A Fatal Obsession
FAITH MARTIN

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Faith Martin 2018

Annie Lyons asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9780008297763

Version: 2019-08-21

For my Mum and Dad – for always believing in me

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Acknowledgements

Extract

About the Author

Also by Faith Martin

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE
Oxford, July 1955

The body on the bed lay sedate and demurely silent as the middle-aged man looked slowly around the room. It was a lovely room – large, well proportioned and lavishly decorated in tones of blue and silver. One of two large sash windows was partly open, allowing a warm summer breeze to blow in, gently wafting the fine net curtains and bringing with it a faint scent of honeysuckle from the lush and well-tended gardens below.

The man wandered slowly around the opulent bedroom, his eyes greedily taking in everything from the quality of the silk bedsheets to the bottles of expensive perfume on an ornate antique dresser, while being careful not to touch anything. Having been born into a working-class family, he knew nothing about the pedigree of the paintings that adorned the walls. But he would have been willing to bet a week’s wages that the sale of just one of them would be more than enough to set him and his family up for life.

He’d never before had cause to visit any of the mansions that proliferated in the swanky streets that stretched between the Woodstock and Banbury Roads in the north of the city, or any of the leafy avenues in the area. So now he took his time, and a considerable amount of pleasure, in looking around him, luxuriating in the deep tread of the plush blue Axminster carpet beneath his feet, which was so reminiscent of walking on mossy lawns.

His eyes turned wistfully to the jewellery box on a walnut bedside table, left carelessly open. Gold, pearls and a few sparkling gemstones winked in the summer sun, making his fingers positively itch.

‘Very nice,’ he muttered quietly to himself. But he knew better than to slip even a modest ring or two into his pocket. Not this time – and certainly not with these people. The man hadn’t reached his half century without learning there was one law for the rich, and one for everyone else.

Thoughtfully, his eyes turned once more to the body on the bed. A pretty little thing she was. Young too. Just out of her teens, perhaps?

What a damned shame, he thought vaguely.

Then the breeze caused something on the bedside table to flutter slightly, the movement instantly catching his eye. He walked closer to the bed and the dead girl, again careful where he put his feet, and saw what it was that had been disturbed. It had clearly been deliberately propped up among the pots of face cream and powder compacts, lipsticks and boxes of pills.

Bending ponderously at the waist, the man, who was definitely beginning to run to fat, squinted down at it and read some of the words written there.

And slowly, a large, beaming smile spread over his not particularly attractive face. He gave a long, slow, near-silent whistle and then looked sharply over his shoulder to make sure nobody from the house had come upstairs behind him and could see what he was about to do. Confident he remained alone and unobserved, he reached out for the item and put it safely away in his large inside jacket pocket.

Then he lovingly patted the place over his heart where it lay. For, unless he was very much mistaken, this precious little find was the best bit of luck he’d had for many a year – if not in his whole life. And it was certainly going to make his imminently approaching retirement years far more pleasant than he’d ever previously anticipated.

He walked jauntily to the door, leaving the dead girl behind him without a second thought, and stepped out confidently onto the landing.

Time, he rather thought, to tackle the man of the house.

CHAPTER ONE
Oxford, January 1960

Probationary WPC Trudy Loveday shouted, ‘Oi, you, stop right there. Police!’ at the top of her lungs, and took off at a racing sprint.

Needless to say, the young lad she’d just seen snatch a woman’s handbag as she was standing below the clock face on Carfax Tower did nothing of the kind. She just had time to catch a fleeting impression of a panic-stricken young face as he shot a quick look at her over his shoulder, and then took off down The High, like a whippet after a hare.

He nearly got run over by a taxi as he crossed the main road at the intersection but, luckily for Trudy, the traffic that had screeched to a halt to allow him to cross meant she could take advantage of the gap to race across herself, in rather more safety.

On her face, had she but known it, was a look of sheer joy.

Sergeant O’Grady had given her the task of trying to find the man responsible for a spate of bag-snatching in the city centre that had been going on since before the Christmas rush, but this was the first time she’d actually caught sight of her quarry in all that time. Though the thief had been active enough, and the list of outraged complaints from housewives and shoppers had grown steadily longer, neither she nor any of her fellow constables walking the beat had yet been lucky enough to be in the right spot at the right time.

Until now.

And a month of pounding the freezing pavements, taking statements from enraged or tearful women, and hiding behind shop doors on increasingly aching feet while keeping her eyes peeled for mischief, had left Trudy with a proper grudge against this particular villain.

Which meant she was in no mood to lose him now.

She was aware that many of the people in the streets were watching her race by with open mouths and round, astonished eyes. Some of the men, indeed, looked as if they were going to try and interfere, and she could only hope and pray that they wouldn’t. Although they no doubt meant well, the last thing she needed was for some chivalrous, middle-aged bank manager to try and stop the fleeing thief for her, only to be roughly tossed to the floor, punched, or worse.

The paperwork involved in that was something she definitely didn’t want to think about. Not to mention the look of resigned fury that would cross DI Jennings’s face when he learned she’d somehow managed to muck up such a simple arrest.

Less than a minute of mad chasing had passed so far, and rather belatedly she remembered her whistle and debated whether or not she should use it.

At nineteen (nearly twenty), Trudy Loveday still remembered her glory days at the track and field events at her school where she’d always won cups on sports day for her racing – be it sprinting or cross-country. And she could still run like the wind, even in her neat black shoes and police uniform, with her leather satchel of accoutrements bouncing on her hip. Moreover, she could tell she was gaining ground on the little villain in front of her, who had to deal with the added obstacle of shouldering pedestrians out of his way as he ran, leaving the pavements rather less clogged for her.

Her legs and arms were pumping away in that satisfying and remembered rhythm that allowed her to eat up the yards, and she was reluctant to alter that flow, but training and good sense told her she must. So, trying not to lose momentum, she reached her hand across her chest, swung the silver whistle on its chain up to her lips, and blew hard on the outward, expelling breath.

The distinctive, loud-pitched whistle promptly resounded in the cold, frost-laden air, and would, she knew, bring any of her colleagues within hearing distance running to her aid. Which might be just as well if the bag-snatcher decided to give up his attempt at a straight flight and tried to lose himself in the city’s narrow, medieval back streets, or by dodging in and out of the shops.

But so far he was intent on just running down The High, no doubt confident he could outrun a mere woman. But this hardly made him the first man to underestimate her.

With a confident grin, Trudy put on an extra burst of speed. He was so close now, she could almost feel the moment when she’d rugby-tackle him to the ground, hear him grunt with surprise and then see the look of dismay on his cocky little face as she slipped her handcuffs on him and gave him his caution.

And at that moment, just as she was reaching out and getting ready to grab him, he turned and glanced over his shoulder, saw her and swore. And immediately began to dodge to his right, between two parked cars.

Trudy cast a swift look over her shoulder, saw that the road was clear, then looked ahead as far as Magdalen Bridge, noticing the familiar outline of a red bus chugging along, coming towards her. But she had plenty of time before it reached them.

Anticipating the fleeing thief’s intention of crossing the road and trying to lose her down one of the side streets opposite, Trudy gave a final blast on her whistle. This was as much to warn the gaping, watching public to keep out of the way as it was an attempt to attract further help from her colleagues.

Then she leapt sideways.

Her timing, as she’d known it would be, was near perfect, and before he could gain the middle of the road, she was on him, swinging him around and back towards the pavement. She hit him hard, putting all of her slight weight into it. Luckily, at five feet ten, she was a tall girl, and had a long reach.

The thief landed unluckily on his nose on the icy tarmac, and yelped in shock. He was a skinny, wiry specimen, all arms and legs, and already his nose was bleeding profusely. Comically, he was still clutching the lady’s handbag he’d snatched back at Carfax.

Trudy felt her police cap fall off as she landed on top of him but, mercifully, her long, wavy, dark-brown hair was held up in such a tight bun by a plethora of hair pins and elastic bands that it remained contained.

Reaching behind her, with one knee firmly positioned in the middle of the thief’s back, she groped for her handcuffs. She was vaguely aware of a male voice shouting something only a short distance away, and that the public, who had begun gathering in a curious little knot around her, were now moving back, when the thief beneath her suddenly bucked and twisted violently.

And before she could even open her mouth to begin to caution him, his elbow shot upwards, smacking her firmly in the eye.

‘Owwww!’ she yelled, one hand going up instinctively to cup her throbbing cheekbone. This provided the bag-snatcher with the opportunity he’d been waiting for, and he gave another massive heave, sending her sprawling.

Nevertheless, she had enough presence of mind to reach out and grab him by the foot as he attempted to get up. He turned, drew back his free leg and was clearly about to kick her in the face when she became aware of another figure looming over her.

‘All right, matey, hold it right there! You ain’t going nowhere,’ a triumphant voice said. And a pair of large male hands came into her view, hauling the bag-snatcher to his feet. ‘I’m arresting you for assaulting a police officer in the course of her duty. I must caution you that anything you say will be taken down and may be given in evidence.’

Trudy, her large, dark-brown eyes watering as much in frustration as in pain, watched as PC Rodney Broadstairs – the Lothario of St Aldates police station – slipped his handcuffs onto her suspect. Stiffly, she got to her feet. Only now that the adrenaline was wearing off was she beginning to feel the scrapes and bruises she’d sustained in the tackle. Although, fortunately, her gloves, uniform, and the heavy black serge greatcoat she wore over it had saved her from losing any actual skin.

A brief and polite smattering of applause from the public rang out as PC Broadstairs began frogmarching the thief back to the pavement. One member of the public diffidently offered Trudy her cap back, which she took with a smile and a weary word of thanks.

She also retrieved the lady’s handbag for evidence.

But the admiring looks from the bystanders and the murmuring of approval for ‘the plucky little thing’ as she limped grimly after PC Broadstairs and the bag-snatcher did little to improve her now sour mood. Because she knew, after nearly a year’s bitter experience, just how things were going to go now.

Broadstairs, having been the one to deliver the caution and put on the cuffs, would be accredited with the arrest. It would be the good-looking PC, not the humble probationary WPC, who would get the nod of approval from her superior officers.

She would no doubt be told to go home to her mum and dad and get some rest, nurse her burgeoning black eye and then type up her report first thing in the morning. Oh, and to go and get the deposition of the woman whose bag had been snatched. And all the time having to endure the whispers and snide asides about how that was all WPCs were good for.

Disconsolately, as she trooped back to St Aldates, she could only hope that DI Jennings wouldn’t use her minor injuries as an excuse to put her back on desk duty again.

In front of her, PC Rodney Broadstairs looked over his shoulder at her and winked.

