A Fatal Obsession

by Faith Martin

  ‘You had no right to interfere! How dare you, you, you worthless, stupid woman!’ He was almost vibrating with repressed fury, and his fists clenched and unclenched at his sides.

  Now Trudy finally understood what it meant when someone was described as ‘being beside themselves with rage’.

  ‘Rex!’ Beatrice cried.

  ‘Oh, why did you have to go and spoil it all?’ he wailed. ‘I knew something was wrong that day she died. I just knew you’d been up to something, but I thought you only…’ He stopped suddenly, and swayed a little.

  Dressed in black trousers with a knitted Fair Isle sweater in deep cream, he suddenly went as pale as his jersey and reached out and steadied himself against his mother’s chair. ‘If only I’d known what she wanted…’

  ‘Why don’t you tell us about the day your sister died, Rex?’ Clement interposed gently. ‘You were here at home that day, weren’t you?’

  The question seemed to pull him back to the present, and he turned to look at the coroner scornfully. ‘Oh, yes, I was here,’ he admitted with a grim smile. ‘Mother thought I was out playing somewhere with my friends. But I wasn’t.’

  ‘Do you have many friends, Rex?’ Clement asked curiously, watching the young man closely. He was breathing hard and clearly struggling to keep very strong emotions in check. Obviously the same malady that had so dogged his sister had found another victim to torment. Hereditary, perhaps?

  His mother shifted uneasily in her chair, suddenly sensing that the worst was not over yet, but unable to put her finger on exactly where the danger lay. But that didn’t hinder her instinct to try and protect her child. ‘Rex,’ she warned softly, but her son moved abruptly away from her, as if she was tainted, and flung himself down onto a hard chair near the window, where he could watch all the occupants of the room with a baleful eye.

  ‘No, not really,’ he finally answered the old man’s question.

  ‘Is that because they don’t like you, Rex?’ Clement asked dryly. ‘Or is there just nobody good enough for you, that you want to hang around with?’

  Rex snorted. ‘The latter, of course! Only Gisela really understood me.’ Then he laughed. It was a rather high-pitched laugh that instantly grated on Trudy’s nerves – a bit like when someone scratched a blackboard with their nails. ‘And the former too, I expect,’ he owned sourly, with what Clement thought was probably a rare moment of insight for the boy.

  Clement smiled and nodded. ‘Not that it mattered, right? You were quite happy being on your own.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I liked to read – science fiction mostly. And ghost stories sometimes.’ Rex shrugged. ‘It took me away from all this…’ He waved a hand around the room. ‘…Dull suburbia. You have no idea how we hated it.’

  ‘We? You mean you and your sister?’

  ‘Gisela didn’t belong here any more than I did,’ Rex stated scornfully. ‘She belonged in Monte Carlo, winning a fortune at the baccarat tables. Or in Hollywood, vamping James Dean. She adored James Dean. She always thought that oaf, McGillicuddy, looked a bit like him.’ Rex snorted again. ‘I tried to tell her he wasn’t good enough for her and that she was wasting herself on him.’

  He looked petulant now, and Trudy began to wonder, a shade uneasily, if he was, as her old gran would have put it, ‘playing with a full deck of cards’.

  ‘But Gisela wouldn’t listen to you,’ Clement guessed softly.

  ‘No. I… I couldn’t make her see it,’ he agreed miserably. ‘She only saw his good looks. And went on and on about how he’d been touched by tragedy – marrying young, being widowed young, and nobly bringing up that little brat of his.’

  On her chair, Beatrice again shifted uneasily. ‘Rex, you know you don’t have to answer this man’s questions. In fact, I think…’

  ‘I don’t care what you think, Mother,’ Rex interrupted rudely and brutally, his blazing green eyes radiating utter scorn. ‘Neither did Gisela. In fact, we both used to sit up in her bedroom laughing at you. At both of you. Father was just as bad.’

  Beatrice flinched.

  ‘You and your sister were close,’ Clement swept on, taking advantage of the boy’s inability to listen to good advice when it was offered to him. He knew he needed to keep the boy talking before Beatrice had the chance to rally sufficiently and chuck them out. ‘How you must have suffered when she suffered,’ he added sympathetically.

  ‘I did! I did! And I tried to help her when that brute, that utter bastard, McGillicuddy dropped her,’ Rex ranted. ‘But I couldn’t reach her. I couldn’t help her or stop her from slipping down and down.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell us about that day she died,’ Clement said softly.

