by Faith Martin
Trudy looked back at her visitor and thought quickly. ‘How about tomorrow?’
But even as she said it, she realised she no idea whether or not it would be possible to let Glenda have it back so soon. After all, she’d have to take it to the coroner, and then they’d have to study it, and maybe even send it away for tests. And if it did turn out to be vital evidence of a crime, she’d probably never get it back.
But Trudy didn’t think Glenda would willingly part with it if she said as much.
‘Oh, that’s fine,’ Glenda said now, looking so relieved that Trudy felt instantly guilty. ‘Like I said, I don’t know what it is. I didn’t look.’
‘So you never took it out of the plastic bag?’ Trudy asked sharply. When the older woman vigorously shook her head, she smiled with relief. Good. That would be one less set of fingerprints they needed to worry about.
‘After what you said about… murder… and things… I’ve been lying awake all night, worrying,’ Glenda went on. ‘I hope… I hope… Nothing’s going to happen to my Dickie, is it?’ she wailed, her nerves finally failing her.
Trudy instantly went to her and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. ‘I really don’t think your husband is in any imminent danger from the killer, Mrs Gordon,’ she said, mentally crossing her fingers that she was right about that. ‘And I promise you, I’ll do everything I can to make sure you and your family don’t suffer for this either,’ she added, giving the envelope a little jiggle.
Once again, Trudy hoped she’d be able to make good on that promise as well. But she was very much aware that, as a lowly WPC, her opinions would count for nothing. On the other hand, she was confident that DI Jennings and his superiors wouldn’t be in any hurry to bring the force into disrepute if they could avoid it – and that if they could keep Richard Gordon’s name out of things, they would be happy to do so.
With more assurances that Trudy knew she really shouldn’t be making, she gently ushered the pale-faced woman back into the outer hall, where Phil Monroe watched them thoughtfully.
‘That’s not a happy lady,’ he said in massive understatement, once Glenda, casting a final, anxious look over her shoulder, had hurried through the front door and scuttled away.
‘No,’ Trudy agreed. She was itching to look inside the envelope, but decided, very reluctantly, that she should wait until someone superior to her had seen it first. For a second, she was torn – should she take it straight to DI Jennings, or to Clement Ryder?
But once she thought about it, there was no question which of them she trusted most. If she gave it to DI Jennings, he’d simply take it off her and dismiss her, and she’d probably never even get to read it, whereas Dr Ryder actually seemed happy to be working with her, and was far more likely to share his thoughts.
She quite liked being useful, and being asked for her opinion. In spite of his sometimes-frightening intelligence and arrogant manner, she was beginning to rather like the old vulture.
‘I’m just off to Floyds Row,’ she told the desk sergeant.
‘Fine. But don’t be late for the afternoon briefing,’ Phil called after her with a grin. ‘You know the DI likes to observe the rule book!’ he warned sagely.
‘I won’t,’ Trudy called back gaily.
Phil Monroe shook his head in wonderment. Clearly the young lass was getting on well with that crusty old sod, the coroner, after all. Now who’d have thought that unlikely pair would make such a good team?
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Trudy quickly requisitioned a bicycle from the police bike shed, not wanting to walk even the short distance, so eager was she to show Dr Ryder what she had. She was also mindful of the desk sergeant’s warning, and if the contents of the envelope were interesting, and the coroner kept her late, she’d need the extra few minutes the pedal-power would give her to get back in time for the debriefing.
She knew Dr Ryder wasn’t sitting in court that afternoon, since he’d made sure she had a copy of his schedule. By now his secretary was so used to seeing her face that she ushered Trudy through without even bothering to consult his diary or look disapproving at her rushed, cheerful greeting.
Had Trudy but known it, she was one of a very select few who didn’t need an appointment to see the eminent man.
Unaware of this honour, however, she simply rushed into his office and found Clement sitting behind his desk and frowning over the autopsy report from his last case of the week – the unexpected death of a 32-year-old television repairman.
