by Faith Martin
‘A man with ambitions, was he?’ Trudy said, careful to keep her voice light and jocular. ‘I know his sort all right. Rather good-looking I imagine?’
‘Oh, ar. Well, so the womenfolk told me. Couldn’t see it meself, like. He had a head and pair of eyes and a nose and a mouth, the same as the rest of us.’ The old man shrugged, as if the vagaries of women were so unfathomable that he’d long since given up trying to understand them.
‘He must have been very upset. Do you think he left because the squire got rid of Seamus?’ she asked, looking at him innocently.
The Head Boy shrugged. ‘The missus’s death hit him hard, that’s all I know. And he just ups and puts in his resignation.’
‘I don’t suppose you know where up north he went do you?’ she asked, but wasn’t unduly surprised when the old man shook his head. ‘Haven’t a clue, my duck, sorry.’
Well, she would find him, Trudy thought. The one thing about being shunted off and having to work in records so often was that it had taught her to handle paperwork!
‘Well, thank you, Mr Kirklees,’ she said, and glanced at Clement, to see if he had anything to add.
The coroner nodded slightly. ‘Yes, thank you, Mr Kirklees. You’ve worked here long?’
‘All me life, man and boy. Well apart from the war, like. The first ’un, I mean.’
‘So you would have known the squire’s mother, Vivienne de Lacey? I’d lay bets she was a fine horsewoman too.’
‘Oh ar. A real lady, she was,’ William Kirklees said proudly. ‘Once or twice she nearly got me with that riding crop of hers!’ he said fondly. ‘Didn’t do to get on her wrong side. She had a bit of a temper on ’er, she had.’
Trudy gawped at him. ‘She tried to hit you with her riding whip?’ she asked, scandalised.
The old man looked at her and grinned. ‘Oh, ar. Like I said, a real lady she was,’ he said approvingly.
Clement coughed to hide the sudden bark of laughter that he could no longer repress, and turned away.
‘Well, we won’t keep you, Mr Kirklees. It’s getting on, and I dare say you’ll be wanting your tea,’ Trudy acknowledged.
Even as she spoke, the church clock began to strike four.
‘Ah, dare say,’ the old man said evenly.
Trudy followed Clement back through the arch and towards the front of the house, where the coroner had left his Rover.
‘Are these people all mad?’ she huffed, once she was sure they were out of range. ‘If someone tried to hit me with a crop, I’d… I’d… I’d brain them!’
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ Clement said solemnly. And a moment later, her sudden peal of laughter made his lips twitch. And for a moment, the gloom that had overtaken him before was suddenly lifted.
Trudy, in contrast, began to feel slightly gloomy on the short ride back to town. Once she’d reported in to DI Jennings, she’d have to go home, and she didn’t for one moment think that she had heard the last about her break-up with Brian!
Chapter 25
Trudy was held back at the station for a while, since DI Jennings was in a particularly sarcastic and bloody-minded mood and demanded a practically word-for-word account of the Eddie Proctor case so far. This meant that she only just caught the last bus home, and was consequently late for her tea.
Not an auspicious beginning!
She changed into her civvies in super-quick time, washed her face and hands, and arrived at the tea table as silently as possible. Her dad was still sitting at the table reading the evening paper, although it was clear that both he and her mother had already eaten their meal at the usual time.
On seeing Trudy enter, her mother moved wordlessly from the sink where she’d been washing up and over to the oven. There, she donned a pair of oven gloves, opened the main oven door and removed a tin plate from one of the shelves. On it was a slightly congealed-looking mound of Lancashire hotpot and some slightly shrivelled peas. She then picked up an old newspaper from the countertop that she kept especially for just such purposes, slapped it down on the Formica table and then set the hot tin plate down on top of it.
‘Mind you don’t burn yourself,’ she said tersely.
Trudy nodded glumly. She hated being in the doghouse with her parents – it always made her feel uneasy and uncomfortable. She picked up her knife and fork and tentatively pried a piece of lamb from the plate, blew on it, and carefully popped it into her mouth.
‘Hmmm, lovely,’ she said with forced cheerfulness.