  ‘No!’ Beatrice said sharply.

  ‘I saw her,’ Rex shouted, overriding his mother’s objections and instead fixing his stare on the old man. He at least seemed to understand the gross unfairness of what had been done. ‘I saw her lying on the bed – so quiet and still and beautiful. I had been reading comics in my bedroom but I had the door ajar, and saw Mother go into her room. And it stayed so quiet. I couldn’t hear them talking, so I was curious. And when I saw Mother leave a long while later and go downstairs – in order to telephone Father and the doctor, as it turned out – I went into her room.’

  ‘Oh, Rex, no. You never said!’ his mother wailed.

  Ignoring her totally, his eyes still fixed on the coroner, the young man slunk back a bit in the chair, his eyes taking on a dreamy look. Clement risked a quick glance at Trudy, relieved to see she was still busily taking everything down that was being said.

  He gave a brief, sharp nod. Good. They were going to need her notes later.

  ‘I saw her lying there and I just knew she was dead. And then I saw the note. A note, I should say, and one I now know she didn’t even write. Oh, hell! I should have realised at once she hadn’t written it,’ he said with utter self-disgust. ‘I was such a fool! Such a stingy, emotionless, drab little note!’ he glowered at his mother bitterly.

  ‘I couldn’t even cry for her, not then,’ he went on quietly. ‘I just stood there, looking down at her. Knowing she was gone. Knowing I’d never hear her voice or see her smile. She meant everything to me – she was the only thing that made living in this hellhole of a world worthwhile,’ he declared, oblivious of the absurd melodrama he was spouting. ‘I wanted to shout at her and shake her and ask her why she hadn’t taken me with her. That’s what hurt the most, you know,’ he added, almost conversationally, turning to glance at the old man to make sure he properly understood. ‘I’d have done it, you know,’ he said, shouting once more into his poor mother’s appalled face. ‘If she’d told me what she was going to do, we could have gone together.’

  ‘A suicide pact?’ Clement sighed, shaking his head.

  ‘Why not?’ Rex insisted savagely. ‘Instead, there I was, left there all on my own. She could be a selfish little cow sometimes,’ he said, but his tone of voice was admiring more than annoyed – as if he approved of such self-absorption.

  ‘And how old were you then?’

  Rex shrugged the question aside, as if his youth had been of no importance. ‘I heard Mother coming back and scarpered just in time. I slipped out of the house when the doctor came and pretended to come back home not long after Father.’ Rex suddenly laughed. ‘Later, when I heard the version of events she gave to the police, I knew she and Father had been up to something, concocting some stupid story, because they made no mention of the suicide note. It only took a little while to figure out they were covering it up because they didn’t want a scandal!’

  He shouted the last word at his mother with such hatred and vitriol that even Trudy recoiled. ‘As if she wasn’t worth a scandal. As if she didn’t deserve to be talked about and mourned and fêted and… I’d have shouted it from the rooftops if I could. She was dead! Gisela was dead and the whole world should have mourned. Instead, her parents came up with this pathetic little story about too many pills taken accidentally. Talk about going out,
“not with a bang, but with a whimper”!’

  He shook his head, his eyes glittering with what looked, to Trudy, to be utter madness. ‘I thought at the time it was all so pathetic! But now I know just how truly and to what extent Gisela was robbed. By you!’ He sprang up, his fists clenched, as his mother shrank back in her chair. ‘You had no right to do that! Don’t you see, even now, you utterly worthless fool, what you did? What she had planned was glorious! It was clever and so perfect! If you’d just let well enough alone, that man would have hanged for what he did to her! But, oh no! You had to go and spoil it all! You had to let her down! Like always.’

  ‘But you didn’t let her down, did you, Rex?’ Clement said, raising his voice to almost a shout now as he saw the boy was about to throw himself at his mother. Trudy tensed, waiting and willing to spring into action if he went so far as to attack Beatrice.

  But the coroner’s words got through to him, and instead he turned and stared at the old man, wild-eyed. Clement nodded. ‘It’s obvious you were the only one here to really understand her,’ he said soothingly. ‘You were like kindred spirits, you and Gisela, am I right? We’ve spoken to her friends and they all told us how close you were.’

