A Fatal Flaw

by Faith Martin

  Clement shrugged. ‘No idea yet. I’m going to chat to the theatre owner, see if he has any ideas on what’s been happening in his theatre, right under his nose.’

  Dennis Quayle-Jones knew a man of importance when he saw one, and although he had no idea who Dr Clement Ryder was on sight, the moment the man walked up to him and introduced himself, the actor-cum-theatre-manager was on his best behaviour.

  ‘So you’re the new judge,’ Dennis said, wracking his brains for all he’d heard about this man. As a leading light of Oxford society himself, he liked to keep himself informed. So he knew the coroner had friends in very high places, didn’t suffer fools gladly, and was both respected and feared in equal measure.

  ‘Yes. It was my unpleasant duty to oversee the inquest into the death of one of your girls here. Abigail Trent?’ Clement decided to take the bull by the horns. ‘Did you know her?’

  ‘Oh, poor Abby. Yes. No. Well…’ Dennis took a breath, pulled himself together, and managed a light smile. ‘I didn’t know her as a person, not really, but I had talked to her, naturally, on and off during the rehearsals and whatnot. Some of the girls are total novices, as you’d expect, and I was happy to give them some pointers on stagecraft. You know – how to stand, walk, and especially talk during the interview segment. I keep telling them – you need to project your voice. It’s no good talking to the compere, even with a microphone, as if you were just chatting to the boy-next-door. Even with something as banal as this, they needed to emote.’

  Clement found the actor-manager’s verbosity annoying, but he nodded wisely.

  ‘And did Abby take direction well?’ he asked urbanely.

  ‘Oh yes. Most of them do. Mind you, I think most of them are a bit stage-struck, and see this competition as a way into show business. Poor lambs.’

  ‘And Abby was no different?’

  ‘Like I said, I didn’t really know her,’ Dennis prevaricated, straightening his cravat. He was dressed theatrically in a velvet lounge jacket of dark green, and everything about him screamed ‘famous’ actor. There was almost something desperate about the man’s desire to ‘be’ someone, and Clement found himself feeling sorry for him. What, he found himself wondering, did the man do when he was alone at night without a play to direct, or people to impress or bedazzle?

  ‘Her unexpected death must have been felt keenly here, I imagine,’ Clement mused gently, glancing around at the milling girls, the Dunbars, judges and theatre workers.

  ‘Oh, it was. She was so young, you see – barely into her twenties and quite lovely.’

  ‘Did you think she was in with a chance of winning?’ Clement asked, not really interested in that, but wanting to keep the conversation on track.

  He was rather surprised at the quick flash of alarm that crossed the other man’s face. In a second it was gone, and the smooth mask was back in place.

  But it left the coroner feeling wrong-footed. What on earth had pierced the man’s armour like that?

  ‘Oh, who can say? A lot of the contestants are capable of winning, aren’t they?’ he said off-handedly.

  ‘But you’re one of the judges,’ Clement pressed. ‘Don’t you have some idea by now who you’re going to vote for?’

  ‘Good grief, no!’ Dennis said, in his best (and often portrayed) horrified manner. ‘I’ll just wait until show night and make up my mind then. I expect that’s what most of us will do. Mind you, some of my fellow judges may have been thoroughly corrupted by then,’ he said with forced gaiety, nodding towards a good-looking man who was being charmed by a pretty blonde.

  ‘One of the perks, is it?’ Clement asked, wondering if his companion’s sudden unease had its basis in a guilty conscience. Had he been making promises he couldn’t keep to one girl in particular, in return for a little appreciation? Somehow, he didn’t think so. Unless his intuition was way off – and it seldom was – the fairer sex was not the one that held any interest for Dennis Quayle-Jones.

  ‘Naughty! And no, it most definitely isn’t’, Dennis said archly. ‘You’ll have Mrs Dunbar breathing fire and brimstone down on you if you try any fraternising with the beauty queens. That woman terrifies me! I can see her heading this way right now, so if you don’t mind…’ He adroitly slipped away, and with a thoughtful glance, Clement let him.

  As the actor turned away, however, the coroner noticed that one of the contestants – a very striking-looking woman with raven hair and wearing a Chinese silk kimono that he recognised as Caroline Tomworthy – was watching the actor-manager’s progress across the room with a small smile that played intriguingly at the corners of her mouth.