As WPC Trudy Loveday wrestled with the desire to swear in a most unladylike manner at her male colleague, five miles away, in the small and pretty village of Hampton Poyle, Sir Marcus Deering had stopped work for his elevenses.

Although he was still nominally in charge of the large chain of department stores that had made his fortune, at the age of sixty-three he now worked two days a week from the study in his large country residence in Oxfordshire. He was confident his managing directors, plus a whole board of other executives, could safely be left to do the bulk of the work without any major mishaps, and now rarely travelled to the main offices in Birmingham.

He sighed with pleasure as his secretary came into the book-lined room with a coffee tray laden with fresh-baked biscuits and that morning’s post. A rather portly man, with thinning grey hair, a neatly trimmed moustache and large, hazel-green eyes, Sir Marcus liked to eat.

His appetite, however, instantly fled as he recognised the writing on one large, plain-white envelope. Addressed to him in block capital letters, it had been written in a rather bilious shade of green.

His secretary deposited the tray on his desk and, noticing the way his lips had thinned into a very displeased line, hastily beat a retreat.

Sir Marcus scowled at the pile of correspondence and took a desultory sip of his coffee, telling himself that this latest in a line of recent anonymous letters was nothing more than a nuisance. No doubt written by some crackpot with nothing better to do with his time, it was hardly worth the effort of opening and reading it. He should just consign it straight to the wastepaper basket instead.

But he knew he wouldn’t do that. Human nature wouldn’t let him. The cat wasn’t the only creature curiosity was capable of killing, after all. And so, with a slight sneer of distaste, he snatched the offending envelope from the pile of correspondence, reached for his silver paper knife, and neatly slit it open. He then pulled out the single piece of paper within, knowing what it would say without even having to look at it. For the letters always made the same preposterous, ambiguous, infuriatingly meaningless demand.

He’d received the first one a little under a month ago. Just a few lines, the implication of a veiled threat, and unsigned, of course. Nonsense, through and through, he remembered thinking at the time. It was just one of the many things a man of his standing – a self-made, very wealthy man – had to put up with.

He’d crumpled it up and tossed it away without a second thought.

Then, only a week later, another one had come.

And, oddly enough, it hadn’t been more threatening, or more explicit, or even more crudely written. The message had been exactly the same. Which was unusual in itself. Sir Marcus had always assumed that nasty anonymous letters became more and more vile and explicit as time progressed.

Whether it was this anomaly, or sheer instinct, he couldn’t now say, but something about it had made him pause. And this time, instead of throwing it away, he’d kept it. Not that it really worried him, naturally.

But he’d kept the one that had come last week too, even though it had said exactly the same thing. And he’d probably slip this one, also, into the top drawer of his desk and carefully lock it. After all, he didn’t want his wife finding them. The wretched things would only scare her.

With a sigh, he unfolded the piece of paper and read it.

Yes, as he’d thought – the same wording, almost exactly.

DO THE RIGHT THING. I’M WATCHING YOU. IF YOU DON’T, YOU’LL BE SORRY.

But this letter had one final sentence – something that was new.

YOU HAVE ONE LAST CHANCE.

Sir Marcus Deering felt his heart thump sickeningly in his chest. One last chance? What was that supposed to mean?

With a grunt of annoyance, he threw the paper down onto his desk and stood up, walking over to the set of French windows that gave him a view of a large, well-maintained lawn. A small brook cut across the stretch of grass marking the boundary where the formal flower garden began, and his eyes restlessly followed the skeletal forms of the weeping willows that lined it.

Beyond the house and large gardens, which were so colourful and full of scent in the summer (and the pride and joy of his wife, Martha) came yet more evidence of his wealth and prestige, in the form of the fertile acres being run by his farm manager.

Normally, the experience of looking out over his land soothed Sir Marcus, reassuring him and reminding him of just how far he’d come in life.

It was stupid to feel so bloody… well, not frightened by the letters exactly; Sir Marcus wouldn’t admit to being quite that. But unsettled. Yes, he supposed that was fair. He definitely felt uneasy.

On the face of it, they were nothing. The threat was meaningless and tame. There wasn’t even any foul language involved. As far as nasty anonymous notes went, they were rather pathetic really. And yet there was something about them…

He gave himself a little mental shake and tramped determinedly back to his desk, sitting down heavily in his chair. And with a look of distaste on his face, he swept the letter into a drawer along with all the others, and locked it firmly.

He had better things to do with his time than worry about such stupid nonsense. No doubt the mentally deficient individual who’d written them was sitting somewhere right this moment, chortling away and imagining he’d managed to put the wind up him.

But Sir Marcus Deering was made of sterner stuff than that!

Do the right thing… Surely, it couldn’t be referring to the fire, could it? A spasm of anxiety shot through him. That was all so long ago, and had had nothing to do with him. He’d been young, still working in his first executive position, and had no doubt been wet behind the ears; but the fire hadn’t even occurred on his watch, and certainly hadn’t been his responsibility.

No. It couldn’t be about that.

Defiantly, he reached for a biscuit, bit into it, opened the first of his business letters and pondered whether or not he should introduce a new line in wireless sets into his stores. The manager at the Leamington Spa emporium was all for ordering in a large batch of sets in cream Bakelite.

Sir Marcus snorted. Cream! What was wrong with Bakelite that was made to look like good solid mahogany? And what did it matter if it was 1960 now, and the start of a whole new exciting decade, as the manager’s letter insisted? Would housewives really fork out their husband’s hard-earned money on cream Bakelite?

But at the back of his mind, even as he called in his secretary and began to dictate a reprimand to his forward-thinking executive in the spa town, his mind was furiously churning.

Just what the devil did the letter mean by ‘do the right thing’? What was the right thing? And what would happen if he, Sir Marcus, didn’t do the right thing?

CHAPTER TWO

‘That you, love?’ Barbara Loveday called out as she heard the front door open and shut. ‘I’m in the kitchen!’

And Trudy, who was wearily hanging up her things in the tiny hallway, couldn’t help but smile. Of course her mother was in the kitchen – Barbara Loveday was rarely anywhere else. Throughout their childhood, she and her older brother, Martin, had spent more time in that tiny, comforting space than anywhere else in the small terraced house in the rather rundown area of Botley they called home.

As a suburb of the city, Botley might lack Headington’s lofty hills and smart new housing, or Osney Mead’s more bohemian and colourful canal-side charm, but Trudy couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. And on a cold, disappointing day, with her bones aching and her eye blackening nicely, she was more than happy to traipse through to the kitchen, where she knew the appetising smell of something tasty cooking, and a warm, loving welcome from her mother could be guaranteed to greet her.

‘You’re home earl—oh, Trudy, love!’ Barbara said helplessly, her face creasing in concern as she saw her daughter’s face. ‘What happened? Come here.’

For a moment, as her mother’s ample form enfolded her and pansy-brown eyes – the mirror image of her own – inspected her face carefully, she didn’t mind feeling as if she was about six years old again. It was, after all, very nice to know that someone loved and cared for you, and here, in this little kitchen, with its cracked linoleum floor and cheerful yellow curtains, she felt safe and appreciated once more.

Which was more than could be said of how she’d felt back at the station.

‘Here, love, sit down. Let me make you a nice cuppa. I’ll put something on that eye. I’ve got some cream that’ll do the trick. I only wish we had a nice bit of beefsteak to put on it.’

Trudy couldn’t help but grin – even though it made her face hurt. Because if the Loveday family had been able to afford a nice bit of beefsteak, she knew full well they’d never be foolish enough to waste it on her face. It would be cooked and scoffed in no time at all.

‘Mum, it’s nothing,’ she insisted, sitting down at the tiny kitchen table, shoved up against one wall to preserve space, and then looking down as Maggie the cat rubbed against her ankles. She reached down absently to stroke her black-and-white fur. But the loud purring that resulted, Trudy suspected cynically, was more likely intended as a spur for someone to feed her than as an offer of support or sympathy for her human companion.

Trudy was wise to the ways of feline cunning.

‘So, what happened this time then?’ Barbara demanded, standing by the sink as she watched the kettle start to boil, hands planted firmly on her ample hips.

Trudy sighed. She really didn’t want to get into this fight again. The same old argument about whether or not women belonged in the police force had been running in the family home ever since she’d told her parents what she wanted to do for a living.

‘Like I said, Mum, it’s nothing. I just slipped and fell on the icy pavement, that’s all.’

Well, that wasn’t totally a lie, Trudy mused. The pavement had been icy. And if she hadn’t so much slipped as launched herself into orbit in order to bring down a bag-snatcher…well, her mother certainly didn’t need to know that.

‘Don’t give me that, Gertrude Mary Loveday,’ her mother warned, making Trudy wince. Only her mother ever called her by her detested full first name – and then only when she was in trouble.

Named after one of her dad’s sisters, who had died young in the war, Trudy had always insisted on the diminutive, practically from the time she had first learned to talk. And teasing from her schoolmates when they’d discovered her proper Christian name had only reinforced her determination to remain strictly – and only – Trudy.

Now she shot her mum a sharp glance.

‘And don’t give me that look, neither,’ Barbara Loveday shot back crisply. ‘You were out chasing villains, weren’t you? That’s how you got that shiner, my girl. Do you think I’m stupid?’

Trudy resisted the urge to slump over the table and hold her head in her hands. ‘Mum, that’s my job,’ she wailed helplessly. ‘That’s what the police do.’

Barbara sniffed. ‘I daresay it is,’ she agreed stiffly. ‘But why are you one of the ones that’s doing it, that’s what I can’t understand. Silly, I call it. I thought when you went to college to learn to do typewriting and shorthand, you’d become a secretary.’ Her mother ploughed on, with the now all-too-familiar lament. ‘You’d have been the first in either my family or your dad’s to do that! Us Butlers and Lovedays have always worked in shops or factories, or on the buses, like your dad. You’d have been the first one to work in a nice office. Even our Martin works with his hands.’

‘He’s a carpenter, Mum,’ Trudy said wryly. ‘He’s earning good money and always will. He’s got a trade.’

‘Yes, that’s true enough,’ Barbara said, taking time off from berating her daughter to beam with pride at the contemplation of her firstborn. ‘I wish he was still living at home, though.’

Trudy smiled. Martin had moved out of the family home over a year ago, to lodge with a friend of the family nearer his work up in Cowley. And, like any other young, fit and good-looking man, very glad he’d been to get out from under his parents’ watchful eyes too. Not that Trudy would ever tell them so! While she had a good idea what the rascal got up to of a Saturday night, she rather thought her mum and dad were still in blissful ignorance.

‘And you could have been a secretary.’ Predictably her mum went straight back on the attack as she heaped three spoonfuls of tea leaves into the teapot and poured boiling water over them. ‘Instead of sitting there now, looking like someone who’s been dragged through a hedge backwards.’

