Durrington cleared his throat. His wife watched him nervously, as if afraid he was about to reveal some deeply protected secret.
But he didn’t. All he said was, ‘Have you thought about schools at all yet?’
Oh dear, thought Jude, is it going to be one of those dinner parties?
But it didn’t develop that way. Joke Burnethorpe, who Jude had already assessed as a very strong-willed young woman, persisted with her line of questioning. ‘So where is Harry?’
Grant again seemed embarrassed by the question, and a moment of marital semaphore passed between husband and wife. ‘He must’ve got caught up in . . . you know what they’re like at that age . . . some computer game . . . something on the internet—’
‘Or just exploring the house,’ Kim cut in; and then, as though such a pursuit were somehow more respectable than computer games or the internet, she went on, ‘All the children are fascinated by history, you know, and this house is full of history.’
‘So’s all of Fedborough,’ said the Rev Trigwell, pausing for a moment to check that this statement had not been controversial. Reassured, he continued, ‘You must get James Lister to take you on one of his Town Walks. He’s a real character, James . . . though of course in the nicest possible way,’ he concluded weakly.
‘Oh yes, a great character,’ Donald Durrington agreed. ‘I tell you, it was very amusing during the Fedborough Festival a couple of years back when . . . well, let’s say the drink had flowed liberally in the Sponsors’ Tent and Jimmy had indulged rather more than his wife Fiona would have approved of and—’
But the anecdote which was to detail James Lister’s qualification as ‘a character’ would have to be wheeled out some other time. A child’s scream was heard from downstairs. Seconds later, Harry Roxby burst in through the dining-room door. He carried a large rubber-covered torch, which was switched on. His face was so red Jude could hardly see the spots which had been prominent earlier, and his eyes were staring.
‘Dad!’ he shouted in sheer childish terror. ‘We’ve found a dead body in the cellar!’
Chapter Two
Professional priorities might have dictated that Dr Durrington would be first to the body, but he showed a marked reluctance to move from the dinner table. It was Kim Roxby who led the way into the hall, where she immediately stopped to comfort her hysterical daughters.
Her husband took the torch from his son and set off through the door that led down to the cellar. He was grim-faced, determined not to appear panicked. If the commotion turned out to be a practical joke perpetrated by his children, they were about to be severely reprimanded. Disrupting their parents’ social life, they would learn, was not funny.
It seemed natural for Jude to follow Grant down the stairs into the darkness. Harry, half-fascinated, half-repelled, trailed after them.
The beam of the torch waved around in the gloom. Jude had difficulty judging the precise dimensions of the space, but it felt low-ceilinged and smelt of mildew.
‘Where is it, Harry – this thing you claim you’ve seen?’ The father’s voice was taut with contained emotion.
‘I didn’t claim to see it, Dad,’ the boy protested weakly. ‘It’s there – over through that partition.’
The torch beam landed on a discoloured sheet of chipboard, bloated with damp, which had been nailed across one end of the cellar space. The top corner had been pulled away and flapped down like a piece of torn paper.
‘Did you do that, Harry?’ asked Grant sharply. ‘Pull it down?’
‘Yes,’ came the grudging admission from behind Jude.
‘Why?’
‘Just to see what space there was down here – see if we can turn this into something.’
‘Into what, Harry?’
‘I don’t know. Computer room . . . ? Den . . . ? Some place where I can go, somewhere I can be on my own . . .’
Jude was struck, given the situation, by the incongruity of the father questioning his son in this way. For a moment she wondered if Grant was just delaying the sight of the horror that lay ahead, but then she decided the exchange was simply a reflection of their relationship. Grant Roxby still wanted to know about – possibly even control – everything his son did. And Harry resented this constant monitoring of his life.
Grant raised the torch through the exposed triangle to illuminate the void beyond. From behind her, Jude heard a sudden dry retching sound.
‘I think I’m going to be—’
‘It’s all right, Harry! Let’s get you out of here!’ Grant put his arm around the boy’s shoulders and hurried him towards the light at the top of the stairs. The father seemed empowered by his son’s weakness, more confident when he could treat Harry as a child. Passing her, he thrust the torch into Jude’s hands.
Some people would not have wanted to look, but squeamishness had no part in Jude’s nature. She redirected the torch to where Grant had been pointing, and peered over the broken chipboard partition.
Any notion that the children’s hysteria might have been prompted by an anthropomorphic dummy was quickly dispelled. What the torchlight revealed was very definitely human.
The body lay horizontally at the foot of the wall, dark, almost black, with leathery skin tight over the bones. Beaky, reminiscent of an unwrapped mummy whose photograph Jude had once seen in a National Geographical Magazine, the face was still topped by a straggle of mud-coloured hair.
Rotted round about on the floor were the remains of the box in which the corpse must have lain hidden. From the soggy corrugated debris, this appeared to have been made of no more than stout cardboard. The angled plastic strips which had reinforced its corners lay splayed out on the floor.
There was no evidence of clothes. The object’s shrivelled breasts and pudenda showed that what Jude was looking at had once been a woman.
The body had no limbs. The arms had been neatly removed at the shoulders, and the legs at the hip joint.
Chapter Three
When Carole Seddon opened her front door the next morning, the Sunday, she looked frosty. Her pale, thin face did frosty rather well. The sensibly cut steel-grey hair offered no concessions, and when she wanted them to, her light blue eyes could look as dead as the glass in her rimless spectacles. The fact that it was a fine June day, that seagulls were doing exploratory aerobatics across the Fethering sky, did not penetrate her gloom.
‘Hello,’ she said, without enthusiasm.
There was a momentary impasse before Jude asked, ‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’
‘Oh, very well.’ Carole drew back, still making no pretence at a welcome. That someone normally so punctilious in her social usages should behave like this indicated she was in the grip of some powerful emotion.
Jude
