“Do what?” asked Jude innocently.
“Well, jump in the river.”
Carole joined in the questioning. “Is everyone in Fed-borough assuming it was suicide?”
“Obviously. What’s the alternative?”
“He might just have fallen in. He drank a lot. Very unsteady, I would imagine, when he was walking around.”
“Oh yes, but he knew the riverbank well. He wouldn’t have fallen in by accident.”
“Someone might have pushed him in,” Jude suggested innocently.
“Why would they do that?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Well, I’m sorry, my lovely young thing…” James Lister took the opportunity to give Jude’s shoulder a more than avuncular pat. “…but I’m afraid the truth is poor old Roddy topped himself.”
Jude continued to play the innocent. “Why would he do that?”
“Once the police had identified Virginia’s body, he knew it was only a matter of time before they arrested him. He couldn’t face that, so…”
“Are you saying he murdered his wife?”
“That’s what everyone in Fedborough’s saying.”
“Is everyone in Fedborough usually right?” asked Carole.
“About most things, I’d say, yes. Once you hear a rumour in this town, nine times out of ten it’ll turn out to be true.”
Neither woman believed this, but they both nodded, unwilling to stop his flow.
“Poor old Roddy.” James Lister shook his head lugubriously. “Must’ve been nursing that ghastly secret all these years. Probably what drove him to drink.”
“But I thought he drank a lot while his wife was still around,” Carole objected.
“Yes, but he was worse after she’d gone. Now we know why.”
“How long ago was it all this happened?” asked Jude, still playing the ingénue.
“Three…three and a half years. I know that, because it was my last year in the business. I sold out…I suppose about six months after Virginia disappeared.”
“Must’ve been a wrench for you after all that time, giving up the family business.”
“Well, in some ways it was. In a lot of other ways I was pleased to be shot of the whole thing. Butchery’s changed, you know, not the profession it was. When I started, Fed-borough could support two butchers. There was my dad’s, and old Len Trollope on the corner of Dauncey Street. And both of them thought their business would be passed on from father to son for all eternity.
“But now every supermarket has its own meat counter, it’s hard to make a living as the old traditional local shop. And butchers nowadays have all this Brussels and BSE nonsense to deal with…I think I got out at the right time. Didn’t do too badly out of it, either. Property prices in Fedborough have gone up very satisfactorily, you know.”
“Good,” said Carole, reckoning that was the required response.
“Oh yes.” He nodded, pleased with his business acumen.
“So were you one of the last people to see Virginia Hargreaves alive?” asked Jude breathlessly.
The idea of being part of the drama appealed to him. “Yes, I suppose I was.”
“Ooh, how horrid,” said Jude, continuing to play daffy. “Do you remember when it was exactly?”
He smoothed his white moustache with the effort of recollection. “Let me see. I think it was late on the Friday afternoon before she vanished…”
Neither Carole nor Jude made any reaction, but the same thought was in both their minds: when Roddy was already on the ferry to France.
“Mm, because I remember, just before closing time, I’d dropped into Stanley Franks’s shop next door…”
“The grocer’s?”
“That’s right. He sold up round the same time I did. But we were still both in business then…”
“I gather he’s now very ill,” said Carole.
“Yes, poor bugger – pardon my French again. Physically in very good nick, I gather, which means he’ll probably last for years. But the mind’s totally gone. Very sad. He used to be so good at what he did. All right, I know running a shop’s not the most glamorous of professions…” (a fact of which his wife had left him in no doubt over the years of their marriage) “…but there’s a lot of skill involved in doing it well, and the best people inthe retail trade really take a pride in their work. I like to think I was one of those, but I couldn’t hold a candle to Stanley Franks. He was a real perfectionist, ran that shop like a finely oiled machine. Spotlessly clean, all the best produce, a lot of it prepared on the premises. Really sad to see him now.
“Used to be a great drinking mate of mine, Stanley. You know, we’d both built up our businesses in the town next door to each other, but…” He shook his head gloomily. “Used to go and see him when he first moved into The Elms, but pretty soon stopped. No point. He didn’t know who I was.”
“I met his wife, Billie. She said she thought he was getting better.”
“Deluding herself, I’m afraid, Carole my love. There’s no way back from the road old Stanley’s gone down. Billie’s had a rotten deal of it. Had to sell the family home and move into a houseboat to pay for his care and, as I say, he looks like he could last for ever. Don’t know what she’ll do when the money runs out.” His head shook mournfully.
“Sorry,” Jude prompted, “but you were telling us about the last time you saw Virginia Hargreaves.”
“Oh, right, so I was.” With relish James Lister resumed his position centre stage of the tragedy. “When I popped into Stanley’s shop that afternoon, Virginia was there and I remember thinking at the time…she looks in a bad way.” He paused for effect.
“What – ill?”
“Could have been ill. Certainly pale and drawn. But I thought she looked more…emotionally upset.” He nodded sagely. “I remember, I said so that evening at our Friday-night dinner party. I said, ‘Virginia Hargreaves is looking in a bad way. I don’t think things are too healthy in that marriage’.” He let the meaning sink in, while Carole and Jude thought how typical it was that private grief should be dissected round the Listers’ dinner table. “Little did I know how prophetic my words would be,” James concluded.
After a suitably impressed pause, Carole asked, “But didn’t anyone in Fedborough think to enquire where she had gone?”
“Not really. Everyone knew things had been sticky between her and Roddy. The surprise really was that she hadn’t walked out earlier. I think the general assumption was that she had gone back to stay with some of her aristocratic relations.”
Ah yes, thought Carole, the title once again working its magic. Fedborough had been honoured by the presence in its midst of a member of the peerage; not good form to pry after she’d graciously moved back to be among her own kind. Though, if Fedborough had pried, it would quickly have found out that she wasn’t on speaking terms with any of her own kind.
James Lister’s face took on an expression of pious thoughtfulness. “If only I’d asked Virginia what the trouble was when I saw her that Friday afternoon, perhaps I could have saved her.”
“I don’t think you should blame yourself,” said Carole, managing not to smile.
“No. But one does,” he said gravely. “When something like this happens, inevitably one does.”
Jude took up the baton of investigation. “Jimmy, you don’t know of anyone who saw Virginia Hargreaves after you did?”
He shook his head. “Somebody may have done, but…Didn’t realize at the time it would be important, so I never thought to ask.”
“And I don’t suppose,” said Carole, “that you remember when you next saw Roddy after that weekend?”
“Matter of fact, I do.” He barked a laugh. “Typical of the disorganized bugger.” Too caught up in his narrative, he forgot to ask for his French to be pardoned. “I get a call from him on the Tuesday evening. He’s just come off a ferry at Newhaven, he’s smashed out of his skull…would I ‘be a mate’ and pick him up?”