  So what did she know, that he didn’t? Clement mused, with a slight frown. Clearly, there were undercurrents within undercurrents at the Old Swan Theatre. And again, he felt uneasy that Trudy Loveday was right in the thick of things.

  Perhaps he should ask DI Jennings to intervene and put an end to her undercover assignment here? Although he knew Trudy might never forgive him if he interfered, he also knew that he could never live with himself if something happened to her.

  Or was he just over-reacting? So far, they’d found no evidence whatsoever that Abigail Trent had even been murdered in the first place. And the latest poison-pen incident might be a totally empty threat.

  Clement sighed. He would wait and watch, and if he thought that Trudy was in the slightest danger, then whether she liked it or not, he would do what needed to be done.

  * * *

  Trudy had been trying to corner Vicky Munnings all night for a second chance to talk to her, but somehow seemed to keep missing her. She was just pretending to drink from a second glass of wine when Sylvia Blane went to move past her, almost jogged her arm, and then had to stop and apologise.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t see you there,’ she muttered gracelessly. ‘Truth be told, I’m only seeing red at this moment,’ she fumed.

  Trudy grinned. ‘Bad as all that? What’s up?’

  ‘Interfering old busybodies, that’s what up,’ the blonde girl muttered mutinously. ‘First it’s that old bat Mrs Merriweather poking her nose in where it’s not wanted. Then Mrs Dunbar. Honestly – it’s getting so that a girl can’t even talk to a man without somebody coming down on you like a ton of bricks.’

  Trudy smiled sympathetically. ‘Mr Cowper is very good-looking isn’t he,’ she said mildly. Then, when the other girl’s eyes narrowed on her, hastily held up her hands. ‘Pax! I’m not interested in him! He’s too old for me,’ she added, wondering what the other girl would have to say about that.

  Sylvia merely tossed her blonde curls and gave a slightly condescending smile. ‘I prefer mature men. They’re so much more interesting than mere boys!’

  Trudy blinked a few times at this, but wisely said nothing. Then she sighed as she saw Vicky Munnings slip behind the curtain and head back towards the dressing rooms. Apparently, she was going to call it a night.

  Oh well, Trudy thought. There’d always be another time.

  Then she turned her attention to Sylvia, realising that she couldn’t afford to miss the opportunity of picking up more of the gossip. ‘I see Vicky Munnings is leaving early. I suppose it must be hard for her to carry on with all this, now that her friend’s dead? Didn’t someone tell me that it was Abby who was the one who persuaded her to enter the competition in the first place?’

  Sylvia gave a sudden snort of laughter. ‘Yes, she did. And if you ask me, she was beginning to regret it.’

  ‘Oh? Why?’ Trudy asked sharply.

  Sylvia shrugged. ‘Well, you had to know them, really. You got the feeling that Abby was the queen bee, and little Vicky was just another drone, you know? A worker bee, only there to support her majesty.’ Sylvia gave a little giggle. ‘From what the rest of us could tell, Abby had been lording it over her all the way through school.’

  ‘You sound as if you didn’t like her much,’ Trudy slipped in.

  ‘I didn’t. She was much too sure of herself for one thing.’ Sylvia huffed. ‘Min
d you, after a few sessions in this place, she was beginning to get taken down a peg or two,’ she added with some satisfaction. ‘Oh, she might have got that poor mouse, Candace, under her thumb in short order, and one or two of the others. But she definitely couldn’t bully Caroline! It was rather funny, really, watching the cat run rings around her. Then Abby would get so mad and frustrated that she’d take it out on Vicky. Poor kid – the things she had to put up with. Abby treated her like a servant!’

  Trudy sighed. ‘I’m surprised Vicky didn’t just withdraw from the competition if it got that bad!’

  ‘So was I, at first. But then it became clear that she’d got the bug.’

  ‘The bug?’ Trudy echoed blankly.