Trudy bit back a groan. No matter how many times she’d tried to explain to her mother that working in a boring office, doing boring, meaningless clerical work, wasn’t for her, Barbara Loveday had never accepted it.

Which was rather ironic really, Trudy thought, fighting back the urge to laugh. For once she’d finished her police training at Eynsham Hall, and been stationed at St Aldates, she’d spent more time typing up reports, filing and making cups of tea for her superiors than any secretary.

It had all been so far removed from what she had thought of as proper police work that she’d despaired of ever being given more responsibility.

So now, just when she’d finally made it onto the beat, and had even managed to get one or two nice little arrests to her name (two shoplifters and a case of minor arson), this disaster with the bag-snatcher had to go and happen! It just wasn’t fair!

She could still see the rather guilty look on Sergeant O’Grady’s face when he’d seen her black eye, and the uncomfortable look on DI Jennings’s face when he’d read her report.

As men, they didn’t like to see women get hurt – especially as a result of violence. And while she understood it (and in a way even appreciated the gallantry of it), she also knew, with a growing sense of frustration, that while they maintained that attitude it was going to be almost impossible for her to advance her career.

Because once she’d finished her two-year probationary period in uniform, walking the beat and doing her general duties, the first chance she got she was going to sit her exams and apply to be a TDC – or Temporary Detective Constable.

It wouldn’t happen at once, of course. Nor would it be a case of working just another two years or so. More likely she’d have to get in a good four or five years before that could happen. But she was determined it would. And no man was going to stop her, superior officers or….

‘Trudy!’

Her head shot up as she realised her mother had been giving her the usual lecture, and she’d been caught out, letting her mind wander.

‘Sorry, Mum,’ she muttered.

Barbara sighed wearily. ‘What’s wrong with settling down with a nice young man and having a couple of young ’uns, that’s what I’d like to know?’ she added stubbornly.

Trudy was about to tell her roundly that there would be plenty of time for all that, but then her mother’s face crumpled. ‘Oh, Trudy, love, it just scares me so, you being out there on your own, walking down dark streets and dressed in that uniform. There are plenty of louts out there who don’t care for the police sticking their noses in their business. What if you get really hurt next time?’

Trudy got up and hugged her mother hard. ‘Please, try not to worry, Mum,’ she said uselessly. ‘They train us how to cope with stuff like that. And besides, I’ve got my truncheon.’

But of course her mother worried – how could she not? And her dad did too. Although more easy-going and tolerant than his wife, and less inclined to lecture her, she was well aware he would have preferred her to find another job. Any other job – even if it was only as a clippie on one of his beloved buses.

She could still remember how he’d laughed when, as a little girl listening to his stories of life as a bus driver for the City of Oxford Motor Services, she’d told him she wanted to drive buses too, when she grew up.

Not that that was an option either, Trudy thought with a brief grin. Who’d ever heard of a woman bus driver?

Still, she knew both her parents agreed anything would be better than their ‘little girl’ working as a serving WPC.

And although she sometimes felt conscience-stricken that she was causing them so much worry and grief, she also knew there was little she could realistically do about it. She’d just have to wait for their anxiety and fears to wear off – which they would have to do eventually, right? And who knew – maybe a little further down the line, when she’d got her sergeant’s stripes and they were feeling as proud as punch of her, they’d look back on days like this and laugh.

CHAPTER THREE

Dr Clement Ryder reached for the claret jug and swore loudly as his hand began to twitch.

It was dark outside, it had been a long and tiring day, and after going out for a quick and rather unsatisfying meal of sausages and mash in his local pub, he felt like he deserved a decent nightcap by his own fireside. Having a nightcap at all was a rare occurrence for him, since he seldom drank alone. Now he realised he probably shouldn’t have bothered, since he couldn’t seem to hold the glass straight, damn it.

At least, he thought grimly, the shakes hadn’t started until after he’d left the office. And so far, praise be, he’d never had an attack of them while actually in court. Which meant the humiliating moment when he’d have to come clean about his condition to his staff and superiors could be put off a while longer yet.

Which was just as well. Clement had no intention of telling anyone anything, if he could help it.

At fifty-seven, Clement was beginning to feel the cold more and more, he’d noticed. Luckily, his thick-walled Victorian house overlooking South Parks Road was relatively draught-proof, and as he carefully poured out a small measure of his third-best claret, he was pleased to note that he didn’t spill a drop.

He smiled sourly, but knew he should be grateful for even small victories.

So far, the shaking palsy that had begun to stalk him a little over five years ago hadn’t become a major issue in his new life. Even though it had, obviously, put paid to his old one.

Born to middle-class parents in a suburb of Cheltenham, Clement had earned a scholarship to Oxford, where he’d studied medicine. From there he’d gone on to a residency at a major London hospital, culminating, after years of hard graft and more study, in a surgical position at the same hospital.

He’d then gone on to specialise in heart surgery, and by the age of forty had smugly assumed his life would continue in the same vein.

Of course, it hadn’t. His children had grown rapidly and, with a thirst for independence, had left home at the first opportunity. Which, as it turned out, was just as well since Angela, his wife, had died before she could reach her fiftieth birthday.

And, as if that hadn’t been enough of a blow, two years later, while preparing for surgery, he’d noticed a slight tremble in his left hand when he’d been scrubbing up.

Naturally, he’d dismissed it as probably nothing. The surgery had gone well, but two weeks later, he’d felt a slight weakness in his arm when he’d been lifting a half pint of beer at a retirement party for one of his colleagues.

Again, he’d dismissed it – but perhaps not quite so quickly, and with an added sense of unease and foreboding.

Over the next year, he monitored himself closely, noting down every little incident, every little unexplained tremble or weakness of limb. And, of course, he’d done his research.

He found that, way back in the mists of time, ‘paralysis agitans’ had been known to physicians. But it was only in 1817 that James Parkinson had published ‘An Essay in the Shaking Palsy’, which best described the familiar characteristics of people suffering from this condition, detailing the resting tremor, abnormal posture and gait, paralysis and diminished muscle strength, and the way the disease progressed over time.

At first, Clement had not accepted it. There were other possible causes of his symptoms, after all. But one thing became immediately clear – he could not continue operating on people until he knew for sure.

And so he’d taken a few weeks of leave and, under a false name, booked himself into a little clinic he knew of in the south of France, where he’d ordered and overseen a series of tests he’d had run on himself. And when the results came in, he knew they effectively meant the end of his world.

Clement sighed heavily now as he took a large gulp of the claret. He was vaguely aware that, since he’d ceased operating, he had slowly grown used to becoming a social drinker – in a minor way. Fastidious about not touching alcohol for so many years, it made a nice change to be able to indulge now and then.

But, he thought now, with a snort of amusement, if people did begin to detect the odd whiff of alcohol on his breath, getting a reputation for being a bit of a lush could be a positive bonus. It would help explain the odd stumble or two, or a bout of clumsy shaking.

Now how was that for irony? A man who’d always been careful not to imbibe too much being taken for a lush? Still, it was better than being thrown on the scrap heap.

Outside, the hail passed, but he continued to stare into the fire, his mind drifting back over the years.

The loss of so much in such a short space of time might have broken a lesser man. But Clement Ryder had never been the sort of man to let life kick him when he was down. So, after tendering his immediate resignation, he had looked around for something to fill his time.

He’d returned to Oxford, but had no desire to teach. Instead, he’d simply sat down one day and asked himself what he did – and didn’t – want from life.

He certainly didn’t want to leave the world of medicine altogether, but he was wise enough – and knew himself well enough – to know that becoming a GP or consultant at some hospital would soon drive him insane. Surgeons were lofty individuals with very healthy egos, and heart and brain surgeons, especially, were used, quite literally, to holding the balance of life and death in their hands.

As ugly and appalling as it sounded, he knew he couldn’t bear to become something less than he’d once been. He also felt he needed a complete change of direction – the challenge of something new, something that could grab his interest, and which would prevent him from slipping into self-pity or bitterness. In short, he needed another major and rewarding goal to aim for.

So, after some thought and investigation, he’d studied law, and retrained to become a coroner.

And it was the coroner’s court that had now been his home, and his world, for the last few years. There, his sharp mind, medical knowledge, newly acquired legal training and natural, dogged determination to find out the truth had become vital assets.

He prided himself – with some justification – on just how quickly he’d come to grips with his new role. After barely a year, he was confident he could tell when witnesses were lying or fudging. He had quickly developed a sixth sense for what the police were thinking and wanted from him – and formed his own opinion as to whether or not to give it to them. And while this latter trait might not have endeared him overmuch to the local constabulary, no one had any doubt that, when Dr Clement Ryder was presiding, a case wouldn’t be allowed to get out of hand.

He was both thorough and competent, and didn’t need to be told his name was both feared and respected by those that mattered – he simply took it for granted!

Which was why the thought of their pity, or glee, should his medical condition became known, was anathema to him. And why he was so determined to keep it a secret for as long as humanly possible. Besides, they’d be bound to try and oust him from his office, and he was damned if he was going to restart his life a third time. No, they’d have to drag him from the coroner’s court by the scruff of his neck, kicking and screaming.

And it would take someone with far more guts than any of his clerks, or those namby-pambies at the Town Hall to do that!

With a grunt of amusement, Clement drank the last of his claret. He had court tomorrow and would be glad of a good night’s sleep. He’d be damned if he’d let his illness affect his professionalism.

He got slowly to his feet – and at six-feet-one he had some way to rise from the chair. In the window he caught a glimpse of his reflection as he passed – his hair now fully silver/white, without even a hint of the dark brown it had once been. Rather watery grey eyes matched the rainwater running down the glass.

With some satisfaction, he noticed that his hand had stopped trembling. For now, anyway. With a sense of relief, he gave a mild, self-satisfied grunt.

Just as he suspected, there were still many good years left in him yet. Which was just as well. Only last year he’d had to steer a jury which had obviously been intent on bringing in an accidental verdict towards an open verdict instead, leaving the way clear for the police to pursue the case further and eventually arrest the guilty party for negligent manslaughter.

As a surgeon who had once had the power of life and death over people, Clement Ryder had no qualms about sitting in judgement over witnesses he knew to be guilty. And making sure they got their just desserts. On his watch, nobody got away with anything!

Naturally, such an attitude hadn’t earned him many friends, but then Clement had never been a man who’d needed the approbation of others. Which was probably just as well, since his friends – real, true friends – were few.

The grandfather clock in the small hallway struck eleven as he tramped past it on his way to the stairs. Tomorrow the inquest on a schoolgirl who’d died after being struck by a car in St Giles would open.

Her grieving family would all be in attendance. It was going to be grim.