On the wall, the sunburst wooden clock (a Christmas present from Auntie June a few years ago) ticked away neutrally, like a disinterested observer.
Her father rustled his paper, drawing her eye, and when he caught her gaze, offered her a slight smile.
Trudy grinned back at him, saw her mother begin to turn back to the table, and quickly wiped it off her face. Barbara Loveday sat down portentously, and leaned back slightly in her chair, arms crossed.
Which was not a good sign.
‘Right, our Trudy,’ she began – another sure indication that she was going to get a good talking-to! ‘Your dad and I want to have a little chat with you.’
Trudy selected a piece of sliced potato, blew on it, chewed it, swallowed, and tried to look nonchalant. ‘What about, Mum?’ she asked mildly.
‘About Brian of course,’ Barbara said. ‘I’ve had his mum around, asking if it was true that you’d thrown him over. I didn’t know where to put my face. Madge has been my friend since we moved in here!’
‘I’m sure she’ll carry on being your friend, Mum,’ Trudy began to try and placate her but, like most other of her ‘little chats’ with her mother, she was barely able to get a word in edgewise.
‘Of course she will, our Trudy, that’s not the point.’ Barbara Loveday huffed shortly, her pretty, slightly plump face beginning to flush with anger.
Recognising the signs, Trudy hastily returned her gaze to her meal, although her appetite was quickly waning. She forced herself to fork up some peas and took her time chewing them.
‘She says her Brian was right upset. He says it came right out of the blue. Naturally, Madge asked him what he’d done to upset you like, and he swears he doesn’t know.’
‘He didn’t do anything, Mum,’ Trudy said, trying to be patient, but feeling her own anger begin to stir. ‘He’s a nice enough chap, but I just don’t want to marry him. I don’t think we’re suited. It’s as simple as that.’
For a moment, silence reigned. Then her mother stirred in her seat. ‘You’ve been seeing him since you were 16. That’s nearly four years. When a lad’s been going steady for that long… Well, he has a right to expectations.’
Trudy mutinously studied her plate. ‘We barely went out,’ she said at last. ‘A few visits to the cinema and to the local dance a few times. And I never ever said… I never encouraged him… We never exchanged rings or got anywhere close to something like that. It was always you and his mother who assumed…’ It was always the same when she got angry or upset – she just couldn’t seem to link a coherent sentence together.
‘And Brian assumed it too, don’t you forget,’ her mother admonished flatly. ‘Madge said he was right upset about it all.’
Trudy bit back the smart retort that sprang to her lips, and took a long, slow, breath instead. ‘I think you’ll find that Madge is exaggerating a little. Brian didn’t seem that upset about it to me. A little surprised, I know, and yes, disappointed. But I hardly broke his heart, Mum! Honestly.’
For a moment her mother stared at her flatly, then her shoulders sagged in defeat and she cast her silent husband a quick look that clearly said she could do with some reinforcements.
‘It’s not just about Brian, though, is it?’ her mother swept on, her voice flatter, and somehow a little more bitter now. It sent a slight chill running down Trudy’s spine, since it was a tone of voice that she’d never heard her mother use before.
‘It’s this job of yours, Trudy,’ Barbara began, and instantly
Trudy felt herself prickle.
‘Oh, not this again, Mum!’ she all but wailed. ‘I thought we had this out when I first applied for training!’
‘No we didn’t then,’ her mother shot back, her voice beginning to rise. ‘We never wanted you to join, and you said you were going to, and that was that. And if you remember, young lady,’ her mother carried on, with growing heat, ‘you agreed that we would discuss it again when your probationary period was nearly up. When we’d all had some time to take in just what you being a woman police officer really meant. And now that time is up!’
Trudy frowned, trying to remember if she had, indeed, made this concession, and seemed to recall, vaguely, that she probably had. But at the time she’d made the offer, she was hoping that they would soon forget about it altogether.
Clearly, they hadn’t.
