Читать книгу The Torso in the Town - Simon Brett - Страница 11

Their meal was slightly awkward. They could not be unaware of Roddy Hargreaves and his chortling coterie at the bar, and Jude was not offended but rather puzzled by Carole’s standoffishness when she’d been invited to join them. Carole herself was painfully aware of yet another example of the spikiness in her character. Just being in a pub had started up again the cycle of recrimination about having made a fool of herself with Ted Crisp.

And it wasn’t the moment for Jude to give a resumé of the little information she had got from Roddy Hargreaves.

So they didn’t talk much as they waded through their plates of South Downs Sausages. Jude had two large Chilean Chardonnays to drink, but Carole refused the offer of a second for herself. She didn’t even finish her first, feeling that the punishment she deserved was not yet complete. Jude, not usually bothered about waste, still didn’t like to see alcohol going undrunk, so she downed the remains of Carole’s glass as they rose from the table.

‘Oh, just a minute,’ she said.

Carole hovered by the pub door, feeling more than ever a social outcast, as Jude went back to the group of men.

‘Pleasure to meet you all,’ she said. ‘And it’s suddenly struck me . . . are you the James Lister who I’ve heard does Town Walks round Fedborough . . .?’

He beamed. ‘The very same, at your service. Always at the service of the ladies,’ he smirked.

‘When do they happen?’

‘Sunday morning at eleven. I always service the ladies at eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning.’ He winked in a manner which was intended to be roguish rather than repellent, but failed to achieve its object. ‘Allow me to present my card.’

‘Thank you very much,’ said Jude. ‘I’d really like to find out more about Fedborough.’

‘Let’s go the long way round,’ she said when they got outside the pub. The June day was dwindling to twilight, but the tall frontages of Fedborough’s houses still looked unimpeachably respectable.

‘Did you find out much?’

‘Not a lot. You could have heard anything I did find out.’

‘Yes.’ A blush suffused Carole’s pale cheeks. ‘I’m sorry. There are certain situations when . . .’

‘It’s all right,’ said Jude easily. ‘Don’t worry. Roddy Hargreaves denied knowing the torso was there while he owned the house.’

‘Presumably he would have made that denial, whether it was true or even if he had killed and dismembered the body himself.’

‘Exactly. Still, we’ve made contact. If we need to follow up—’ Jude looked at the card in her hand. ‘Do you fancy doing a guided walk round Fedborough on Sunday morning?’

‘Well, I . . . What would be achieved by that?’

Jude shrugged. ‘Bit of background. Get to know the place. Find out perhaps what horrors lurk behind all this middle-class respectability.’

‘All right. I’m game for it. Why’re we going this way?’

‘This is Pelling Street, which in the perverse way of English country towns is not where one will find the Pelling Arms, that being in the High Street, but is, however, where one will find Pelling House.’

‘Ah. We’re joining the ghouls, are we?’

‘If you want to put it that way, Carole, yes. Though I doubt if there’ll be many of those around now. Unless the police release more information soon, I think this murder will be very much less than a nine days’ wonder.’

‘The gossip won’t stop.’

‘Not in Fedborough, no. But I don’t think many more out-of-towners will bother to come down here in search of cheap thrills.’

They were now within sight of the house. A Land Rover Discovery was parked opposite. ‘Ah, they’re back,’ said Jude.

‘Mm?’

‘Kim and Grant. That’s their car. They must have been allowed back into the house.’

They walked past the red-brick façade and the fine white portico without breaking step. No bloodthirsty onlookers stood drooling outside. There was no police tape, no notices visible. Pelling House had lost all signs of its recent notoriety and reverted to being just an expensive, respectable dwelling in Fedborough.

‘Police didn’t really stay long,’ Carole observed thoughtfully. ‘Body discovered on Saturday night and by Tuesday the house is no longer sealed up. Well, maybe the cellar’s still closed, but otherwise the police would appear to have finished their on-site investigations.’

‘So, from the knowledge of their ways you gleaned in the Home Office, what would you say that indicated?’

‘One of two things,’ Carole replied. ‘Perhaps they’ve found no signs of anything untoward in the rest of the house and therefore concluded that the body was either killed in the cellar or moved to the cellar post mortem. So the cellar is the only part of the house they’re continuing to examine . . .’

‘Or?’

‘Or the police have already reached their conclusions as to who the torso belonged to, and how she was killed. Which would mean that their investigation is at an end.’