CHAPTER FOUR

Trudy’s black eye had paled into a mere smudge of yellow when, five days after catching the bag-snatcher (and losing the collar to the golden-haired, blue-eyed boy, Rodney Broadstairs), she returned from the Records Office and saw that something had caused a stir in the main office.

Sidling over to Rodney, who was sitting at a desk, painstakingly typing out a report with his two forefingers, she whispered, ‘What’s up?’

She nodded at the portly, prosperous-looking man with a neat moustache who was being ushered very civilly into Jennings’s private office by Sergeant O’Grady.

‘Dunno,’ Rodney said vaguely. ‘Some bigwig not happy about some poison-pen letters or something.’

Trudy sighed.

Knowing that pumping him for further information would be useless, since Rodney tended to be able to deal with only one thing at a time, Trudy sauntered casually towards the DI’s slightly open door, a file in hand for camouflage.

Much to her chagrin, after her recent stint of roughhousing with the purse-snatcher, DI Jennings had promptly assigned her to Records and filing work. Now, opening the filing-cabinet drawer nearest to Jennings’s office (and pretending to search diligently for the right spot to deposit the file), she let her ears flap unashamedly.

Inside the office, Sir Marcus Deering, slightly red-faced and breathing a touch heavily, slapped a piece of paper down onto the desk and snapped, ‘There!’ He took a long, shaky breath. ‘Just you read that and then tell me I’m overreacting,’ he challenged.

Jennings, at not quite forty years of age, made vaguely appeasing sounds. A slender man with thinning fair hair and a nose just big enough to make him feel self-conscious about it, he shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

When Sir Marcus Deering had first telephoned to say he would be calling in and expected to see someone senior, he’d known he’d have to be careful. Naturally, his superiors would expect him to treat the man with kid gloves. The businessman’s charitable donations to many local good causes (including the police widows and orphans fund) were very well known. As was the fact that he sat on several boards where his influence spread further than just the Town Hall.

Also, Jennings had no doubt at all that he was a fellow Mason.

Mindful of all this, he cleared his throat carefully and read the green-inked missive in front of him.

YOU HAVE FAILED TO DO THE RIGHT THING. YOU WERE WARNED THAT YOU ONLY HAD ONE MORE CHANCE. NOW YOUR SON WILL DIE. HE WILL DIE AT EXACTLY TWELVE NOON TOMORROW. PERHAPS THEN YOU WILL DO THE RIGHT THING.

Over his right shoulder, Sergeant O’Grady gave a slight sigh. A slightly chubby man with a sandy quiff that tended to flop over his forehead, the Sergeant, at forty-one, had long since given up on any hopes of gaining further promotion. Not that it worried him much. He’d been at the station for years and had it running just as he liked it.

Now he pursed his lips. When the Inspector had told him a local dignitary had been receiving poison-pen letters he hadn’t been expecting this. The usual run-of-the-mill stuff tended to accuse the recipients of sexual misbehaviour. More rarely, they included death threats – but nothing this precise. In fact, to Mike O’Grady’s mind, there was something uncannily odd about the specific threat. What kind of madman actually told you when he intended to strike?

‘I can see that you would find this very distressing, sir,’ DI Jennings began diplomatically. ‘But first, let me assure you that nearly all anonymous letters are the work of cranks, and any threats made in them are very seldom carried out. What’s more, they’re usually written by women (rather than men) who either have delusions of grandeur or whopping great inferiority complexes. On the whole, they tend to be a rather sorry, pathetic bunch.’

Sir Marcus, who was nervously fiddling with his hat – a nice homburg in dark grey – snorted impatiently. ‘Do you think I’m not aware of all that, man? That’s why, when I first started getting these blasted things, I just ignored them. Threw the first one in the bin, where it belonged. But when they kept on coming, all saying the same blessed thing, I started saving them – just in case. But this is the first one that’s threatened my son, damn it! That’s going too far.’

Jennings slowly sat up a little straighter in his chair. ‘You’ve had others, you say, sir? I don’t suppose you brought…’ He broke off as Sir Marcus grunted and pulled a few sheets of paper from his pocket.

‘Yes. Here, read them. All identical, as you can see, except for these last two.’

‘Hmmm… yes. I can see why they’d make you feel uneasy, Sir Marcus,’ the DI conceded. ‘Do you have any idea who might have sent them?’

‘Not a clue,’ Sir Marcus shot back shortly. ‘And don’t think I haven’t wondered. This last month or so, I’ve done little else.’

‘Anybody you had cause to sack recently?’ Jennings persisted. ‘You’re bound to have a disgruntled employee or two in the offing, so to speak?’

‘Bound to,’ Sir Marcus said offhandedly. ‘But I doubt it would run to this, do you?’

Jennings sighed. ‘Perhaps not, sir,’ he agreed, although secretly he wasn’t so sure. Folk did odd things when they got their dander up. ‘What about your domestic staff, sir?’

‘No, no. Been with me years, all of them,’ the millionaire said dismissively. ‘Well, the cook and my butler, certainly. The housemaids seem to come and go… leave all that sort of thing to my wife.’

‘Hmmm. And do you, er…’ Jennings paused, trying to find a tactful way to put the next question. ‘Do you have any idea what our anonymous letter writer means when they urge you to do the right thing?’

Sir Marcus wavered. Again, he thought about the fire. And again he dismissed it. It was so long ago now, and it definitely hadn’t been his fault. ‘Er, no. That’s what’s so frustrating. Why can’t this bloody person just say what they mean in straightforward language? Usually these anonymous letters have no trouble doing that, do they?’

And Jennings was forced to agree that Sir Marcus had a point. Your run-of-the-mill nasty letter usually spelt out, in very colourful language indeed sometimes, exactly what was on the writer’s mind.

‘It’s this blasted threat to Anthony that’s really thrown me,’ Sir Marcus admitted with a heavy sigh. ‘The boy just laughs it off, of course, but I’m not so sure.’ He leaned forward slightly in his chair and fixed the Inspector with a fierce eye. ‘Isn’t it the job of the police to protect citizens when their lives are being threatened?’

And there it was, Jennings thought, biting back a groan. Ever since he’d read the letter, he’d just known this would be coming. And of course there was no getting around it. He’d have to waste a certain number of man hours on it.

‘Yes, sir, of course it is,’ he said soothingly. ‘And you can be assured that, come noon tomorrow, Sergeant O’Grady here will be at your house, and will have your son under observation at all times.’

‘Yes, well… so I should jolly well hope,’ Sir Marcus said, a little more mollified now as he leant back in his chair. ‘I’ve told Anthony I want him in the house, and although he kicked up a bit of a fuss about it, he’s agreed. Mind you, he says he can take care of himself, and I dare say he can, but, well, when you’re dealing with someone a bit cracked, as this blasted idiot obviously is, you never can tell, can you? I dare say Anthony could acquit himself well if it came to a brawl or a bout of fisticuffs,’ his father boasted proudly, ‘but what if the maniac has a knife? Or worse, a gun?’

‘I think that’s highly unlikely, Sir Marcus,’ Jennings reassured him promptly. But secretly, he had to wonder. A lot of men had brought their service revolvers back with them from the war. They weren’t supposed to, of course, but they did. So it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that the letter writer had the wherewithal to follow up on his threat to kill Sir Marcus’s son.

‘That’s as may be. But until we find out who’s been writing these damn letters, how can we be sure?’ Sir Marcus demanded fretfully. ‘It may well turn out to be some demented old woman who gets a kick out of scaring people, or some weedy little clerk in one of my back offices with a Napoleon complex or bearing a grudge of some kind. But then again it might not! Damn it, man, I can’t go around the rest of my life looking over my shoulder!’

‘No, sir, of course you can’t,’ Jennings said, and not without genuine sympathy for his point of view. ‘And we’ll definitely look into it for you. If you could just provide us with a list of anybody you think might, even by the remotest chance, have some sort of grudge against you or your family, sir?’

The businessman nodded glumly and rose ponderously to his feet. ‘Very well, I’ll do that. And you’ll be at the house tomorrow?’ he demanded, drawing out one of his personal visiting cards and placing it on the desk. ‘This is the address.’

‘Yes, sir, my Sergeant and another constable will be there bright and early,’ Jennings promised. ‘I take it your son lives with you?’

‘At the moment. He has a flat in London, of course, but he’s still up with us for Christmas. He likes to attend the Boxing Day hunt,’ the older man said, a fond glint coming to his eye as he talked about his son and heir. ‘So he always stays on for another couple of weeks to enjoy the gallops. Boy always was horse-mad, and rides every day he’s with us.’

Jennings, not one whit interested, nodded vaguely. ‘I see, sir. Well, leave it with us. Sergeant, show Sir Marcus out.’

Outside, Trudy stepped smartly away from the filing cabinet and nonchalantly moved back towards a free desk.

Sergeant O’Grady shot her a quick look, lips twitching, as he ushered their visitor out.

Once back in with the DI, he sighed in sympathy. ‘It’s a bit of a pig, sir, and no mistake,’ he said flatly. ‘But there’s nothing much we can do for him, of course. Sooner or later our letter-writing friend will just get bored and move on to some other target. And as for the chances of anything funny happening tomorrow bang on noon…’ O’Grady snorted. ‘Well, that’s about on a par with pigs being seen flying over Brize Norton airbase.’

‘No good telling Sir Marcus that, though,’ Jennings said with a brief smile. ‘And I don’t mind telling you, that threat to his son was a bit odd. Naming a specific date and time like that.’

‘Yes,’ O’Grady agreed uncertainly. ‘It’s not the usual run-of-the-mill thing, I’ll grant you.’ And he wondered if his superior had picked up on the slight hesitation when he’d asked Sir Marcus if he had any idea what the letter writer meant by ‘doing the right thing’. Because the Sergeant was sure Sir Marcus had definitely looked a bit shifty-eyed then. And if the millionaire didn’t have a skeleton or two in his cupboard, he’d eat his hat. The rich, in his experience, always had something they’d prefer to keep quiet about.

‘Well, go and hold their hands tomorrow anyway,’ Jennings ordered briskly. ‘And although I agree that the chances of anything coming of it are virtually nil, take a strapping lad with you just in case. Broadstairs, perhaps. He’s handy to have in a scrap.’

‘Sir.’

‘Oh, and Sergeant…’

‘Sir?’

‘When you go tomorrow, take WPC Loveday with you, will you? All week long she’s been giving me long-suffering looks. It’s beginning to get on my nerves. She can help question the housemaids or something. They won’t know anything, naturally, so it won’t matter if she cocks it up.’

O’Grady grinned. ‘Good idea, sir. It’ll be good practice for her too – honing her questioning skills.’

Jennings shrugged indifferently.

