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Sometimes, Beatrice had worried for her daughter’s very sanity, but of course she couldn’t say that. Not out loud. Not now and not to these people. She’d not even spoken the words out loud to her own husband.
‘But you must have blamed Mr McGillicuddy to some extent for all this?’ Trudy persisted firmly.
‘No, not really,’ Beatrice said helplessly.
In discussing their strategy at length, Clement had made it clear Trudy’s job was to push the witness as far as she could. He would then watch and listen as Beatrice was put under pressure and try to spot any telltale signs she was lying. And although Trudy didn’t particularly like the idea of doing it, she had seen the sense in that.
And so now, in spite of the fact that her more tender instincts were telling her she shouldn’t be badgering this woman, a mother who must, even nearly five years after the event, still be grieving the loss of her child, Trudy tensed to do her duty.
If she was ever to make anything of herself in this job, she knew she had to get used to questioning witnesses, and sometimes, if the occasion warranted it, even be ruthless about it. And if that meant growing a slightly thicker skin, then so be it.
Even so, as she formed her next question, she felt a little bit sick inside. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Fleet-Wright, but I simply don’t understand how you can say that. It’s all right, you know, to admit that you didn’t like the victim. I know Mr McGillicuddy’s just been murdered, and that you may not feel comfortable speaking ill of the dead, but I assure you… we’d rather you spoke the truth. Don’t you feel even a little bit of satisfaction that the man who caused your family so much grief is now dead himself?’
There! She’d done it!
But Beatrice Fleet-Wright didn’t look angry or defiant – or even guilty. She looked, in fact, shocked. Genuinely shocked.
‘No! Oh, no, how can you say that?’ Beatrice said, appalled. ‘Of course I’m not glad he’s dead!’ Her voice had risen a full octave, and as the sound of her suddenly strident voice echoed back at her in that sterile room, she suddenly seemed to become aware of it.
Beatrice caught a breath, and got a rein on her scattered wits. No, you mustn’t lose control, she told herself. Keep calm. Don’t let them provoke you. Don’t give yourself away.
‘All right, Mrs Fleet-Wright,’ Clement now interposed smoothly. Clearly, despite a valiant effort, his young companion had failed to pierce the woman’s armour. So now a different approach was needed. ‘Can you tell us what you remember most about Jonathan? He worked for you for some time, after all. And then he was your daughter’s young man. Did you like him – as a person, I mean, as opposed to the individual your daughter was seeing?’
Trudy, now that Dr Ryder had stepped in and taken over, took the opportunity to take stock and do some observing of her own. Leaning slowly back against the sofa and letting some of the tension ease out of her painfully tight shoulders, she watched the older woman carefully.
Beatrice had turned to the coroner and looked instantly more at ease. Was that because he was a man, and she was used to appeasing men? Or was it because the interview had now veered away from the topic of her daughter and her tragic death?
‘Well, I always felt sorry for him, of course, losing his wife so young and being left with a child to raise,’ Beatrice admitted. ‘And I admired his hard work and ambition in wanting to start his own company.’
Clement sighed inwardly. That was all very polite and non-committal but he couldn’t let her continue with such nonsense.
‘He was a good-looking young chap too, I think.’ Clement smiled. And then wondered. A middle-aged woman, still attractive and trapped in a dry, unsatisfying marriage; perhaps she’d had her head turned by a young, attractive, available man? It wasn’t exactly unheard of.
But if she suspected the way her visitor’s thoughts were going, Beatrice made no sign of it and instead laughed lightly. ‘Yes, that too,’ she admitted simply. ‘But he was also kind, uncomplicated and sometimes he could be very funny. I wasn’t surprised Gisela loved him so.’
‘Did he ever mention any enemies he might have had?’ Clement went on perfunctorily. Like Trudy, he doubted that McGillicuddy had died through any fault of his own; he had simply been unlucky enough to be fathered by Sir Marcus Deering, who had acquired a very deadly enemy indeed. But to keep up the pretence that it was Jonathan’s murder they were investigating, and not the circumstances surrounding the death of her daughter, it was necessary he ask questions like these.
‘Oh, no. I’m sure he didn’t. Either have an enemy, or tell me about having crossed someone, I mean, he wasn’t that kind of man. He was just… ordinary.’ Beatrice shrugged helplessly.