  ‘Yes. The contest! Vicky… I don’t know, in these last few weeks, she’s begun to really blossom. She was always quite pretty, but she’d always been in the queen bee’s shadow. But this place’ – Sylvia waved a hand around the theatre – ‘was beginning to set her free. She started to wear better clothes, use her make-up with more skill, come out of herself a bit. She had her hair cut properly and began to, you know…’

  ‘Gain confidence?’ Trudy proffered helpfully.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I don’t suppose Abigail liked that much,’ Trudy remarked carefully. ‘Losing her best worker bee and all that.’

  ‘Oh, she didn’t,’ Sylvia said with relish. ‘Especially when Vicky began to get talked about as a real possibility for winning the crown. By the time Abby died, they were almost at daggers drawn!’

  ‘Oh,’ said Trudy, her eyes shining. ‘I had no idea that was the case.’

  And wasn’t it interesting?

  Chapter 11

  Clement accepted a cup of tea from Vera Trent and smiled his thanks at the grieving mother as she sat down opposite him.

  He’d called on Abigail Trent’s family home at ten-thirty in the morning, expecting her father to have gone to work, since it was primarily the dead girl’s mother he wanted to talk to. Mothers, in his experience, knew far more about their daughters than did their fathers.

  The house was a new-build council house in a small cul-de-sac on the ever-spreading outskirts of Parklands, a desirable suburb in Summertown. Here, the new houses rubbed shoulders rather uneasily with Victorian and Georgian buildings, and rows of what the tourists would no doubt call ‘quaint’ workers’ cottages.

  ‘Thank you for calling in, Dr Ryder,’ Vera Trent said, her voice rather slow and weary. The doctor in him wondered what sedatives her family GP had prescribed for her.

  ‘I just wondered if you had any questions about the inquest, or wanted to ask me anything,’ Clement began gently. ‘When you go through such a traumatic event, as you have, sometimes you don’t think to ask questions right away.’

  ‘No. Well, I suppose I’m not sure what happens now?’ Vera was a woman who was not quite tall, not quite thin, and not quite pretty – but looked as if she missed all three by just a whisker. Her daughter, in contrast, had clearly had no difficulty in achieving beauty, as the many framed photographs of her distributed about the living room showed.

  ‘Well, when the circumstances surrounding a death are unclear, the police continue to investigate, of course,’ Clement said, but didn’t mention his and Trudy’s secondary involvement. The less people knew about it, the less likely it was that Trudy’s undercover role at the beauty pageant would be discovered. ‘What do you think happened to Abigail, Mrs Trent?’ he asked, taking a sip of tea. It was hot and strong and unsweetened, just as he’d asked for.

  ‘She didn’t kill herself, that’s for certain,’ the dead girl’s mother said, with the first signs of animation Clement had seen in her. But no sooner had she got the words out, than her shoulders slumped and she became weary and apathetic again. ‘My Abby was full of energy and confidence and had all of the rest of her life to look forward to.’

  With these words, Clement felt a wave of sadness wash over him. In his former life as a surgeon, of course he had lost his fair share of patients. But it always struck hardest when it came to losing the young.

  ‘Yes, she did,’ the coroner agreed softly. ‘So you think it was an accident then? That she’d made up a potion thinking it was safe, and it wasn’t?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Vera said, but didn’t look convinced. ‘But it wasn’t as if she’d done that sort of thing before.’

  ‘Made up potions you mean?’ Clement pressed gently. ‘But then, she hadn’t entered a beauty pageant before, had she?’

  ‘No. No, she was all excited about that,’ Vera admitted.

  ‘And I hear she was a competitive sort of girl,’ Clement chose his words carefully. He must not sound as if he was criticising her daughter in the slightest. Not only would it be cruel, it would also make her uncooperative. ‘So I suppose she was determined to do well?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose she was,’ Vera admitted dully. ‘She was always winning cups and prizes at school. Spelling. Running. All sorts.’ She waved a hand towards the tiled mantelpiece over the open grate, where a small assortment of brightly polished cups and awards sparkled in the autumn sunlight.

  ‘And I imagine that she would have done anything it took to actually win the crown for herself?’ Clement mused, adding quickly, ‘She was certainly lovely enough to win it.’

  ‘Yes, she was, wasn’t she?’ Vera said, but there was more defeat than pride in her voice. Once again, Clement wondered what pills she was taking.