But as he closed the door behind him, Mike O’Grady didn’t think it was at all likely that WPC Trudy Loveday would cock anything up. She was a bright enough girl and, being pretty and personable as well, would probably have Sir Marcus’s domestic staff quickly eating out of her hand.

CHAPTER FIVE

The next morning, Mavis McGillicuddy dunked a soldier into her boiled egg and glanced at the kitchen clock. She had an hour yet before she had to get her granddaughter up for school, which was just as well, since, at ten years old, Marie was fast getting to the stage where her endearingly childish eagerness to please was beginning to transform into something more mutinous.

Not that Mavis minded all the ups and downs that came with child rearing, even at her age. Most women in their early sixties might have thought all that was behind them now, but Mavis was very much aware that without her son and his daughter living with her, she’d be just one more lonely widow.

And she’d much rather be rushed off her feet or dealing with a childish tantrum than sitting twiddling her thumbs.

On the wireless the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, was saying something dreary, as he always seemed to be doing, and she was half-tempted to get up and fiddle with the dial to see if she could find something more cheerful to listen to. But nowadays the radio stations seemed to play nothing but all this modern music the youngsters were going for. It was all Be-bop-a-lula this, or Poison Ivy that. And it was getting harder and harder for her to find the music she liked – recordings of the Glenn Miller Band, say, or a nice bit of Vera Lynn.

She looked up as the kitchen door opened and her only child swept in. ‘Morning, Mum. Seen my boots anywhere – the ones with the toe-caps? I’m uprooting some old apple trees today, and I don’t want… oh, I see them.’

The sight of her son, Jonathan, always brought a smile to Mavis’s face. At just turned thirty, he was still a handsome lad and looked far younger than his years. He’d inherited his thick, wavy blond hair from her and striking hazel-green eyes from his father. At nearly six feet tall, his work as a landscape gardener kept him fit and lean.

As she fondly watched him pulling on his work boots, she sipped her tea in contentment. Although life had been hard for Mavis in her early years (and during the war, naturally), she had to admit she’d had some luck in her life, and never ceased to be thankful for it. Outside the window of their modest, tiny, terraced house, the suburb of Cowley was going about its busy business, with the majority of the men in the neighbourhood flocking into the car works. But, thanks to help from Jonathan’s father, Mavis actually owned the little house they lived in, and was the only one in their street not to be renting. She had been able to afford to send Jonathan to the local grammar school, which in turn had led to his being able to do a bit better for himself than his peers, first becoming apprentice to the head gardener at St Edmund Hall, before striking out on his own and setting up his own little business.

Yes, in many ways, Mavis knew, she had been lucky.

‘Marie still in bed?’ her son asked now, pouring out a mug of tea for himself and peering through the window. The last few days had been wet and relatively mild – perfect for grubbing up stubborn tree roots.

‘Yes. She’s not happy to be going back to school after the Christmas holidays, though,’ Mavis said with a smile. ‘So I suspect I’ll have a bit of a job getting her up in time. But don’t you worry about it, son – I’ll not be having any of her tantrums. She’ll soon settle down again.’

Absently, Jonathan walked behind her chair and kissed the top of her head. ‘Thanks for looking after her, Mum. Don’t know what we’d have done without you.’

Jonathan said this often, more out of habit than anything, although he was vaguely aware that what he said was perfectly true.

He’d had to marry young, at just twenty, when the girl he’d been going steady with had fallen pregnant, and in truth, he’d never felt really happy about it – something that had always made him feel guilty. But there was no point in denying he’d felt trapped and a little resentful, and when his daughter had been born seven months later, he’d felt vaguely cheated. He’d expected – and wanted – a boy. Which had only increased his sense of guilt further.

But then, just three years after Marie was born, Jenny had been killed in a train crash, along with four others. She’d been on her way to Banbury to see about a part-time job, in the hopes they’d be able to afford to move out of his mother’s house and find a place of their own.

Obviously, that had never happened. So, at the age of just twenty-four, Jonathan McGillicuddy had become a very eligible young widower with a little girl to look after, and had quickly found that his unexpected freedom wasn’t as wonderful as he might have imagined. He’d missed Jenny terribly. And far from being an unwanted child, his daughter had come to mean the world to him. Luckily, his mum, long since widowed herself, had been more than happy to step into the breach.

Now Marie called her ‘mum’ and seemed to have no memories of Jenny at all.

His mother set about buttering some toast for him and then made sandwiches for his packed lunch. Slightly plump, she still bustled about with energy, but she must, Jonathan mused, be beginning to feel her age a little bit. And once more, he felt a vague sense of guilt wash over him. Was it fair to keep on expecting her to look after his daughter and effectively ‘keep house’ for him? Perhaps it was time he thought about marrying again? But even as he thought it, he shied violently away from the idea.

He’d only had two serious relationships with women in his life, and both had ended in utter disaster. First Jenny and then… But no, he wouldn’t think of her. He couldn’t. It had taken years for the nightmares to stop, and sometimes they plagued him still, wrenching him out of sleep, sweating and shaking, with his heart pounding.

Sometimes, he wondered if he was actually cursed.

His own ‘natural’ father had died before he’d even got the chance to know him. Everyone, it seemed, left him. And what if something happened to his mum? Or to Marie?

He shuddered and, telling himself not to be so maudlin – or stupid – quickly ate his toast and threw on his mackintosh. Everything would be fine. It had been for some time now. He mustn’t think about that other time in his life, when it had seemed he must be going crazy. When the danger had been so sharp and acrid he could almost taste it. No, that part of his life was over, and it was never coming back. It couldn’t. It was all dead and done and finished with.

Once again he absently kissed his mother on top of her head as she sat sipping her tea. ‘Bye, Mum. See you about four,’ he added cheerfully. ‘It’s no use trying to work in a garden after dark.’ That was one of the few advantages of winter for a gardener – a shorter working day.

He was whistling slightly as he stepped out onto the wet path and closed the door behind him. And as he walked to the end of the street and the group of lock-up garages where he kept his old van, full of his gardening tools, he didn’t notice the silent, watchful figure making careful note of his movements.

And it probably wouldn’t have made much difference if he had.

CHAPTER SIX

Trudy felt her jaw fall open as she looked at the house on the outskirts of Hampton Poyle, a pretty little village set deep in farming country. Large, built of Cotswold stone and uncompromisingly square in the Georgian manner, it stood in manicured grounds, looking effortlessly elegant and substantial.

‘How the other half lives, eh?’ Rodney Broadstairs said from the front passenger seat of the Panda car. Behind the wheel, Sergeant O’Grady smiled grimly.

‘Better watch your Ps and Qs here, sonny,’ he advised him flatly. ‘Right, I dare say the son of the house is out on his bleeding horse, but he’s promised his father he’ll be back by ten. Rod, you stick with him like glue – especially come twelve o’clock. Trudy, I want you to make your way to the kitchen and talk to the staff. Pick up on any gossip you can about the family. We’re not just interested in who wrote the letters – there has to be a reason Sir Marcus and this family were targeted, and we need to find out what that is. Got it?’

‘Yes, Sarge,’ Trudy said happily.

Finally, she was being allowed to get hands-on in a real case!

Jonathan McGillicuddy drove through the large village of Kidlington and parked his van under the bare branches of a large beech tree. The grounds he was currently working in belonged to a Victorian pile overlooking the Oxford canal, but the new owners were currently in Barbados, wintering in their villa there. Having only recently purchased the house, they had left him detailed plans for the changes they wanted made in the large garden, which included grubbing up the old orchard and creating a large pond there instead.

He began unloading the van, carrying a large pickaxe and several different types of saws through an overgrown herb garden towards the rear of the property and then into the orchard at the far perimeter. As he walked, he hummed the latest Ricky Valance song softly under his breath.

Having nobody living up at the house was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, he didn’t have his clients looking over his shoulder every moment of the day to make sure he wasn’t slacking, or to keep changing their minds about what they wanted done. But it also meant he couldn’t just pop in to use their downstairs loo, or scrounge in the kitchen on a cold day for a warming cup of tea or bowl of soup.

He glanced at his watch as he unloaded the last of his gear by the first of several gnarled and mostly disease-ridden apple trees, so old even their topmost branches bent down far enough to almost touch the ground.

It was just gone nine.

The young lad he sometimes hired as casual labour to help him out with the heavy work, Robby Dix, had another job on today, but Jonathan didn’t really mind. He quite liked working alone.

As Jonathan set to work sawing off a tree limb, the figure that had noted his movements back in Cowley moved stealthily around the outskirts of the walled kitchen garden. And from the dark depths of the arched opening in one side of it, carefully peered out into the old orchard.

It was a damp day, the grass was long and wet, and the beginnings of a vague fog were forming. Although the house had neighbours on either side, the gardens were large and empty, and even the street outside was silent. No one was out and about on such a damp and dreary day – not even a dog walker.

Which was a definite bonus.

The figure withdrew and retreated to the even darker shadow cast by an old yew tree, which had been planted in one particularly obscure corner of the grounds. The patient voyeur now had less than three hours to wait. Not that he needed to actually wait until noon. It hardly mattered, after all, did it? He smiled grimly. But if a thing was worth doing, it was worth doing well.

Trudy ate her final morsel of Dundee cake and smiled at the cook. ‘Lovely, Mrs Rogers, but I couldn’t eat another bite.’ She smiled, patting her flat stomach. She’d spent the last two hours, as Sergeant O’Grady had wanted, chatting to the staff and making friends with the housemaids, Milly and Phyllis (‘call me Phil’). Both girls were only a year or so older than her, and far more interested in grilling her about what it was like to be a police officer than in gossiping about the family. Nevertheless, Trudy had persisted, and now thought she probably knew as much about Sir Marcus Deering and how his household was run as the man himself.

She knew, for instance, that Lady Deering had a bit of a gambling habit she was very careful to keep from her husband. She knew that the son, Anthony, was the apple of both his parents’ eyes, and could do no wrong in their opinion; but both Milly and Phil said they had to keep an eye on him, otherwise he’d take advantage, if they let him. A good-looking man, apparently, but he tended to think his wealth and charm entitled him to take liberties.

Trudy had smiled and said she’d found most men to be the same.

This had led on to talk about Sir Marcus himself, who tended to be more pompous than promiscuous. ‘He’s so full of himself sometimes,’ Milly had complained. ‘I reckon it’s because he’s not a proper “Sir” at all. He only got his title for being one of them industrial barons, or whatever. He feels it, see. Not being a proper toff, I mean. It makes him on edge whenever they entertain. Always thinking the proper gentry are looking down on him, when half of them couldn’t care tuppence.’

‘But if they are miffed or like to look down on him, it’s only because they’re jealous he’s got pots more money than they have,’ Phil had agreed, displaying surprising insight into how the minds of the upper classes truly worked.

