“Giving their theories about what happened?”
“You betcha. God, the number of names that havebeen whispered discreetly to me…You’d think Fedborough was entirely populated by serial killers.”
“And do you have any theories yourself, Grant?”
He made a negative grimace. “I don’t know enough of the personalities involved. I’ve a feeling whatever happened happened at least three years ago.”
“Do you base that on something the police have said?” asked Carole eagerly, as her mind matched his words with the date of Virginia Hargreaves’s disappearance.
“No. While everyone else has been extremely generous to me with their theories, I’m afraid the police – the only people who might have anything vaguely authoritative to contribute – have said bugger all.”
“So where do you get your three years from?”
“Well, I met the Carltons…you know, while the house purchase was going through…and I just can’t believe they had anything to do with it. Besides, the state of the body when I saw it in the cellar…it looked like it had been dead a long time.”
Carole shook her head wryly. “Maybe. From the description Jude gave me, it sounded as if it had been sort of mummified, which would make precise dating a lot more difficult. Could be three years, could be a lot older…or indeed a lot more recent.”
“You know about these things?”
“I’m not an expert. But I used to work for the Home Office, and picked up some of the basics. The only thing that the state of the body does seem to indicate is that the woman was killed – or perhaps we should say, pending further information, met her end – somewhere else.”
“And was moved into the cellar here?”
“I should think that’s almost definitely the case, yes?” Grant Roxby looked thoughtful, and picked up the wine bottle. Only about a third of its contents remained. He gestured towards Carole, who shook her head again, and he filled up his own glass.
“You sound as if that news has affected your thinking about the case, Grant.”
He shrugged. “As I said, what do I know? On the other hand, it might make sense of something else…”
“Hm?”
“Well, because of what I’d assumed to be the age of the body, and because I hadn’t considered the possibility it might have been moved here, I had rather ruled out as suspects the people we bought the house from.”
“Debbie Carlton and her husband?”
“Ex-husband, yes.” Grant Roxby tapped his chin thoughtfully. “But maybe this explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“Apparently Francis Carlton has been summoned back from Florida.”
“Summoned?”
“Yes. The police want to talk to him.”
“I saw it,” said Harry truculently. “Whatever they say doesn’t change the fact that I saw it.”
“‘They’ being your parents?”
“Of course.” He looked at Jude with defiance. “They like to control everything in my life, but they can’t do that. They can’t control my thoughts – or my memories.”
“‘They’ in this case being your dad.”
“Well, I suppose…Like about everything else, Mum just goes along with what he says.”
She was silent for a moment. “Are you telling me your parents don’t want you to think about what you saw?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t dwell on it, Harry. Just forget it. Don’t keep picking away at it, Harry!” Though the impersonation of Grant was not a good one, it caught some of his energy and bossiness.
“But putting that image out of your mind completely must be very hard.”
“Hard? It’s impossible.” His bottom lip trembled and tears threatened. At that moment he looked nearer ten than fifteen. “I’d never seen a dead body before. Any kind of dead body…let alone one in…in that condition.”
“Pretty ghastly, wasn’t it?”
“So you can’t just keep something like that out of your mind, shut the lid on it and never think about it again.”
“No, you can’t. I don’t think you should try to.”
The boy looked straight at Jude. For the first time, he seemed to believe she had something worth saying. “You mean I should think about it?”
“Of course you should. You don’t come to terms with something unpleasant by closing your mind. You have to go through the experience in detail, process it, reach some kind of conclusion about it.”
He was cynical again. “Isn’t that what a psychiatrist would say? Are you a psychiatrist?”
“No, I’m not.” She grinned. “If I was, I’d just have used the word ‘closure’, and I didn’t, did I?”
“No,” he conceded. “Then why did Dad ask you to talk to me?”
“Wasn’t him, it was your mum. Your dad is extremely unkeen on my being here.”
“Oh.” Harry’s reaction suggested Jude had gained credibility from his father’s disapproval.
“I’m here,” she went on, “because you and I have something in common.”
“What’s that?”
“We’ve both seen the torso, haven’t we? Apart from the police – and your dad – we’re the only people who have. And since your dad doesn’t want to talk to you on the subject…”
“Certainly not. He won’t even allow me to mention it.”
“Then I’d say you and I really should talk about the torso…”
The boy nodded slowly. “Yes, I think we should. Are you still, kind of…shocked by what you saw, Jude?”
The use of her name was very encouraging. “A bit. More than shocked, though, I’m intrigued.”
“Oh?”
“Come on, Harry, the torso was a ghastly thing for us to have seen, but, in spite of that – or perhaps because of that – it does raise a lot of questions.”
“What kind of questions do you mean?”
“Who the torso belonged to when she was alive? How her remains came to end up in the cellar here? Who cut off her arms and legs? And was that the same person who caused her death in the first place?”
“You mean, like…a murderer?” There was horror as he spoke the word, but also fascination.
“Yes. You’ve been presented with a possible murder mystery right on your own doorstep. Harry. And I think the best way of working through the shock of what you saw would be to treat that as a challenge, try and find out for yourself what happened.”
“Sort of…do my own investigation?”
“Why not? Talk through all the information you have, try to work out the solution.”
For the first time there was a sparkle in the boy’s eyes as he asked, “Would you help me to do that, Jude?”
“No,” she replied. “You’d help me, Harry.”
Fifteen
They tiptoed down the stairs. The door to the dining room was closed, with Grant and Carole presumably still behind it. There was no sign of Kim; no doubt in the kitchen, tidying up the lunch things.
Harry put his finger to his lips. He was enjoying the conspiratorial element in what they were doing. The torch was still in the large baggy pocket of his large baggy trousers. He wasn’t going to produce it until they were past danger of being spotted.
“I sorted out how to break the police seals, Jude,” he confided proudly. “Cut through with a metal saw and joined them together again with Blu-Tack.”
“Very James Bond,” she murmured. It was the right thing to say. The boy beamed. “Must’ve taken a long time, though.”
“Did it yesterday. They were all out for a walk on the Downs.” He invested the words with all the contempt a disgruntled fifteen-year-old can muster. “Took a while, but I made a neat job of it.”