wood and leather. But their colours toned with the others in the room, soothing away any danger of strident anachronism. In the same way, the brass light fittings on the walls, starkly contemporary in design, diffused a light that was golden, mellow and contemplative. Alan Burnethorpe certainly knew his job.
When Jude entered, clutching her Art Crawl map, Joke Burnethorpe was sitting on one of the minimalist chairs, dealing with a couple who had just made a purchase. On the table in front of her was a pile of catalogues. Unlike the photocopied sheets in Debbie Carlton’s flat, these were glossily produced, with the logo of Alan’s architectural practice on the front.
Joke was dressed in a v-necked white T-shirt, black jeans and clumpy black slip-on shoes. Such artless simplicity, Jude recognized, didn’t come cheap. A woman more interested in fashion than she was would have wanted to know the identity of the labels.
There was no question, though, that with her square-cut blonde hair and exquisitely judged make-up, Joke Burnethorpe looked stunning. She really did have a fabulous figure.
Joke was the kind of woman, Jude knew, whom all men would undress with their eyes. How generous, therefore, of her husband to save them the trouble. As James Lister had suggested, the walls of the Felling Street house were decorated with an abundant selection of images of the naked Joke.
The drawings showed her in a variety of abandoned poses, though to Jude’s mind they were too punctiliously accurate in execution to be erotic. Still, she wasn’t a man. Quite possibly a masculine reaction would be different.
The art-buying couple’s paperwork was completed, and they left with expressions of satisfaction at thei
r deal. Joke looked across at Jude.
“Oh, hello, we met that evening at the Roxbys.” The ‘that’ was a ‘dat’, still the only give-away to Joke’s foreign origins.
“Yes. Jude.” She avoided the problem of her name having been forgotten.
“Of course. And I am Joke.”
“I remember.” Jude gazed round appreciatively at the walls. “These look wonderful. Are they all of you?”
Joke Burnethorpe preened herself as she replied, “Most of them. A few down the end date from before Alan met me. Other women.” The way she said the last two words managed to combine both confidence and disparagement.
“I look forward to having a good look at all of them. I was told, whatever else I missed in the Art Crawl, I must make sure I saw Alan Burnethorpe’s work.”
“Who said that?”
Jude was momentarily flummoxed. The recommendation had been pure invention. “James Lister,” she said quickly.
“Ah yes.” Joke gave a cunning smile. “The way he reacts to these, you’d think he’d never seen a naked woman before.”
“Which, given who he’s married to, may well be true.”
It was an uncharacteristically bitchy line for Jude. And also risky. If Fiona Lister turned out to be Joke Burnethorpe’s closest friend, the remark wouldn’t be conducive to increased intimacy.
But, as was so often the case, Jude had judged her effect exactly right. The Dutchwoman’s face broke into a wide grin, revealing perfectly schooled teeth. “Yes, I’m afraid the Listers aren’t our favourite people. He spends all his time ogling me and she’s just malicious.”
“So you’re not on their Friday-night dinner-party list?”
“No.” She shook her head firmly. “I think Alan maybe was before he and I got together, but not now.”
“Any particular reason?”
“Fiona Lister invited him once when we were just going round together, before we got married. And Alan said, fine, could he bring me? Fiona said no, she didn’t think it would be suitable to invite servants to her dinner parties.”
“Ah.”
“The sheer arrogance. I was very angry. If my parents in Naaldwijk had ever heard about it, they would have been furious. Fiona Lister is only a butcher’s wife, after all, not a member of the Royal Family.”
Jude giggled. “I did recently hear another story, the kind of mirror-image of that one.”
“Really?”
“About Virginia Hargreaves…”
At the mention of the name, a shadow of caution came into Joke’s blue eyes. “Oh?”
“You used to work for her. Perhaps you can tell me if it’s true or not. That Fiona Lister invited Virginia Hargreaves to one of her soirées, and Virginia turned her down flat like a bedspread, on the ground that it wasn’t her sort of thing.”
Now Joke saw the funny side. “I don’t actually know if that’s true, but it would have been in character. Just the sort of thing Virginia would do. She never did anything she didn’t want to – and she didn’t…what’s the expression you have? ‘Suffer idiots gladly’…?”
“‘Suffer fools gladly’.”
“Right. Well, that’s it. She didn’t.”
Jude made as if to laugh again, but stopped herself. “Terrible, what happened to her, wasn’t it?”
“Virginia? Yes, awful.”
“Must be ghastly for you, having actually lived in the same house as them.”
“Well, it is ghastly now, now I know what happened. At the time I wasn’t aware of what was going on, so it didn’t really worry me.”
“But you must have noticed that there were tensions in the marriage?”
Joke shrugged. “Yes, but I put that down to what was happening with Mr Hargreaves’s business and, you know, how much he drank, which was a result of the same thing. But they led fairly separate lives. I don’t think Virginia was too worried, so long as she could do her own thing.”
“And what was her own thing?”
“Going up to London a lot, you know, to do her charity work.” The words were spoken without irony. Virginia Hargreaves’s housekeeper had been as incurious as the rest of Fedborough about what her employer got up to in London. Jude had the feeling that Alan Burnethorpe’s secret past was safe.