All of which had proved very interesting, of course, Trudy acknowledged as she checked through her notes, but she couldn’t imagine what use all of this would be to the Sergeant.

Still, that wasn’t for a humble WPC to say.

‘That’s the precious son and heir coming now,’ Phyllis said, turning to crane her neck to peer out of the kitchen window, and earning a dark look from the much more circumspect Mrs Rogers. ‘Well, I can hear his horse,’ Phyllis insisted with a giggle.

Trudy, not wanting to miss the chance of being allowed to assess Sir Marcus’s son with her own eyes, got quickly to her feet. ‘Well, I think that’ll be all for now,’ she added politely. ‘Thank you for your time.’

‘I do hope you find that nasty poison pen soon,’ the cook said anxiously.

Although the servants had already suspected that something was upsetting their employer – they’d all noticed he’d been particularly edgy of late – all of them had seemed genuinely shocked by the news that he’d been receiving death threats, directed at his son. Unfortunately, none of them had any idea of who could be behind it all. Likewise, they’d all professed ignorance about any possible dark misdeeds in Sir Marcus’s past that might account for someone wanting revenge now.

It had all been rather discouraging, but Trudy’s pace quickened with excitement as she stepped out of the kitchen and made her way outside.

It was half past eleven and, in the stable block situated at the back of the house, she watched as Rodney Broadstairs approached the young man dismounting from a lovely black hunter.

Trudy, a city girl through and through, knew nothing about horseflesh, but she instinctively recognised quality when she saw it. And it occurred to her, as Anthony Deering swept off his riding helmet and handed the reins to the stable girl who had stepped up to take them, that it wasn’t only the horseflesh on display that was worth looking at.

As she got nearer, she saw that the son of the house was about the same height as she was, with thick brown hair and large, hazel-green eyes. Dressed in jodhpurs and a dark-green hacking jacket, he looked the epitome of an upper-class gent at play.

His eyes swept over her warmly, reminding her of Phyllis’s warning. ‘Let him near your bottom, and he’d as likely as not try to pinch it.’

Trudy smiled now as she contemplated how nice it would be to arrest this handsome young toff for assaulting a police officer if he was ever rash enough to try and pinch her derrière!

‘Well, things are looking up, I must say,’ Anthony Deering said, smiling into her eyes. ‘And are you going to protect me from Dad’s nasty letter writer too?’

‘No, sir.’ It was Rodney who spoke up first, his eyes shooting daggers at Trudy. ‘WPC Loveday is just about to go inside and talk to your mother, sir.’

Trudy, taking the hint, nodded briskly and continued round to the back of the house, where she knew Sergeant O’Grady was with the Deerings in the large sunroom.

It was ten minutes before noon.

The sunroom was accessed by a pair of French doors with an aspect on the south-facing side of the house, and as she tapped on a glass pane and was bid to enter, she couldn’t help but wonder what Anthony Deering must be thinking now.

And again, she glanced at her watch.

Just eight minutes to go.

Even though the young man’s swagger and joking manner had suggested he really didn’t take the threat seriously – as, indeed, most of them didn’t – he must still, nevertheless, feel just a little trepidation, surely? Knowing that someone, somewhere, had vowed to kill you when the hands of the clock both stood straight up would be enough to make anyone feel a cold chill up their spine.

In some respects, the situation reminded her a little bit of the film High Noon. With herself, the Sergeant and Rodney keeping an anxious eye on the clock while waiting for something explosive to happen. Except that Anthony Deering was no Gary Cooper! And he certainly wasn’t expected to face any gunmen alone.

Even so, she still maintained he wouldn’t have been human if he didn’t feel a little bit scared. And she knew for a fact that his parents definitely had the wind up for, inside the sunroom, Lady Deering, a tall, sparse woman with a rather long face, paced restlessly up and down, while her husband pretended to read the newspaper. Sergeant O’Grady glanced at her as she came in, smiled briefly, and continued to survey the expanse of fields outside the house.

Trudy glanced at her watch once again – she couldn’t help it. Barely five minutes to go now.

Was it really possible that someone was outside, watching them, waiting to make their move? That, despite the police presence, they had figured out some fantastic way to end Anthony Deering’s life right under their noses? Perhaps by setting up a booby trap of some kind? Or might they have simply decided that brute force was by far the easiest way, and would simply come in, guns blazing?

The thought of the possible carnage that would result if such an unlikely scenario came to pass made her feel sick, and she only hoped the women in the kitchen would have the good sense to stay hidden if anything bad did happen.

But, of course, nobody really believed it would. DI Jennings, the Sarge and even that plank, PC Broadstairs, were all sure it was nothing but a mare’s nest. Which was reassuring, Trudy supposed. Even so, she knew her nerves weren’t the only ones being stretched.

Outside the door, she heard Rodney Broadstairs’ voice, and that of Anthony Deering answering him. In the next moment, both men stepped into the room.

Sir Marcus looked up from his paper and nodded. ‘Sit next to me, Anthony, will you? I’ve saved you the crossword puzzle.’ And he pulled out a section of the paper and handed it, along with a pen, to his son, who accepted both offerings, indulging him.

‘Fine,’ he said briskly, casting his father a wide smile. ‘But at five past twelve I’m off to the kitchen for lunch, and then I’m going to Oxford, to catch a matinee at the cinema.’

Sir Marcus frowned. ‘I wish you wouldn’t, son.’

‘Yes, why can’t you stay here? At least for the rest of the day,’ his mother insisted nervously.

Anthony sighed theatrically. He’d changed out of his riding clothes and now wore a tweed jacket with dark-grey flannel trousers. ‘Oh, come on! This lunatic threatened to bump me off at twelve noon. Once we’ve got past that, I’ll be fine. After all, why go to the trouble of specifying a time so precisely and then not stick to it? It doesn’t make sense. Either something will happen at twelve o’clock, or it never will.’

‘That’s hardly guaranteed,’ Sir Marcus muttered, unconvinced by such spurious logic.

‘Nothing in life’s guaranteed, as you well know,’ his son shot back pithily. ‘Come on, old fella, you can’t expect me to hang around the old homestead forever,’ he joshed his father. ‘Buck up – we all know this is just some sad, silly person giving us the runaround. Nothing’s going to happen!’

Sir Marcus sighed and glanced at the clock on the wall. Four minutes to noon.

Jonathan McGillicuddy paused, stretched, and put his palms in the middle of his aching back. Another hour and he’d take a break and go back to the van for his sandwiches and flask of tea.

He picked up a handsaw and bent down to tackle a particularly knotty and thick branch close to the ground. Despite the damp chill of the day, he’d managed to work up quite a sweat.

He didn’t hear footsteps approaching him from behind, as the harsh scraping noise of the saw, and the soft, damp grass smothering the sound of booted feet, served to keep him in ignorance of the figure creeping up on him.

Away to his left, Jonathan McGillicuddy heard the mellow tones of the bell of the village church begin to strike twelve.

It was the last thing he ever heard.

Lady Deering began to laugh. Out in the hall, the grandfather clock chimed the last of the twelve strikes. The silence after the last one seemed profound.

Trudy felt like laughing too. Had she ever seriously imagined that some madman would burst in, spraying gunfire? Now she felt vaguely ashamed of her fears.

Anthony Deering looked up from his nearly completed crossword puzzle and grinned at his mother. ‘Feeling better now?’ he asked.

‘Much, darling,’ Martha agreed.

‘See, Dad…’ The young man turned to his father. ‘I told you nothing would happen!’

It was six o’clock and fully dark before Mavis McGillicuddy began to really worry. It wasn’t like Jonathan to work this late. It had been fully dark for nearly two hours. Where on earth could he be?

At nine o’clock she nipped next door and asked her neighbour if she wouldn’t mind sitting with Marie for a while. The little girl had gone reluctantly to bed, but Mavis feared she might be naughty enough to get up, claiming she wanted a drink of water, and she didn’t want her to find the house empty.

Marie, too, had expected her father to be home in time to read her their usual bedtime story, and Mavis wasn’t sure her granddaughter had believed her lies about his arranging to meet with some friends and have a drink with them at the local pub.

The desk sergeant at the police station listened patiently to Mavis’s report, then told her that her son, in all likelihood, probably really was currently drinking in some pub somewhere, just as she’d told his daughter, and that it was far too early to panic just yet. Only after Mavis had vehemently insisted it was something he’d never done before did he promise to check there had been no road-traffic accidents reported, involving Jonathan’s van.

And more to get rid of her than anything else, he then rang around the local hospitals to see if anyone of Jonathan’s description had been brought in.

No such reports had been made.

Eventually, knowing she had to get back home, since she couldn’t expect her neighbour to sit in her house all night, Mavis forced the sergeant to promise that, first thing in the morning, he’d send a constable round to the garden where her son was currently working. Just to check all was well there.

On nearing her house, her footsteps quickened with hope. Surely she’d find that Jonathan had come home while she’d been out? He’d be full of sheepish apologies on finding their neighbour in residence in the sitting room, and she would tell him off roundly.

But when she got there, there was still no sign of him.

Not surprisingly, Mavis didn’t sleep a wink that night.

Mavis McGillicuddy was up with the dawn, and was sitting dry-eyed and hopeless in the kitchen, her hands feeling as cold as ice even though they were wrapped around a hot cup of tea, when she heard the knocking on her door.

She dragged herself to her feet and out into the hall. Through the frosted glass in the front door she could make out a large, ominous shape. When she opened it, it was to find a policeman looking back at her solemnly.

It was only then that she began to cry.

Sir Marcus Deering rose that morning with a cheerful whistle on his lips and ate a hearty breakfast. The whole mood in the house was jubilant now, and faintly shamefaced, as if acknowledging they had been silly ever to have worried.

Anthony was once more out on his beloved horse, since he was due back in London soon and was determined to make the most of a dry, if cold, day.

By nine-thirty Sir Marcus was seated behind the desk in his study, reading the morning post. There had been no green-inked missive to worry him, and if any more came, he would simply toss them, unread, into the bin. The poison pen had shot his arrow and missed by a mile. And never again would Sir Marcus be foolish enough to be conned into worrying about ‘doing the right thing’.

When the telephone on his desk rang he reached for it absently. He heard his secretary telling him there was a woman on the line who insisted on speaking to him but wouldn’t give her name.

‘Oh?’ Marcus frowned. ‘That’s odd.’ His daytime calls were invariably with other businessmen or their secretaries – none of whom was unwilling to identify themselves. ‘Well, put her through.’

‘Yes, sir,’ his secretary said. There was a short delay, a beep, and then he heard a tentative, tearful voice.