He looked up as Trudy barrelled in. Her cheeks were flushed and she was breathing hard (she’d pedalled like fury) and Clement felt a momentary pang of something nostalgic as he looked at her. How long had it been since he’d been in such a hurry? Or had felt so excited his eyes shone, as hers did now?
‘WPC Loveday,’ he said dryly. ‘I take it you have something interesting?’
‘Yes! Well, I think so,’ Trudy temporised, as a sudden, horrible thought hit her. What if there was nothing of interest in the envelope, after all? What if Glenda had merely stumbled on another of her husband’s minor peccadilloes that had nothing to do with their case?
Quickly, she recounted the gist of Glenda Gordon’s visit, and then placed the envelope on the desk between them. She felt, suddenly and absurdly, as if she was some sort of gundog proudly bringing him a fallen pheasant and placing it at his feet.
But then the flash of resentment this thought brought quickly faded as the coroner reached into his desk and drew on a pair of thin rubber gloves, and pulled the inner, plastic envelope free of the outer brown paper one. Carefully, he removed the sheet of paper from its protective covering and opened it out.
Eagerly, Trudy moved around his side of the desk so she could read it. This time, she was pleased to note, she couldn’t smell alcohol on him, which was a relief. She hadn’t liked to think that the old vulture might be a secret tippler or a bit of an old soak on the sly. Somehow, that would have diminished him irreparably in her eyes.
And that would have made her feel very sad.
The small, rectangular piece of paper that was now lying on the desk in front of them was pale lavender in colour, and the flowing feminine handwriting that covered it had been written in black ink. It was dated July 28th, 1955, and the printed letterhead bore the Fleet-Wright address.
Trudy’s heart beat faster as she read the few, simple lines.
‘I’m so sorry, but this simply can’t go on. I haven’t enough strength or courage. I only hope my family can forgive me. But life is simply no longer worth living.’
It was signed, simply, Gisela.
‘So it was suicide, after all!’ Trudy said, not sure whether to feel disappointed or elated that they had finally got to the truth of the matter.
For a long while, however, Dr Ryder said nothing. He reread the few lines a number of times, then sighed softly, and carefully put the piece of paper back into the plastic evidence bag.
Trudy watched him, feeling vaguely dissatisfied. She knew he wasn’t the most demonstrative of men, but she had expected him to be a little more animated than this. Maybe even just a little bit complimentary? She had, after all, just brought him the solution to the case on a platter, hadn’t she?
But she should have known better than to expect praise, she thought crossly. She was just going to have to get used to the fact that nothing she did would ever be good enough for her superiors – be they DIs, sergeants or civilians!
Then, telling herself that self-pity was unattractive, she distracted herself by confessing just what she had promised Glenda Gordon.
As expected, he didn’t approve, and showed no compunction about showing it. Oh, that’s typical, Trudy fumed silently. You do something wrong and they didn’t hesitate to jump on you like a ton of bricks.
‘You shouldn’t have done that, Constable. There’s no way Mrs Gordon can have this back tomorrow,’ Clement said, waving the letter briefly in the air. ‘And you’ll just have to tell her so.’
Trudy nodded glumly. It wasn’t a task she was looking forward to. ‘So what are you going to do with it?’ she asked curiously, nodding at the letter. ‘I suppose you can close the case now? And should I tell DI Jennings?’
‘Not just yet,’ Clement said, a shade sharply. ‘He’ll only reassign you to something useless and asinine, I have no doubt! And I don’t want to lose you just yet. There are still a few loose ends I need to tie up.’
‘Oh?’ Trudy said, feeling ridiculously pleased, but also puzzled. ‘Like what?’
‘I want you to find that witness who identified Jonathan McGillicuddy for a start. His details will be in the file, won’t they?’
‘Yes, they should be,’ Trudy agreed vaguely. ‘But why?’
‘I want you to find out all you can about him and ask him about that day. I’m curious as to why he thought it was Jonathan he saw robbing the delivery boy.’
Trudy sighed. She couldn’t see how that was relevant now, but she was game. Anything was better than walking the cold winter streets looking for bag-snatchers. ‘All right.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Is there anything else? Only I need to get back. Did I tell you our prime suspect, that gamekeeper I told you about, doesn’t look like such a sure thing any more?’
