“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 ofanyone 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 Felling 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’.”
Seven
“There was nothing on the local news,” said Jude. They were in Carole’s sitting room, in front of the log-effect gas fire, which looked even less welcoming when switched off. Every surface in the room gleamed from punctilious polishing. The décor was unimpeachable, but anonymous. Like its owner, the room resisted intimacy.
Jude had tried to get Carole to come to her house for coffee – or even, as it was already late afternoon, a glass of wine – but her neighbour had opposed the suggestion. The process of rapprochement between them might have started, but any further progress would be at the pace Carole dictated. So Jude had acceded to the request to talk in High mr rather than Woodside Cottage, and Carole had filled her in on the morning’s visit to Debbie Carlton.
“So the police have no idea who the torso belonged to?”
Jude shrugged. “No idea they’re yet ready to make public, anyway.”
“It is frustrating,” Carole observed, not for the first time, “knowing they have all kinds of information at their fingertips, and we don’t have access to it.”
“Murder is their job,” Jude pointed out. “With us it’s only really a casual interest.”
“Like bridge and line-dancing and amateur dramatics and all those other things recommended for the retired to fill their lives with.” The bitterness in her voice showed how much Carole still resented her enforced early departure from the Home Office. Jude was sometimes disturbed by the depths of varied resentments that lay within her neighbour, and wondered whether they could ever fully be eased away. Carole did seem to make life unnecessarily difficult for herself. Prickliness was not part of Jude’s emotional vocabulary, and she had had long-term plans to humanize Carole. The plans had even been making some progress, until the split-up with Ted Crisp had moved everything back to square one.
Still, not the moment to pursue that. Jude moved the conversation on. “I had a call from Kim Roxby this morning. I’d left a message, thanking them for the dinner party. A bit late, but quite honestly, given the way Saturday evening ended, social niceties got rather forgotten.”
“Did she talk about the torso?”
Jude was encouraged by the eagerness in her friend’s voice. She’d been right. Investigating a murder might be just the thing to jolt Carole out of her cycle of self-recrimination.
“Yes. She hadn’t got much to add to the little we already know. Needless to say, the Roxbys have had a lot more to do with the police than I did. Pelling House is still sealed off. Kim’s sent the kids to her mother’s. That’s in Angmering. Kim and Grant have booked into a plush hotel up on the Downs for the duration.”
“Will the police pay for that?”
“No idea. With the money Grant’s got, I’m sure he’ll never even bother to ask.” Jude looked thoughtful. “I hope Harry’s all right…”
“Hm?”
“Grant and Kim’s oldest. The one who found the thing. He’s at a very tricky stage of his life, and it was a ghastly shock for him.”