‘All right then,’ Trudy said, taking the bull firmly by the horns, ‘let’s do that. You know as well as I do that I’m practically nothing more than a glorified clerk. I spend most of my time in records, or doing the filing, or making the tea. I might as well be working in an office as a secretary! When I’m not doing that, I’m called upon to do strip-searches of female suspects and root about in their handbags. Occasionally I get to sit beside the beds of people in hospital, waiting to hear if they wake up and say anything useful or incriminating. And I get to go and knock on people’s doors and give them bad news, and sit and hold their hands – which is awful, and makes me sad, but it’s hardly dangerous. And when I’m not doing any of that, I walk a beat. And so far…’
She hurried on as she could see that her mother was about to explore that promising avenue further, ‘I’ve earned nothing more than a few scraped knees and elbows chasing down purse-snatchers and what have you. And I got far worse injuries than that on the hockey fields at school.’
She paused to take a much-needed breath, but it gave her mother time to jump in.
‘And that’s why you’ve just been commended for bravery is it?’ Barbara said angrily. ‘That little shindig at the Randolph Hotel wasn’t about a scraped knee was it, my girl? You tackled a murderer, our Trudy!’
‘I thought you were proud of me,’ her daughter shot back, clearly hurt.
‘We were. We are! But that’s not the point!’ her mother all but shouted now, but looked, and probably felt, close to tears of frustration. ‘How do you think we felt, your dad and me, when we heard what you’d done? We were sick with worry!’
‘Mum! I was never in any danger! Not really – the suspect never wanted to hurt me!’ she tried to explain, but even as she spoke, she realised she might as well not have bothered.
‘And what about next time, Trudy?’ The male voice, interjecting between them, brought Trudy up short. She turned her exasperated gaze away from her mother’s equally tight face, and turned to her father.
She felt inexplicably betrayed by his sudden advent into the argument, especially since he was siding with her mother. Something of it must have shown on her face too, for her father sighed, and lowered his paper. He leaned over the table and reached for her hand, grasping it in his slightly callused fingers.
‘You’ve been lucky so far, love,’ he said gently. ‘But luck won’t hold forever. It never does.’
Trudy opened her mouth, then realised she didn’t know what to say.
‘I don’t think you’ve fully realised yet, that the job you’re doing can be really dangerous, our Trudy,’ her father continued. ‘Whenever we read about policemen dying in the line of duty in the papers, it makes our blood run cold. You can understand that, love, can’t you?’
‘Yes, but, Dad…’ Trudy caught herself, and wondered, in growing despair, how she could explain the reality of things to them. ‘For a start, that’s policemen.’ She emphasised the gender strongly. ‘There are loads of duties that they do that I would never have to do. And most of those incidents happen in London anyway – or in the big cities. Not in Oxford! Really, what I do is mostly office work. I promise.’
‘Is that what you’re doing now?’ her mother asked abruptly.
Trudy blinked. ‘That’s not fair. You know I’m helping Dr Ryder with one of his cases – that poor boy who was found dead in a well up in Briar’s-in-the-Wold. We’re trying to help his parents find out what really happened,’ she finished, on a note of growing triumph. ‘Don’t you think that’s something that needs to be done?’ she asked challengingly, sure she was winning the argument now. ‘Just think what that poor little boy’s parents are going through. And Dr Ryder and I are trying to give them answers. Don’t you think someone should be doing that?’
She saw her mother look across at her father with a look of near-despair, and instantly her sense of triumph turned to one of shame. Which made her feel angry. But surely they couldn’t deny that she was doing a good thing? So why did she feel so shabby all of a sudden?
‘Yes, someone should,’ Barbara said heavily. ‘But why does it have to be you?’
Her father leaned back in his chair, and as he did so, his fingers, which had been holding hers across the table, slid away, leaving her hand feeling suddenly cold.
‘We just worry about you, that’s all, love,’ her father said sadly.
Trudy, feeling herself close to tears, pushed her plate away. ‘I think I’ll have an early night,’ she said miserably, and fled.
Chapter 26
If Trudy Loveday was alone in her bedroom, close to tears and feeling alternately bewildered, angry, distressed and rebellious, Marjorie Chandler was having a much more interesting – although equally emotional – time.