Clement glanced at Trudy. And it was a measure of how well they were beginning to work together that she was able to interpret the message in that casual glance so easily.
Time for her to take over again.
‘Naturally, Mrs Fleet-Wright, we, the police, are anxious to explore all elements of Mr McGillicuddy’s life, to see if we can find a motive for his murder,’ Trudy took up the baton smoothly. ‘And, if I may say so, the only things of significance that happened to him, that we can ascertain, were the death of his wife, and the death of your daughter. It strikes me that he was very unlucky in love, wasn’t he?’
Beatrice nodded wordlessly, refusing to be drawn.
‘Can you tell me where your husband was on the day Mr McGillicuddy died?’ Trudy asked flatly.
Again, this strategy had been decided between them beforehand. It was all part and parcel of putting the pressure on her.
‘Reginald?’ Beatrice looked astonished. ‘He was at work, of course, where he always is. And Rex was at college. And I was here, at home,’ she offered, before she could be asked. ‘I can assure you that none of my family had anything to do with Jonathan’s murder. It’s ridiculous to even think so! It’s been almost five years since Gisela died!’
Again her voice was rising, and again, she forced herself to calm down. It was becoming more and more clear to her now that these people had no clue as to what had happened all those years ago. Or anything else about Gisela and Jonathan, or that awful, awful day. And all she had to do to keep it that way was to keep her wits about her, watch what she said and, above all, hold on to her self-control. If she could do that, all would be well.
It would all be over soon anyway, Beatrice told herself. It had to be. They’d find out who had killed Jonathan, and it would turn out to be nothing to do with her, or her family, and everything would go back to normal.
Dull, safe, dead, normal.
‘I see,’ Trudy said flatly. ‘And you have nothing else you’d like to tell us?’ she asked gently. ‘Nothing about your daughter, and what really happened the day she died?’
It was to be their last shot, that final question, and posed at the end of the interview, when Mrs Fleet-Wright was at her most upset and vulnerable.
Clement had been adamant that the woman be given the opportunity to confess, or at least amend her previous testimony. The human instinct to unburden itself, he’d told her, was a very strong one indeed. And it might just turn out that all Beatrice needed to take that final step would be to have a pair of sympathetic ears ready to listen to her.
Now, Trudy felt herself tense as the older woman fixed her with startled, suddenly terrified, green eyes. ‘What do you mean?’ Beatrice managed to whisper. ‘You already know what happened that day. Gisela took too many pills. By accident. It was my fault…’
Her voice trailed off as Trudy gently shook her head.
‘But that’s not true, is it?’ the young policewoman said softly.
Beatrice felt the blood drain from her face. She felt, suddenly, cold. Desperately cold. Was it possible that she was wrong? That far from not having a clue, these people really already knew everything?
‘Gisela didn’t forget to take her pills, did she?’ Trudy persisted. ‘You weren’t confused about whether or not she’d taken the right dose. You didn’t accidentally give her more.’ Trudy, despite trembling with tension, kept her voice soft and gentle and coaxing. ‘You lied at the inquest, didn’t you? You can tell us the truth, Mrs Fleet-Wright,’ she encouraged gently.
And for a moment, for just one magical, split second, she could feel something in the room shift – something change. Beatrice’s lips fell apart. Her eyes went huge and round.
‘Lie?’ Beatrice said desperately, her voice so thin it hardly sounded human. ‘No… no…’
‘Yes, you did,’ Trudy all but whispered back. She could feel that the coroner, on the other end of the sofa, was as tense and expectant as she was. ‘You can tell us,’ Trudy urged, trying not to sound as desperate as she felt. ‘You’ll feel better if you do,’ she promised.
Would I? Beatrice Fleet-Wright thought, and for one, insane moment her heart lifted at the thought. After so many years of misery and guilt, was that possible?
‘Your daughter killed herself, didn’t she?’ Trudy finally spoke the words.
And Beatrice Fleet-Wright blinked.
‘And you covered it up, didn’t you?’ Trudy added softly.
And then something totally shockingly happened.
Beatrice Fleet-Wright began to laugh.
She laughed, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Upstairs, in his large bedroom – part of which had been given over to a model railway – Rex Fleet-Wright stood at the window and watched as the woman police constable and the tall man with white hair left the house.
He wondered, vaguely, what lies his mother had been telling them now.
His mother, as Rex well knew, was very good at telling lies.