  ‘Did she ever say anything to you about somebody wanting to hurt her?’ Clement asked, wondering if the harshness of the question would be enough to penetrate the dull haze that the woman clearly inhabited nowadays.

  ‘No.’ Vera sounded only vaguely puzzled. ‘Who would want to hurt our Abby? Oh, she was a bit of a handful at school, I suppose, but those silly complaints about her turned out to be nothing. Jealousy, that’s all that was.’

  ‘Complaints?’ Clement asked delicately.

  Vera Trent sighed heavily. ‘It was just because she didn’t fit in, at first. Coming here…’ She paused to wave a hand vaguely at the fine view outside the window. ‘Coming here to Parklands, was a bit of… what do they call it? Something to do with culture…’

  ‘Culture shock?’ Clement hazarded.

  ‘That’s it! Yes. We came from a big council estate in Cowley, see? So Abby grew up with kiddies just like her. Dads who worked at the car plant, mums who worked at the corner shop or did some “home help”. Then we moved here, and although there’s still some like us in the Crescent, the area’s much finer than we were used to. Solicitors and doctors and even some old landed gentry still live around here, you know. And Abby was clever and did well in her eleven-plus and got into the local grammar school.’

  ‘Oh, I see. She was bullied, was she?’ Clement asked.

  For a moment, Vera Trent looked disconcerted, then she shrugged and lapsed back into apathy. ‘She gave back as good as she got,’ she muttered. ‘She had to stick up for herself, didn’t she?’

  Seeing that he was losing her, Clement nodded. ‘So tell me about the beauty contest. What made her join in?’

  Vera again shrugged. ‘I don’t really know. I think she wanted the prize money so she could go somewhere nice on holiday. You know, abroad somewhere? Nowadays, people can go abroad, can’t they? On aeroplanes and such.’

  Clement nodded. ‘She was the adventurous sort, was she?’

  ‘Oh yes. Full of ideas, and plans for the future,’ Vera said. ‘She always said to me, “Mum, I’m going to go places and make something of myself. You just wait and see.” But now…’ She shrugged helplessly.

  ‘Do you know who she was close to, in the days before she died, Mrs Trent?’ Clement asked carefully. ‘Was she taking advice from anyone on beauty tips, for instance?’

  ‘Oh, maybe, from her friends. She and Vicky, Vicky Munnings, have always been as thick as thieves. Ever since Abby met her at school here.’

  ‘Oh. So Vicky’s local to here too, is she?’
<
br />   ‘Yes. An only child – her mother’s a widow. One of those whose husbands left them a pension and a good life insurance policy. She gardens,’ Vera added, as if this explained everything.

  ‘So Abby found one friend around here then?’

  ‘What? Oh yes – she brought Vicky home after her first day at school. She trailed in after our Abby, looking like a lost puppy. I think she was a lonely kid. She certainly perked up a bit once Abby took her in hand. They did everything together then. Ten years old, and up to all sorts of mischief between them, no doubt. They’ve been joined at the hip ever since. Whatever our Abby wanted, or did, Vicky had to do the same.’

  Vera Trent tried to smile, but somehow couldn’t seem to remember how to do it. With a sigh, Clement admitted defeat and rose to his feet.

  ‘Thank you for seeing me, Mrs Trent. And thank you for the tea.’

  ‘Tea?’ the other woman said vaguely. Then nodded. ‘Oh yes. Tea.’

  ‘I’ll let myself out,’ Clement said gently, and silently left.

  * * *

  DI Jennings read with distaste the anonymous letter that Trudy had just handed over to him. ‘Looks like the sort of back-biting, hysterical nonsense that women like to spread around, to me. But I’ll certainly hand this over to Sergeant O’Grady right away. As he is the official investigating officer of the Abigail Trent case,’ he added with snide and telling emphasis. ‘Whether or not he’ll want to pursue it any further is up to him.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Trudy said smartly, all but standing to attention at his desk. But she had to hide a small smile. Reading between the lines, it was clear that her superior officer thought the Abigail Trent case was a low priority. No doubt he’d been expecting the coroner’s court to bring in a case of either suicide, or death by misadventure, and resented having to keep on investigating it. So she rather doubted he’d be breathing down the Sarge’s neck for results. Which, with a bit of luck, would leave the field clear for herself and Dr Ryder.