She was in her flat, regarding a lovely diamond and ruby ring, that Martin de Lacey had just offered her.
Outside it was growing dark, and the city lights were beginning to glow. She had just cooked them one of the few dinners in her repertoire – a pasta dish she’d been taught by an Italian grandmother – and now they were sitting on her settee, in front of a flickering fire, sipping a rather nice Merlot.
Martin had chosen his moment well.
He was dressed in a rather fine but old suit, and had simply slipped his hand into his pocket and withdrawn a small, square turquoise-leather box, and lifted the lid.
‘This belonged to my great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth de Lacey,’ he said casually. ‘She got it, I believe, from the younger son of a Marquis, who shall remain nameless,’ he said with a smile and in that rather self-deprecating way Englishmen had. ‘Needless to say, the minx kept the ring, but didn’t marry the suitor. Created a bit of a stir in her day, did Elizabeth. She was rather known for that sort of thing – being a bit flighty, and all that,’ he added with a smile. ‘Scandalised the court any number of times – but she did increase her personal fortune quite considerably.’
Marjorie felt her heart thrill as she looked down at the gem. ‘Which court would that be? Victoria’s?’ she asked, eyes gleaming.
Martin shrugged. ‘Hers, or maybe the one before that. I’m not sure.’
Marjorie laughed. ‘How cavalier you Brits are about your ancestry,’ she said, with real envy in her soft, American drawl. ‘In Boston, people would kill to be able to trace an ancestor back to any royal court.’
Martin shrugged. ‘Back in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, I think we de Laceys had a title of our own. Baron, maybe, or something like that. But I think that line abruptly halted during the Napoleonic wars. Can’t carry on the title through daughters you see. So I can’t promise you’ll be “Lady” de Lacey. Well, not technically anyway,’ he said. ‘But you’ll be lady of the manor to everyone in the village, nevertheless.’
Marjorie laughed, slightly nervously. ‘Is that your idea of a proposal?’ she asked archly.
‘’Fraid so, old girl,’ Martin said with a smile. ‘I think I’m a bit past getting down on the old one knee and all that.’ He regarded the splendid ring for a moment, then looked up as the woman beside him rose, and walked slowly over towards the fireplace. There she rested one hand tho
ughtfully on the mantelpiece and stared down into the flames.
Martin regarded her nervously. Had he mistimed it?
Tonight she was wearing some sort of fancy lounging trouser-suit in shot blue silk. Her long blonde hair had been left artfully loose and she looked younger than her thirty-one years.
‘Of course, if I’ve overstepped the mark…’ he began, putting the ring down on the coffee table in front of him, and coughed uncomfortably. ‘I know Oliver… well, Oliver is much better-lookin’ than me, and a bit of a brain-box to boot. But… well, Oliver isn’t exactly the marryin’ sort, if you know what I mean?’
‘Oh, Martin, don’t be silly. You don’t have to worry about Oliver,’ Marjorie lied brightly. ‘We’re just friends, that’s all.’ She compounded the lie without compunction. ‘It’s just… well, you did rather spring this on me.’
She returned to the settee and picked up the case with the ring in it, that Martin had left to sit, so temptingly, on the table.
Of course, the proposal wasn’t a surprise at all. She’d been aware that Martin had been building up his courage for some time. It was just that she still hadn’t made up her mind.
Oliver, too, had been making discreet overtures, sounding out the lie of the land, as it were. But unlike his cousin, who had a far more straightforward approach, the physics don was much more cautious. In a way, she admired this evidence that proved the younger cousin was a more sophisticated, man-of-the-world sort. On the other hand, there was something brave and admirable about the way Martin simply laid it all out on the line. Had he lived in an earlier age, she could just imagine him as a cavalry officer, riding into the French battlefields.
And the ring was gorgeous.
And she’d be ‘unofficially’ lady of the manor. Pity the title wasn’t still extant though. It would be something to make her friends jealous back home.
But did she really want to become just one of the ‘green wellie’ brigade? She’d first heard this phrase from friends in London, who found it screamingly funny. And it did give her pause to think. She was hardly the country wife type, after all.