He sighed and, after their car had driven away, turned and went back to his bed, throwing himself down on it so heavily he actually bounced.
Or perhaps his mother hadn’t lied, but had managed to distract them in some other way instead. She was good at that too.
He turned on his side and gazed at the large photograph resting on his bedside table. It was of his sister, of course. Gisela, when she was nineteen, her long dark hair covering one green eye, her mouth wide open and laughing.
It was funny, Rex thought, how, even after nearly five years of being dead, his sister still seemed the most alive person left in the house.
‘So, what do you think?’ Trudy asked ten minutes later, as they sat in Clement’s car in the courtyard at Floyds Row. ‘It was hysteria, wasn’t it? All that insane laughing at the end? She was in shock?’
‘Yes,’ Clement agreed thoughtfully.
After her initial burst of spontaneous laughter, Mrs Fleet-Wright had seemed unable to stop. She’d apologised, or tried to, around her guffaws.
‘I’m so s-s-sorry,’ she’d gasped, mopping her streaming eyes with a handkerchief. ‘It’s just so…so… s-s-silly of me.’ But even then, she’d simply carried on laughing helplessly.
Eventually, she’d managed to get a grip on herself, but after that it was impossible to continue the interview. Apart from the fact that the lady of the house had simply risen to her feet and offered to show them out, it was clear they would get nothing more from her after such a shocking lapse of self-control. Because of the shame of her breakdown, she had rapidly built a frigidly cold wall of politeness around herself that would take a battering ram to knock down.
And, if she was honest, Trudy was feeling so emotionally spent herself by that point that she just wanted to get out in the fresh air and try and clear her own head.
‘So, what do you think?’ she demanded again now.
‘I think,’ Clement Ryder said slowly, ‘that Mrs Fleet-Wright is a lady with a lot of secrets.’
Trudy sighed heavily. A fat lot of help that was! Sometimes the old vulture could be so annoyingly enigmatic. But she knew the sense of anger she felt wasn’t really directed at him.
‘I made a right mess of it, didn’t I?’ she said miserably.
Clement smiled. ‘No, you didn’t,’ he said honestly. ‘And I doubt anyone else could have done better. So cheer up – next time, things might be different.’
Trudy nodded. They would, of course, have to question Mrs Fleet-Wright again. But it wasn’t, if she was honest, something she was particularly looking forward to. ‘So, what now?’
‘Don’t you have surveillance duty to do?’
‘Yes,’ Trudy said with a heavy sigh. She’d spent six hours yesterday watching Clive Greaves’s lodgings in the company of PC Rodney Broadstairs, who’d bored her silly, talking about football all the time.
Just as DI Jennings had warned her, it was cold, tedious work indeed. And, she was honest enough to acknowledge wryly, her enthusiasm at learning a new skill hadn’t taken very long to wane.
‘But I’m free tomorrow afternoon,’ she added brightly. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘What do you think you should do?’ he asked curiously, interested to see how logically the girl could think.
Trudy, blissfully unaware she was being tested, merely thought about it for a moment, then nodded. ‘I think I should go and see Mrs Gordon, when her husband’s not around.’
Clement smiled. Good. ‘You think she might tell you anything, though?’ he asked, a shade sceptically. ‘She’s hardly likely to want to admit that her husband’s been up to no good – always supposing he has been.’
Trudy sighed. ‘We won’t know that if I don’t try,’ she pointed out.
‘Can’t argue with logic like that,’ Clement said cheerfully. ‘Right then, off you go. And have a nice night with the pheasants.’
Trudy groaned. One of her fellow PCs had told her that their prime suspect in the Deering/McGillicuddy case often spent several hours at night with his game birds. And tonight was going to be bloody freezing!
Inside her house, Beatrice Fleet-Wright helped herself to a third glass of sherry, finding she was still prone to intermittently breaking out in compulsive giggles.
But she couldn’t help it. It was just so funny!
And to think, she’d almost been on the verge of confessing it all. Every dirty, grubby little thing.
But then, like a lifesaver, that young policewoman had accused her of trying to cover up Gisela’s suicide. And… oh! If only they knew how truly hilarious that actually was!
Again, Beatrice began to giggle and slapped a hand over her mouth in case the maid should hear her. Then, very carefully making sure she didn’t spill a single drop, she finished the sherry in her glass and went to pour herself another.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Anthony Deering was glad to get out of the hospital. Although the doctors and nurses had been great, there was something about the clean white lines and antiseptic smell of places like that that always made him feel uneasy.
