The Torso in the Town

Twenty

Her husband’s voice rumbled disapproval. “I think I was told that in confidence, Joan.”

“Well, you told me.”

“Yes, but a doctor’s wife…there are certain kinds of accepted obligations that go with the job.”

The way the couple looked at each other suggested that they were digging over an old argument. But the defiance in Joan Durrington’s eyes also suggested to Carole that the doctor’s wife was less mousy and anonymous than her manner might suggest.

“You can’t leave it there, Joan,” said Terry Harper.

“No, you can’t!” Andrew Wragg squealed in agreement. “Come on, give us the name! We want to know which of the fine upstanding pillars of Fedborough society cut his mistress down to size in such an imaginative way.”

This sally didn’t go down well with the assembled company. Carole reckoned the offence was caused, not by the tastelessness of the image, but by the implication that respectable men in Fedborough might have mistresses.

Joan Durrington’s moment of self-assertion had passed. “You’d better ask Donald. He was the one the police talked to.”

Fiona Lister turned her beady eye on the doctor. “Well, don’t keep us in suspense.”

He immediately became formal and professional. “The police consulted me about some medical records…”

“Whose?” demanded Andrew Wragg. “Come on, give us the dirt!”

“Obviously I can’t tell you that.” It was the answer Andrew had been expecting; indeed, to get that answer had been the only reason he’d asked the question. Terry Harper’s eyes rolled heavenwards in fond despair at the incorrigible nature of his partner.

“And in the course of conversation they told me there would soon be a press conference when the identity of the deceased would be announced.”

“Has the press conference happened yet?” asked Carole.

“I don’t think so. The implication was that it’ll be tomorrow.”

“Hm…” James Lister stroked his moustache thoughtfully. “I wonder if that’s why Roddy isn’t here tonight…?”

“What do you mean by that?” his wife snapped. “I was just thinking, if the body does turn out to be Virginia…”

Fiona was not persuaded by this idea. “Nonsense, that has nothing to do with it. The reason Roddy isn’t here is the usual one. He’s drunk. It’s his birthday, for heaven’s sake, probably been celebrating all day. He’s lost the few manners he ever had.” Carole thought that was unfair. Roddy Hargreaves was certainly a drunkard, but he had seemed to her almost excessively courteous.

Fiona was returning to a theme she’d started on earlier in the evening, when it became clear that Roddy wasn’t going to turn up. He was very inconsiderate, and had ruined her seating plan. Everything had been arranged for ten people; nine was a much less convenientnumber. She’d been persuaded – against her better judgment – to invite Roddy because it was his birthday and – as ever – he’d disgraced himself. There was no doubt where the fault lay: where it always lay in their marriage. James shouldn’t have issued the invitation.

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 thatshe 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.