“Tell me,” she began, but she was interrupted by a clattering thump from another part of the house, followed almost immediately by anguished childish screams. “Should you go and do something about that? I’ll keep an eye on things here if you – ”
“No,” said Joke sleekly. “I have an au pair to do that kind of thing for me. That’s what she’s paid for.”
The words were spoken with enormous satisfaction and Jude thought what an unattractive role being an au pair for Joke Burnethorpe would be. There is no worse employer than the one who previously suffered the indignities of your job.
Yes, thought Jude, as she looked around the splendour of the sitting room. However high up Joke’s parents might be in the society of ‘Gnarled-vague’ (wherever that might be), their daughter had still come a long way to be queening it in Pelling Street, Fedborough. She had a very nice standard of living for a girl not yet thirty. And she had it because she was married to Alan. Jude wondered about what she’d overheard in the Crown and Anchor, how he’d bemoaned his new wife’s ‘old-fashioned’ attitude to adultery. Now she’d seen the house, she reckoned Joke might be unlikely to put all that at risk, even if it did mean turning a blind eye to her husband’s occasional sexual peccadilloes.
Still, time enough for such thoughts. Jude knew she mustn’t waste this opportunity to tap into the memory of the garrulous Joke.
“Did the police talk to you?” she asked.
“About what?”
“Virginia Hargreaves’s disappearance.”
“No. At the time no one knew she had disappeared. Everyone here in Fedborough thought she had just walked out on Mr Hargreaves – and very few people blamed her for that. He didn’t report her missing, or make any attempt to find her…”
“Which, if he had killed her, is hardly surprising.”
“No.”
“What kind of state was he in after she’d disappeared?”
“I didn’t see much of him. It was just round that time, you see, that Alan and I were getting together. I was going to move in with him to his house. Karen, his wife, had gone off to her mother’s with the children. I’d given in my notice to Virginia.”
“So when were you actually going to leave Pelling House?”
“That Friday of the weekend she disappeared. That’s what I did.”
“So you didn’t see her over that weekend?”
“No. Alan suddenly surprised me with a trip to Paris. He arranged that I should be at Waterloo on the Saturday morning. I had no idea what was happening, and then suddenly he showed me the Eurostar tickets. It was fabulous. We had a wonderful romantic time.”
A second alibi in France, thought Jude. Not that Joke really seemed to need an alibi. On the other hand, she’d raised the possibility that Alan might not have an alibi for the Friday night. Jude would check that in a moment, but needed to ask other questions first.
“So you didn’t see whether or not Virginia Hargreaves had packed up all her belongings when she moved out?”
The blonde head shook. “I didn’t go back to the house after that.”
“So the last time you saw her was the Friday?”
“I have just told you that.”
“Yes, I’m sorry. And you spent the Friday night with Alan?”
“In his house. Alan himself had to be in London that night but, as I say, we met at Waterloo on the Saturday morning.”
Jude quietly filed away this information. “And you and Virginia parted on good terms?”
Joke’s lips twisted negatively. “She had rather got up my nose just before I went. I was trying to move my stuff out, get it to Alan’s place, and she kept insisting I should stay and look after her.”
“Oh yes, of course, she was il
l.”
“Not very ill,” said Joke dismissively. “Only a tummy bug. Something she had eaten – and of course she blamed me, because I did the cooking. But Virginia was always a terrible invalid, make a fuss about everything, had to be waited on hand and foot all the time. She was a very selfish woman.”
Another infant wail erupted from the interior of the house. This time it sounded as though the child in question was being impaled.
“I’d better go and do something about that,” said Joke peevishly, and went to the door. “The girl has no idea how to deal with Linus when he gets hysterical. If you wouldn’t mind staying just till I come back…in case anyone comes in to see the drawings?”
“No problem.”
Since she could no longer pursue her investigation, Jude did what she was meant to be in the house for, and took a look at Alan Burnethorpe’s drawings. From somewhere in the house, she could hear Joke berating the inadequacies of her luckless au pair.
Terry Harper had been right. Alan was extraordinarily good. But Jude still got the impression he had the skills of a draughtsman rather than an artist. The nudes were immaculately executed, but by a detached observer, not by someone who engaged with them at an emotional level.
She moved on through the exhibition, adding to her detailed knowledge of Joke’s anatomy, and imagined how much James Lister would relish doing the same – particularly if he could convince Fiona it was in the name of art.
But in the drawings on the far wall the subject had changed. They were all still nudes, but these were of a variety of women. These were the ones which pre-dated Alan’s meeting with Joke.
One of the pictures showed a woman post-coitally splayed on rumpled sheets. She was blonde, trim-figured, late thirties perhaps. One of her hands suggestively caressed a wooden bedpost carved with the design of a climbing vine. The image of this woman glowed with all the sensuality the other drawings lacked. She oozed sex from every pore.
Jude could not claim to recognize the body from the mummified torso she had seen in the cellar of Pelling House, but, with the bedpost as a clue, she knew instinctively that the subject of the drawing had been Virginia Hargreaves.