Читать книгу The Torso in the Town - Simon Brett - Страница 8

There was a click of the downstairs door being unlocked, and someone called up, ‘Are you there, Debbie love?’ The voice was elderly, but strong, with the hint of a Sussex accent.

‘Yes, Mum, come on up. I’ve got someone here.’

The woman who appeared at the sitting-room door was stout with a tight grey perm and a bulging raffia-covered shopping basket. She looked infinitely reliable. Carole had no difficulty picturing her behind an old-fashioned grocer’s counter, able instantly to put her hand on all her stock, ready to take and pass on confidences. The grocery would have been a sub-station in the network of Fedborough’s communications, the kind of essential information source which has disappeared in the days of out-of-town superstores.

Debbie’s mother looked like a character from a bygone age, a card from a game of ‘Happy Families’. Mr Bun the Baker. Mrs Franks the Grocer. Comparing Debbie’s elegance, Carole reflected on the unlikeliness of Miss Franks the Grocer’s Daughter ever being part of the same set. But seeing the two of them together did help to put Debbie Carlton into context. Her rise to art school, wealthy marriage and interior design consultancy had been from comparatively humble origins.

‘This is my mother, Billie Franks. Carole Seddon.’

The old woman’s brow wrinkled. ‘I don’t think we’ve met, have we?’ There was no criticism in her words, only puzzlement. It was unusual for Mrs Franks to meet anyone in Fedborough whom she didn’t know.

‘I live in Fethering.’

‘Ah. That would explain it.’ If Carole had said Reykjavik or Valparaiso, she would have got the same reaction. Billie Franks reached into her basket. ‘Reg got me a couple of lettuces out of his allotment, and I thought you could probably do with one, love.’

‘Thanks, Mum.’

‘I’ll put it through in the kitchen.’ Billie Franks bustled off. She treated the flat as if it were her own, and her daughter showed no signs of resenting the assumption.

‘I’d better be off, if your mother’s . . .’

‘Don’t worry. She won’t be staying. She’s just on her way to visit Dad.’

‘Oh?’

‘He’s in a nursing home down at Rustington. The Elms.’

‘Yes, you said. I’m sorry.’

‘Completely gone. Alzheimer’s, I’m afraid. He hasn’t a clue what’s going on, but Mum still goes and sees him every day.’ Debbie looked up as her mother came back from the kitchen. ‘Just telling Carole about Dad.’

‘Ah.’ Billie Franks held the basket comfortably against her stomach. ‘I thought he seemed a lot brighter yesterday. Really taking things in. He recognized me. Called me “nurse”, but he did definitely recognize me. I think he’s on the mend, you know.’

There was a plea in Debbie Carlton’s eyes, begging Carole not to say anything about the unlikelihood of anyone making a recovery from Alzheimer’s Disease. Let my mother keep her fantasies, however unrealistic they may be. Carole smiled acknowledgment. She wouldn’t have said anything, anyway.

‘Won’t you stay and have some tea, Mum?’

‘No, thank you, love. I’ll go straight down to Rustington. You know your Dad frets if I’m late.’ This, Carole felt sure, was another of the illusions that sustained Billie Franks in her hopeless predicament. ‘I’ll give you a call later and let you know how he is.’ She paused, for the first time ill at ease. ‘You haven’t, er . . .’

Mother and daughter had an almost telepathic understanding. ‘Heard any more from the police? No, Mum, not since yesterday. I was just talking about it,’ she went on, with what sounded to Carole like deliberation.

‘Terrible business.’ Billie Franks shook her head. Not a hair of her tight perm shifted. ‘You’d heard presumably, Carole . . .?’

‘Hard to escape. It’s been all over the media.’

‘Yes. People are disgusting. You know, when I walked past Pelling House coming up here, there was a big crowd outside. Ghouls, I call them. Why can’t they go and look at the Castle instead? I don’t think murder should be a tourist attraction, do you?’

Carole dutifully shook her head.

‘It’s the single, solitary reason, Debbie love, I’m glad you’re no longer in that house. To think that thing was probably down there in the cellar all the time that you . . . Ugh, it makes me shiver to think about it.’

Carole decided to risk a little investigation. ‘Mrs Franks . . .’

‘Billie, please. Everyone calls me Billie.’

‘All right, Billie. It sounds to me that there’s not a lot goes on in Fedborough you don’t know about . . .’ The old woman smiled complacent acceptance of this truth. ‘So what’s the talk on the street? Does anyone have any idea who the torso may have been?’

Billie Franks gave a contemptuous ‘Huh. There are as many theories as I’ve had hot dinners, and I’m seventy-four, so that’s a good few. No, the gossip-mills have been churning around like nobody’s business. Virtually everyone who’s left Fedborough in the last twenty years has been suggested, not to mention drug dealers, prostitutes and unacknowledged members of the Royal Family. Reg even reckons it’s the work of a serial killer.’

‘But surely this is only one case. There haven’t been any others, have there?’

‘Exactly, Carole. Which may give you some idea of the level of Reg’s intellectual achievement. He was a dunce from the day he was born, always being kept in after school.’

Carole grinned, then, casually, asked, ‘And do you have any theory as to who the dead woman might be, Billie?’

Was she being oversensitive to detect an almost imperceptible hesitation, before Billie Franks said, ‘No. No idea at all’?