  Trudy thought back to some of the descriptions they’d been given of Gisela’s twisted and unhealthy relationship with her younger brother, and shuddered. But she was wise enough not to speak.

  ‘We were close. She loved me – she was the only one who did,’ Rex whispered.

  At this, Beatrice gave a small moan of pain, but Clement was sure, even now, that she still didn’t realise the true horror of what was to come.

  ‘And when she died, you weren’t going to just leave it at that, were you, Rex? Let the family cover it up and bury her, almost guiltily, as if she was worth nothing.’

  ‘Hell, no! If only I’d known what her plan had been, I’d have helped her!’ he cried. ‘I’d never have let Mother ruin it all. I’d have made sure he paid, just like she intended.’

  ‘But you were only young,’ Clement said gently. ‘A boy, still. There wasn’t much you could do. Not then.’

  ‘No, you’re right. I had to wait.’

  ‘And not just wait,’ Clement said gently. ‘You did some serious thinking, didn’t you, Rex? All these years, you’ve been making your plans. And very clever plans they were too. Plans to avenge your sister.’

  ‘What?’ Beatrice said faintly.

  Trudy shot the coroner a quick look.

  Rex began to smile widely. ‘Oh, yes. I made plans,’ he agreed dreamily.

  ‘You weren’t going to let your sister’s murderer get away with it, were you, Rex?’ Clement said. ‘Because that’s how you thought of him, wasn’t it? As far as you knew, she’d killed herself for love of him, and he’d never been worthy of her. And he couldn’t be allowed to get away with it, could he?’

  ‘No, of course he couldn’t,’ Rex agreed, sounding petulant and impatient at such a silly question.

  ‘So what did you do? Just how did you figure it all out? Start with Marcus Deering,’ Clement encouraged. ‘That was really clever. How did you even know about him? That he was Jonathan’s real father, I mean?’ As he spoke, he glanced at Trudy, glad to see that, once again, she was scribbling away furiously.

  ‘Oh, that was easy. Gisela was curious about everything concerning her beloved Jonathan,’ Rex sneered. ‘And she couldn’t stand it that he was so incurious about the father he’d never known. I don’t think she ever believed his mother’s story that he was some ignorant toiler on the land, stupid enough to let a tractor roll on him and kill him. She always told me Jonathan had a “noble” head, and too much breeding to be the offspring of two poor specimens like his mother and some mere peasant. And she was right!’

  Clement nodded. ‘She snooped around his home, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes. At first she found a clue in his mother’s bankbook. Going back years, a regular amount being paid in. Clearly it had to be for child maintenance. And then, she found some love letters in a hidden drawer in Mrs McGillicuddy’s jewellery box. Letters Deering had written to her years ago, when he was still smitten.’

  ‘And Gisela told you all about it, her confidant and beloved little brother?’ Clement nodded.

  ‘Oh, yes, she had to crow about it. And what’s more, she only told me! She didn’t even tell him! I think she planned to surprise him with the knowledge later, when she felt the time was right. But then he left her! Just how stupid was he? How could any man leave her?’ he raged. ‘Anyway…’ He took a deep breath, smiling in reminiscence. ‘She bragged about it to me for ages after she found out. I said big deal – it hardly made him little Lord Fauntleroy, did it? Sir Marcus was only knighted for services to industry. But she said it proved her point – that Jonathan had inherited his father’s brains and gumption. Hah! He was running a penny ante gardening business. But Gisela still insisted on seeing him as Prince Charming.’

  Clement nodded, needing to move things on quickly before they lost momentum. ‘So, once you’d grown up a bit, and had time to make your plans, you decided it was time to avenge Gisela.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But what made you think of the anonymous letters?’ Clement said.

  Trudy’s heart fluttered. Was it possible…?

  ‘Oh, that was simple,’ Rex crowed. ‘Once I’d looked into Deering, I got my first idea of how I could kill McGillicuddy and get away with it. It was so ridiculously simple – misdirection!’

  Beatrice stared at her son as if at a stranger. Luckily, though, for the moment she seemed incapable of speech.

  ‘Misdirection?’ Clement echoed quickly, knowing it was vital he keep the boy talking, and boasting, about his cleverness. ‘Like a magician? Get everyone looking in the wrong place? That way, when McGillicuddy was murdered, nobody would be looking at your family. As they might have done otherwise. After all, McGillicuddy didn’t have any other enemies, did he? He’d only wronged you and yours.’