It took a moment for him to realise who it was on the other end of the line, and when he did so, his first instinct was to look furtively at the closed door of his study. ‘I told you never to call me here,’ he hissed angrily into the receiver, getting automatically to his feet. ‘If my wife were to…’

But the voice frantically overrode him – something that had never happened before. And as he finally took in what was being said, all the anger washed out of him, along with the colour in his face, leaving him sitting white and shaken in his chair and fighting the urge to be sick.

CHAPTER SEVEN

At St Aldates police station, DI Jennings looked gravely at the faces turned towards him.

‘Let me repeat, this is a murder investigation. Sometime yesterday, somebody brutally killed Jonathan McGillicuddy by bashing him over the head with his own spade.’

He went on to give details of the deceased, his work as a gardener in a house where the owners were absent, his failure to return home and the missing person’s report filed on him by his mother as a result. He then went on to relate the discovery of his body in the morning by the PC sent from Kidlington, in response to the request from the desk sergeant on duty at Cowley police station.

‘He subsequently found the victim dead in the orchard,’ DI Jennings concluded heavily. ‘He’d clearly been working clearing out the old trees, and our police surgeon reckons he’d been dead at least twelve hours – possibly fifteen. Probably longer, but he can’t be sure. He’s also given a preliminary cause of death as blunt-force trauma to the head – but again he won’t sign off on it until after the autopsy.’

Trudy Loveday, along with the others, listened to all this dry-mouthed. It wasn’t often that they had a murder case to deal with, and such a cold-blooded, savage attack was very unusual. Around her, everyone else was also tense and alert, and listening intently.

That poor man’s mother, she thought, swallowing hard.

‘The lad who sometimes worked with him as casual labour has been traced, but he confirmed he wasn’t working that day with Mr McGillicuddy, but at a warehouse in Bicester instead. His alibi has since been confirmed. According to Mrs McGillicuddy, her son had no enemies, wasn’t a drinker or troublemaker, and had always been a responsible, respectable lad. Widowed young, with a little girl to take care of, he’d lived with his mother all his life. And he’s certainly not known to us,’ the DI confirmed heavily. ‘But it’s early days yet. Somebody had a reason to kill this man. And that’s where we need to start. Since the killer used the victim’s own spade, one theory is that the murder was unpremeditated. Our MO confirms the initial and primary wound was to the back of the head, with several more blows as he lay prone on the ground. Now I want you to sort yourselves into teams and find out all you can about our victim. His mother says she knows of no female friends.’ The DI paused and smiled at this. ‘But that doesn’t mean they didn’t exist – only that her son played his romantic cards close to his chest.’

The DI shrugged. ‘Then we need to find out all about his finances. He was basically a gardener for hire, so his overheads should have been low and his income easily traceable. Is it? Does he have debts? Maybe he’s a bit of a gambler? Find out.

‘Then there’s the mother. Yes, I know, on the face of it she’s an unlikely suspect. But families can be tricky things. We need to a do a house-to-house around the area where he was killed. Unfortunately, according to the PC who found the body, the house and grounds are large and relatively private. Plus, yesterday was a damp and cold day, and it’s doubtful many people would have been out and about, but we need to find any that were. Did they notice the victim’s van and, more importantly, were any other vehicles seen in the lane that day. If so, we need to trace the owners of those cars and speak to them. Did anyone hear loud or raised voices, or notice any strangers lurking about? We need to interview those who were in the vicinity – the postman, any tradesmen or callers. Was it rent week, or the day the man came around collecting the pools? We need to know anything and everything about that lane and what went on in it yesterday.’

‘Sir…’ A young PC shuffled up and handed him a message from the desk sergeant. He read it briefly, lips thinning slightly in irritation, then nodded at the Sergeant. ‘O’Grady, carry on. I’ll be back shortly.’

‘Sir.’

But DI Jennings wasn’t back for quite some time.

When he’d got the message that Sir Marcus Deering was in the station and was demanding to speak to him, DI Jennings had intended to deal with him quickly and shortly. While he was willing to pander to his superiors’ insistence that the man be treated with respect when times were slow, he had no time to hold the entrepreneur’s hand when he had a vicious murder inquiry just getting underway. Especially since the threats in the anonymous letters had proved to be so much nonsense.

But when he went into his office the businessman’s first words floored him utterly.

Sir Marcus, sitting slumped in the chair in front of his desk, looked visibly haggard, and his hands were shaking uncontrollably.

‘We were wrong, Inspector. They did kill my son, after all,’ he said, his voice thick with emotion.

DI Jennings blinked and sat down heavily in his chair. Another murder inquiry, coming so fast on the heels of the McGillicuddy case? His first thought was that he’d need much more manpower.

‘How did it happen?’ he demanded at once. ‘I was told nothing happened yesterday. When was Mr Deering attacked? Are you sure—’

‘My son Anthony is fine.’ Sir Marcus interrupted the barrage of questions flatly, leaving the Inspector slack-jawed and stupefied into silence. The older man stared down at his hands, unable to meet the DI’s gaze. ‘Fact is, er, Jennings, that in my younger days, well… I was rather fond of a young girl, a local girl, very pretty and perfectly respectable, but a bit… er… below us on the social scale, I suppose you’d say. A decent girl, and all that… but well, when she fell pregnant, my father… Well, let’s just say my father and hers came to an arrangement…’

‘I see, sir,’ DI Jennings said briskly. Although he felt vaguely shocked and a little embarrassed by such revelations, it was not his place to judge. ‘And this… er… local girl, I take it she had a baby boy?’

‘Yes. He’s… was… would have been thirty years old now.’

DI Jennings slowly felt a cold chill begin to creep up his spine. ‘This girl, sir. Your son…?’

‘His name is… was… Jonathan McGillicuddy,’ Sir Marcus said flatly. ‘His mother’s name is Mavis. Naturally, he kept his mother’s name. I believe her neighbours all think McGillicuddy is her married name. Er… less gossip that way.’

‘I see,’ DI Jennings said heavily. ‘And did the lad, er, know who you were?’ he asked delicately.

‘Oh, no,’ Sir Marcus said, sounding shocked. ‘Mavis always told the lad his father died in an accident before they could get married. My father insisted on that.’

‘I see,’ Jennings said – and did too. No doubt Mavis McGillicuddy had received a small annuity to pay for the raising of her child only on the strict understanding that neither she nor the child would do or say anything to embarrass the Deering family.

‘Mavis rang me this morning and told me… told me…’ Sir Marcus began, but then couldn’t get the words out.

‘Yes, sir,’ the DI said grimly. ‘I know what she told you.’

‘My… son. Jonathan.’ The businessman finally raised his head from his inspection of his hands and looked the policeman squarely in the eye. ‘He died at twelve noon yesterday, didn’t he?’ Sir Marcus asked bleakly.

‘We don’t know that, Sir Marcus,’ Jennings admitted levelly. But he knew it would fit with the timeframe supplied by the police surgeon.

Sir Marcus gulped and raised his hands to his head, covering his eyes with his palms. ‘When nothing happened yesterday, we were all so relieved. I thought the nightmare was over, but it’s not. It’s just beginning, isn’t it?’ he asked, his voice muffled by his fingers and despair. ‘Whoever wrote that letter said they’d kill my son, and they did.’

DI Jennings opened his mouth, but didn’t know quite what to say. That they had been protecting the wrong son at twelve noon yesterday was all too clear – and he could imagine the reaction of his superiors when this came to light. And, no doubt, if Sir Marcus had come clean right from the beginning about having a second son, he might not now be lying dead in the county morgue. But that cruel fact hardly needed saying out loud.

‘You have to catch him,’ Sir Marcus said finally. ‘You have to stop him. Or Anthony…’ He broke off and shrugged helplessly, not even daring to put the horrible thought into actual words. Not that he’d needed to, of course, for the DI had already reasoned it out for himself.

If the poison pen could kill once, they could kill again.

‘Sir Marcus, I ask you again. Do you really have no idea what this person wants? What exactly is this “right thing” they want you to do?’

Sir Marcus shook his head. He was a pitiful sight now. Unshaven, pale and trembling, he was a far cry from the bustling, self-important businessman the DI had first met just a week ago. ‘I don’t know!’ he wailed. ‘Unless… there’s only one thing I can think of, but it doesn’t make sense. It truly doesn’t.’

‘I need to know anything that might be relevant, Sir Marcus,’ Inspector Jennings insisted gravely.

And so the shattered man told him all about the fire.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Beatrice Fleet-Wright bit neatly into a thin slice of toast topped with a thin layer of Oxford marmalade, and reached for the copy of the local paper. Her husband was already reading The Times, while Rex, her son, ate without benefit of the written word, as was his custom.

Beatrice was just two years short of her fiftieth birthday, though if that landmark event loomed large in her life, you couldn’t tell it by looking at her. Her short, dark hair was as well groomed as ever, and if hair dye played a major role in keeping the telltale grey at bay, it was too professionally done by one of the city’s best hairdressing salons for anyone to be able to tell. Her green eyes still dominated an otherwise unremarkable face, but clever and discreet make-up had always served her well. As had her determination, over the years, to watch her weight.

Hers had been the generation that had grown up listening to the song ‘Keep Young and Beautiful If You Want to Be Loved’, and if she’d ever been inclined to forget, her mother had always been kind enough to remind her.

Outside, it was another dull and overcast day. She sighed, and to distract herself from the never-ending day ahead, glanced at the rather lurid STOP-PRESS headline that had clearly been rather hastily cobbled together. Obviously a major story had broken shortly before the morning papers went to press.

For a moment, she only took in the bare details – some poor soul, murder, and the horror of a discovery in a large Kidlington garden.

And then she saw the name.

McGillicuddy.

And her heart leapt into her throat, instantly cutting off her ability to breathe. It wasn’t exactly a common name, after all.

For a moment, the room swam around her as, fearfully, her eyes scanned the small printed paragraphs for more details.

The name of the murdered man was Jonathan. It was Jonathan. The age was right. And he was a gardener… It had to be him.

For a moment, Beatrice thought she was actually going to be sick, right there at the breakfast table, staining the white damask cloth and making a total exhibition of herself, no doubt causing her husband and son much distasteful inconvenience.

But, of course, she didn’t. Such behaviour was unthinkable. She was Beatrice Fleet-Wright, a Collingswood by birth. The daughter of a wealthy local brewery owner, she’d attended Cheltenham Ladies College, and later Somerville College. She had always attended her nearest church and had always done what was expected of her. Which included behaving like a lady at all times.

She had even made a good match – and one much approved of by her parents – in marrying Reginald Fleet-Wright, whose father owned a large haulage firm that very nearly produced an annual income equal to that of her father’s business.

She had produced two children and, if life had been fair, could then have expected to decline genteelly into middle age, with nothing more than the odd wrangle with the church-flower roster to blight her days.