Now he was back home again, he was already feeling much better. Although he still felt stiff and sore from his bruises and was prone to sudden lightning strikes of unexpected pain when he made certain movements, he was hopeful that soon he’d be able to get back on his horse and ride around the estate. Just a gentle trot, to fill his lungs with clean, cold, country air.
But as he lay in his bed, staring up at the ceiling and trying to convince himself he didn’t feel afraid, he couldn’t help but worry – and finally start to face some hard, unpalatable facts.
This time, with the car, he’d been lucky. He hadn’t been travelling that fast and he’d managed to slow the car down – his lovely car, now a total write-off – enough to make a difference. But still, no two ways about it. He had been lucky. And following hard on the heels of that thought was the inevitable addendum – this time! And again, following on inevitably from that, one thought now filled his mind.
What about next time?
As Anthony lay on his bed in his father’s large country house, surrounded by his father’s acres, he couldn’t help but wonder – and not for the first time – just what his father had done. What unspeakable sin or act had he committed in the past to bring this vengeful madman to their door?
He sighed heavily then winced as pain lanced across his bruised ribs. With a second, carefully shallow sigh, he closed his eyes and told himself to go to sleep. Surely the police would get to the bottom of all this soon. The chap in charge, Jennings, seemed a competent sort of fellow. And Sergeant O’Grady, likewise, lent a reassuringly solid presence to the household.
But Anthony might not have been able to drift off into his nap quite so easily had he known what his father was doing that very moment, downstairs, in his study.
Sir Marcus Deering carefully watched Sergeant Mike O’Grady as the solid, sandy-haired policeman sat in the chair opposite his desk, rereading the latest letter. It had come in that morning’s post, leaving the businessman feeling almost suicidal with despair.
O’Grady, though, was being careful to keep his face expressionless.
‘I AM RUNNING OUT OF PATIENCE, AND YOU ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME. DO THE RIGHT THING, SOON. NEXT TIME YOUR YOUNGEST SON WON’T BE SO LUCKY.’
Since the car accident, there had always been a PC on patrol outside the house, but that hardly seemed adequate, and now the older man asked testily, ‘Is there no progress being made at all?’
Mike O’Grady hesitated. He couldn’t, of course, reveal anything specific about their ongoing investigation, but the DI had told him to keep the businessman sweet.
‘We do have a prime suspect, sir,’ he said cautiously, then held out a hand to prevent Sir Marcus from bombarding him with questions. ‘And we’re keeping a very close eye on him.’
‘Did he have something to do with the fire?’ Sir Marcus demanded.
Again, O’Grady hesitated, then nodded slowly.
Sir Marcus slumped in his chair. In truth, he was rather surprised by that. ‘I still can’t understand it,’ he said helplessly. For the life of him, he just couldn’t see how anyone would blame him for that. It just didn’t feel right somehow. And Sir Marcus had always been a great believer in listening to his instincts. But if this wasn’t about the fire, what was it about? What?
For weeks now he’d been wracking his brains, but could think of nothing he’d done to deserve this plague that had fallen on his house. The frustration of not knowing what to do to bring it all to an end was almost killing him. Already, he’d had to go to the doctor’s with suspected ulcers.
With a huge mental effort, he forced himself to calm down. As his GP had said, stress could bring on a heart attack and that was the last thing he needed right now. At all costs, he had to stay strong and focused.
He waved a hand at the latest letter. ‘Well, it’s obvious my piece in the Oxford Mail and the charitable donation weren’t enough to satisfy him,’ he said heavily.
‘Apparently not, sir,’ O’Grady agreed cautiously.
‘You fellows will keep Anthony safe until all this is over, right?’
‘Yes, sir,’ O’Grady said. But he, like all policemen, knew it was almost impossible to guard a man day and night. Just ask the secret service detailed to keep the President of the United States alive. The simple fact was, if someone wanted you dead, and that person was reasonably intelligent, patient and determined, sooner or later… well…
If only they could be sure Clive Greaves was their man. Unfortunately, this latest letter to Sir Marcus had been posted before they’d started keeping a twenty-four-hour watch on him. Still, the Sergeant thought with some satisfaction, if Greaves was their man, and he made another attempt on Anthony Deering, this time they’d be ready for him.
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