She was about to explain, but Clement dismissed her with a vague wave of his hand and she could see he clearly had other things on his mind. In fact, he seemed to be thinking very hard about something. She was beginning to recognise the look. And so, feeling vaguely disappointed, and with a definite sense of anticlimax, she left him to it, and pedalled, rather gloomily, back to the station house.
In his office, Clement sat in his chair, thinking furiously.
There was something glaringly wrong about that suicide note, and young Trudy, once she’d had a chance to think it through properly, would almost certainly come to the same conclusion. With a small grunt, he got up from the desk and headed towards the filing cabinet where he kept his briefcase. As he did so, he felt his foot snag on the rug in front of the window and stumbled forward slightly.
He glanced down, wondering if he’d started to drag his feet. Watching them as he continued walking to the cabinet, he decided he was walking just fine. He’d just tripped, that was all.
He retrieved his briefcase and hunted through it, finally finding what he was looking for, which was the postcard Gisela had sent her friend, and which he’d asked to keep when he and Trudy had interviewed her last week. Experience had taught him that it never hurt to accumulate as much evidence as you possibly could – even the kind that didn’t seem particularly promising or useful at the time. Because you never knew when it could suddenly become very significant indeed.
He looked at the card thoughtfully as he went back to his desk. It was of the usual seaside view, and Gisela had written the usual short lines of platitudes. But the light-hearted phrases didn’t matter – the handwriting did.
And although, when he compared the two examples side by side a minute later, they looked the same to his eyes, he willingly admitted to himself that his eyes were not those of a handwriting expert.
But this was Oxford, after all, and it took him only a few minutes on the telephone to find an obliging Don at St Cross College, who said he would be happy to compare them and give his expert opinion right away.
As he left the office with the two pieces of evidence in his hand, Dr Clement Ryder was smiling gently, the smile of a fox on the scent of a rather juicy, plump little partridge.
As he made his way to St Cross College, he wondered how WPC Loveday would get on with the little task he’d set her. Because, unless he was very much mistaken (and he hardly ever was), she was going to find locating and talking to the witness to the theft of the drugs rather more interesting than she’d ever supposed.
The following morning, Trudy grew increasingly annoyed with herself. She’d been given such a simple task, and with her very good, if reluctantly acquired, clerical skills, it should have been a snap. And yet, she simply couldn’t find Mr Malcolm Finch anywhere. Or any evidence he’d ever existed, for that matter.
First, she’d gone to his last-known address in Cowley, which he’d given in his witness statement, but the landlady there had firmly denied any knowledge of him. At Trudy’s gentle suggestion that she might have forgotten him, the good lady had puffed up like an indignant cat and told Trudy her memory was razor-sharp. To prove it, she’d even gone and fetched her record book for July 1955 and showed her the neat, handwritten ledger, wherein the name of Malcolm Finch was most definitely not to be found.
Fully vindicated, the triumphant landlady had seen her off, and Trudy, feeling a little shamefaced and vexed, had returned to the station and started out on a veritable blitz of paperwork.
But of Mr Malcolm Finch she could find no sign. She quickly discovered he had not, in fact, been employed in the place of work he had given in his official statement, and neither was he listed in any local census. He wasn’t registered to vote in the area and she could find no birth certificate for him that matched the date he’d given as his date of birth.
In short, it was quite clear that Mr Malcolm Finch, as a person, did not exist.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ Trudy muttered, slamming down the telephone on the water board, which had been the last company she’d contacted, to see if they’d issued any utility bill to a man of that name.
It was ten o’clock in the morning, and by now Trudy had the sneaking suspicion that Dr Ryder had known just what she would have to report back to him. That he had, in fact, deliberately sent her off on what he had known – or at least strongly suspected – to be a wild-goose chase.
With a growing sense of anger that she’d been taken for a mug, Trudy stalked out of the station house and set off for Floyds Row.
It was time she and the old vulture had a few words!