Of course, that hadn’t happened. Instead, she had faced tragedy, betrayal and loss. Not to mention scandal, and becoming the object of either pity or cutting censure. And now, just when it was beginning to look as if she had weathered all that, it seemed life was about to deliver her yet another vicious blow.

Although she had not loved Reginald when she married him, she had grown fond of him over the years. She’d always loved her children, naturally. But even here she had never worn blinkers, or been one of those mothers who insisted on seeing their offspring as veritable angels.

Which had been just as well.

Beatrice had always insisted on seeing life as it really was. And past bitter experience had taught her that, when faced with adversity, it was no use trying to bury your head in the sand. You had to face things head-on, and try to find a way to make the best of it.

So she quickly swallowed back the bile that had risen to her throat, and put down her toast with only a slight shaking of her hand. A quick glance told her that neither of the men at the table had noticed anything amiss.

This didn’t surprise her either. To her husband, over the years, she had become more or less a fixture of the house – a vaguely valued one, like a really good chesterfield sofa, or a rather elegant painting that hung on the wall, quietly accruing value. And to her son…Beatrice sometimes wondered if Rex was actually aware she existed at all.

‘I shall need to see that idiot over at Binsey Lumber again,’ her husband was saying now. ‘What on earth made him think he could just order twenty lorries at five minutes notice and ex…’

Beatrice had no problem in tuning the droning words out, while giving every appearance of hanging on to his every word – and even offering a sympathetic murmur at just the right moment. She’d had years of patient practice with that particular skill, after all.

And if she thought she caught Rex eyeing her closely, she ignored that too. She was used to his silent antagonism. And understood it. Not that there was anything she could do about it.

Ostensibly Rex was a student, but he seemed to spend little time at college, and even less time studying.

But while she hadn’t entirely given up on mending her broken relationship with her son, now wasn’t the time to worry about that. She had a more immediate problem at hand.

Instead, her thoughts went back to the first time she’d seen Jonathan McGillicuddy, almost seven years ago now. A handsome, golden Adonis of a youth, she could remember that long-ago summer as if it were yesterday.

It had been the summer that her life, and that of her family, had turned to ashes.

And now he was dead too. And not only dead, but murdered.

She took a deep, shaky breath.

Surely this could have nothing to do with her, though? It couldn’t affect her, or her family, could it? It had to be a coincidence. People died all the time. And she hadn’t seen or spoken to him since…

Time passed in something of a fog. Her husband kissed her on the cheek, as he always did, before leaving for the office. Rex made some laconic comment about what he was going to do with the rest of his day, and sauntered off.

Beatrice was only vaguely aware of it all. Her tea went cold, her toast was left uneaten.

Jonathan McGillicuddy was dead. And somehow, Beatrice Fleet-Wright just knew this was going to spell disaster all over again. Disaster for herself and her family, just when she’d thought they’d finally managed to emerge from all the anguish and despair of the past, and those awful events.

She’d thought, then, that nothing could be worse than that.

And on the face of it, the death of someone from her past could hardly compare with the loss of a child and the scandal of the coroner’s inquest. And all the long years of loneliness, guilt and fear she had endured since.

When you thought about it logically, what could possibly be worse than that?

And yet, as she forced herself to read the scant details about the death of a landscape gardener she had once, briefly and tragically, known, Beatrice could just feel in her bones that the worst was yet to come.

CHAPTER NINE

The coroner’s inquest into the death of Jonathan Paul McGillicuddy was opened six days later, on a cold and grey windswept day in late January. All of those with business at either the court or the mortuary, which both shared a courtyard at the end of Floyds Row in the city of Oxford, were huddled up in their warmest clothes, and were glad to get in out of the elements.

Dr Clement Ryder watched his court filling up from a half-open doorway in the corridor connecting to his private rooms, and waited for the moment he would be called in by the usher.

He felt well today, his body free of aches and any damned tremors, and he was mentally reviewing the morning ahead and what needed to be done – which, at this early stage, would be very little. Experience had quickly taught him just how brief the inquest itself would be, unlike the general public, who’d come out in droves expecting to see some kind of spectacle. This rather ghoulish phenomenon was something the coroner was used to now, and he had little sympathy for the morbidly curious masses who would go away sadly disappointed.

He’d already spoken to the investigating officer on the McGillicuddy case, DI Harry Jennings, a sound enough police officer in his opinion, if rather lacking in imagination. They wanted an adjournment, of course, to give them time to gather more evidence, and naturally he’d ensure they got it.

It wasn’t an unusual request in the early stages of a murder inquiry.

He heard his cue to enter and walked confidently into the court, feeling, as he always did, a certain sense of satisfaction in the sudden silence that fell over the room as he appeared. Taking his seat, he looked around the packed room. He noted, with a wry smile of distaste, the presence of the press. Then he glanced at the front seats, where members of the families concerned were usually to be found, and quickly picked out the victim’s mother.

A small, shrunken lady, she looked pale and bewildered and lost.

He caught her eye, and nodded gently at her. He didn’t smile. He never did smile while in court. He hadn’t gone around grinning like a loon when he’d been in the operating theatre, and he didn’t see why he should set about doing so now he was the public face of the judiciary system.

Mavis McGillicuddy, looking up at the silver-haired, smartly dressed and rather distinguished-looking man who seemed to rule over this baffling world of law and medicine like a demi-god, swallowed hard and managed to nod back.

She understood nothing about what was about to happen, and a lot of the traditional pomp and circumstance surrounding the proceedings swept right over her head. But she instinctively felt that the man who was clearly in charge of everything would do right by her son.

But, in truth, she was finding it hard to care about the pursuit of truth and justice. The police had talked to her endlessly the past few days, asking questions about Jonathan and his life. At one point, they even seemed to suspect that she and her boy weren’t close, and that all wasn’t well at home, but she didn’t care about that either. She’d been too tired to even get angry. Her neighbour had now all but taken over looking after Marie, but, so help her, she couldn’t even seem to care about that either.

The only thing she knew or cared about was that her son was gone and she’d never see him again.

Clement firmly moved his gaze on from Mavis McGillicuddy’s blank-eyed face as he called the court to order and proceeded along the well-worn and now-familiar path of opening a coroner’s court proceeding. Once the initial preliminaries were over, the members of the jury had been instructed as to what was expected of them, and the clerks were happy with the state of their paperwork, DI Jennings was called to the stand.

As expected, the policeman made short work of stating the facts surrounding the case, giving away as little as possible about what the police were thinking, and asked for an adjournment in order for the police to gather more evidence.

Clement succinctly gave it.

He nodded to the clerk to make a proper record of this concession and, as he did so, eyed the journalists and reporters scribbling in their notebooks with a jaundiced eye. Early on, when he’d first been appointed, one or two of them had thought they might be able to take advantage of his inexperience and get a few morsels of information out of him regarding one of his more lurid cases. His response had since become legendary, and now no reporter, even the most ferociously ambitious or impertinent, would ever dream of approaching him.

It was while DI Jennings was leaving the witness stand, and his eyes were roving generally around the room, that Clement first noticed the woman sitting in the public gallery. At first he couldn’t have said why she should have caught his attention. She was perhaps a shade better dressed than most of those in the packed room, but while she was handsome enough, she was hardly eye-catching. Perhaps it was the air of stillness that seemed to surround her, or the look of calm but razor-sharp focus in her gaze as she watched DI Jennings, that tweaked his inner radar.

Perhaps it was just instinct.

She certainly didn’t have the look of the average bystander, or one of those repressed members of the public who came in hopes of hearing some titillating secret being unearthed, or else gruesome descriptions of death and injury.

He was so busy trying to figure out why she interested him that it actually took him a moment to realise he’d actually seen her before somewhere. Many years ago – in circumstances that, he rather thought, hadn’t been particularly comfortable.

But before he could pursue the elusive memory, he lost sight of her as the room began to slowly empty, with spectators and court personnel filing out through the narrow doorway.

For a few minutes he remained in the empty room, sitting as still as a hunting heron on his chair, and thinking furiously. Just where had he seen those green eyes, set in that pale face and with that dark frame of hair, before?

He had a brief flashback – an impression of her stoic calm and dull voice – and was convinced she’d somehow known great pain and loss. And yet she hadn’t been a participant in one of his courts, of that much at least he was sure. He had a clear and precise recall of all the cases he’d presided over – and there was nothing wrong with his memory.

Unless this damned disease had begun to rob him of some of his mental faculties? Angrily, he shook his head, stubbornly refusing to give credence to such a disaster.

And yet… Yes – it was coming back to him now. And he had seen her in a coroner’s court before – just not one he’d been presiding over!

When he’d first decided to become a coroner, he’d started haunting the courts, sitting in the public gallery and watching as case after case was heard, listening and distilling the essence of what was happening. And one particular case…

Suddenly he snapped his fingers and, reaching forward, picked up his copy of the McGillicuddy folder and stared intently at the victim’s name.

And suddenly he had it.

McGillicuddy.

Of course, that’s where he’d seen her before.

Slowly, he leaned back in his chair, a small smile playing on his lips. Now he understood what had brought Beatrice Fleet-Wright to this inquest.

And he wondered.

He wondered quite a lot.

He’d thought there had been something very wrong about the Fleet-Wright case. But at the time he’d been in no position to question the residing coroner’s verdict. He hadn’t even started his training then. But that hadn’t stopped it from grating on him. He’d been convinced then that a number of the witnesses in that case had lied. Lied and lied again. And that one of the worst of these offenders had been Mrs Beatrice Fleet-Wright.

He hadn’t liked the evidence of the PC either – the first responder at the scene. He hadn’t trusted him one inch.

And Clement had had no doubt that the verdict handed down had been wrong – very wrong.

Naturally, he’d known it would be pointless to interfere. The coroner, one of his now-retired but very esteemed predecessors, wouldn’t have listened to the opinions of a man – no matter how eminent in his own field – who hadn’t even had the benefit of any legal education.

Besides, Clement had got the distinct impression that, behind the scenes, some very delicate wrangling was going on. Not that he’d ever have been able to prove it.

So, he’d had to just let it slide – much as it went against the grain. And it was one of the many reasons why, when he’d taken office, he’d sworn to himself there would never be anything iffy about any of his cases. Everything would be out in the open and above board, able to withstand any amount of public scrutiny.

He knew his way of doing things had made him a lot of enemies, but everyone, from the police and the Town Hall, to Oxford’s wealthiest and most prominent people, knew he couldn’t be bought, cajoled, fooled or lied to. He simply wouldn’t tolerate it.

And now, finally – perhaps he just might be in a position to do something about that earlier case as well? If he was very careful and rather clever?

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