  ‘Exactly. You’re a clever man, Dr Ryder,’ Rex complimented him. ‘I needed to make sure, when McGillicuddy died, that the police were looking in the wrong place for his killer. So I began writing the anonymous notes to Sir Marcus, threatening to kill his son if he didn’t do the right thing. Naturally, I knew everyone would assume the notes were referring to his legitimate son, Anthony.’

  ‘But when Jonathan died, you knew his connection to Sir Marcus would be made, and then everyone would think they were looking for a killer with a grudge against the Deering family,’ Clement said, forcing an admiring smile onto his face. ‘Yes, that was very clever. And that thing about the warehouse fire was a gift, wasn’t it? It trailed another smelly red herring right across the case.’

  ‘Oh, that!’ Rex laughed. ‘You know, I never even knew about that until I saw that piece of Deering’s in the local paper. Going on about how sorry he was about it!’

  ‘I’m not quite sure I follow,’ Clement said.

  Rex sighed, as if disappointed he wasn’t keeping up. ‘When I wrote the notes, I needed something that was pointed enough to sound threatening, but vague enough to mean anything. And “do the right thing” was just something I came up with.’ He laughed. ‘After all, the man had risen from virtually nothing to become a bigwig millionaire. You don’t get to do that without doing something that might tweak your conscience a bit, right? All these fat-cat entrepreneurs are the same. Ruthless, money-grabbing parasites.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I see.’ Clement almost gave a genuine smile at this little bit of cynical – but accurate – psychology. ‘And so, with all the police attention focused on them and on protecting Anthony, the actual killing of Jonathan presented no problem for you at all, did it?’ Clement put in silkily. ‘In fact, I was wondering if it might not have felt like a bit of an anticlimax?’

  Rex nodded and gave a smile that made Trudy feel slightly sick. ‘You know, you’re quite right. All I had to do was follow him to that garden that day and, when the time was right, creep up behind
him, pick up his spade from the ground and…’

  ‘Oh, Rex, no!’ Beatrice wailed.

  Her son merely shot her a cynical, dismissive smile.

  ‘Did he even know it was coming?’ Clement asked casually.

  ‘No,’ Rex said, looking almost shamefaced for the first time. ‘I wanted him to!’ he said fiercely, ‘But… I wasn’t sure, you see, if it came to a straight fight, that I would win. He was bigger than me, and with all that manual work he was used to doing…’

  Rex shrugged.

  ‘Ah…’ Now Clement understood why the young man had temporarily lost his cocky, crowing attitude. ‘So, in the end, you had to settle for a rather ordinary method of dispatching him. How disappointing for you.’

  Rex flushed sullenly.

  ‘So you hit him on the back of the head and, after he went down, hit him another couple of times, just to make sure he was dead? You were careful not to leave any fingerprints,’ he mused, ignoring the scornful snort Rex gave, ‘and you probably disposed of the clothes you were wearing, just in case?’

  ‘Burned them on a bonfire,’ Rex admitted cheerfully. ‘So there were no giveaway blood splatters or little clues. I have read Agatha Christie, you know. Not even Hercule Poirot could find the evidence to prove what I’d done.’

  ‘And with the police still looking for a killer interested in Deering, nobody was even looking your way,’ Clement finished. ‘Yes, it was all very clever. Congratulations,’ he added dryly.

  Beatrice Fleet-Wright began to cry bitterly as her world finally and irrevocably came tumbling down around her.

  Her monstrous son eyed her without pity.

  ‘I expect you’d like to make a full statement now?’ Clement said briskly. And as the young man visibly hesitated, taken aback by his matter-of-fact manner, Clement smiled widely. ‘After all, Rex, you’ve been so clever that unless you confess, it might all get swept under the carpet again.’ He pointed at the broken woman weeping in her chair. ‘If the police can find no evidence against you, your parents will make sure of that. They’ll hire some clever legal types and nobody will ever know you committed the perfect murder. But, more importantly, nobody will ever know what Gisela did. Just think of it, Rex,’ Clement growled softly. ‘Standing up in open court, with all the newspaper reporters there, hanging on your every word. How she would have loved the drama of it! And you, telling them how magnificent she was – how utterly out of the ordinary. After all, how many of them, all those dull little trolls sitting in the public gallery, or even working from the defence or prosecution benches, would ever have been able to do what she did?’