But when she got to his office, her nicely worked-up steam of self-righteous anger was unceremoniously nipped in the bud before she’d even had a chance to utter a single word. Because the moment she walked into his office, Clement looked at her and cried jubilantly, ‘It’s a fake!’
He was even openly grinning – something Trudy had never witnessed before. The crusty old coroner, actually looking happy!
‘What?’ Trudy said blankly.
Clement reached for the now-familiar evidence envelope, with its square of lavender notepaper. ‘This so-called suicide note,’ he scoffed. ‘It’s a fake. Gisela didn’t write it.’
Quickly he filled her in on his visit to the handwriting expert at St Cross, as Trudy slowly sank down onto the chair opposite him, wide-eyed and quivering.
‘And he was quite sure that, although the writing resembled that on the postcard,’ Clement concluded, ‘it was not the same hand. Though he did think it bore naturally occurring similarities – which is rather suggestive, don’t you think?’ Clement said pointedly.
But, for the moment, the point was clearly lost on her, because all she said was, ‘So it was murder, after all!’
‘Not necessarily,’ he muttered. But apart from giving him a sudden, sharp glance, Trudy didn’t comment. In truth, she was beginning to worry she would only make a fool of herself if she said anything else. All along, as the case had progressed, she’d become more and more aware that this clever man was always one step ahead of her. Which only made her more determined than ever to raise her game. After all, she didn’t want to play the bumbling Doctor Watson to his Sherlock Holmes forever!
Take this latest development, for instance. Surely, if the suicide note was a fake, Gisela hadn’t written it. And if she hadn’t written it, then someone else had. And if someone else had, they’d done it in order to make her death look like a suicide. Which left only murder, didn’t it? Given all they’d learned, it had to be murder, right? To her, the logic seemed impeccable. Yet Dr Ryder didn’t seem to think so – or else why make such a cryptic comment?
For a while she sat in simple, miserable silence. Because no matter how she twi
sted the facts, she still couldn’t see it – whatever it was. And, boy, did that make her feel cross!
Clement, looking at her over the width of his desk, felt his lips twitch and had to fight back a sudden desire to laugh. She looked so forlorn, and yet slightly simmering underneath – like a wet hen, contemplating a good pecking of somebody’s ankles.
It was clearly time to snap the young miss out of her self-pity and doubt, so he said briskly, ‘Now you’ve had time to think about it, did anything strike you as odd about the note? Not that it was a forgery,’ he added quickly, as she looked about to erupt angrily. ‘There was no way you could have known that. I didn’t know it myself until I’d had an expert check it. I mean, was there anything about the note itself you didn’t like?’
Trudy sighed. ‘Yes. When I was in bed last night thinking about it,’ she admitted wearily, ‘I realised it was rather short, and not very well written. Or dramatic. I mean, Gisela was a student of English literature, and I’d have expected her last words to be more…I don’t know. But certainly not so prosaic and ordinary.’
Clement nodded. Yes, he’d known the girl would get there. She was really quite intelligent – just green and inexperienced. Give her time, and she would make quite a good detective. If that fool of a boss of hers ever woke up to the fact and gave her something decent to work on, that was.
‘Go on,’ he encouraged.
Trudy straightened slightly in her chair. ‘I would have expected the note to either go on and on about her feelings, justifying herself and her actions because of how desperate she felt, or maybe be angrier and more accusing. Putting the blame for her fate on someone else – her mother, Jonathan, anyone,’ Trudy said.
‘Yes. That’s what struck me too.’
‘And that’s why you thought it must be a fake?’
Clement shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t say it was as definite as that,’ he temporised. ‘Let’s just say, I thought it would be prudent to find out one way or the other. So…’ he said briskly, glad to see she’d got a little sparkle back in her dark-brown eyes. ‘…Let’s recap. Your PC Gordon…’ Trudy winced at being grouped together with the bent police officer, but said nothing. ‘…Arrives at the scene and finds a young girl dead in her bed. On the table beside her – or on the bed, or somewhere nearby – he finds a suicide note, and sees the medication bottles by her bed. He instantly leaps to the obvious conclusion. Agree with me so far?’