A Fatal Affair

by Faith Martin

  Clement nodded. ‘Well, thanks. You’ve been very helpful.’ He started to rise, then stopped. ‘Oh … just supposing he did keep a journal, you wouldn’t have any idea where he might have kept it, would you?’

  Ronnie, who’d just begun to think the ordeal was over, blinked, then looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We didn’t find it amongst his personal effects,’ Clement explained patiently. As yet, they hadn’t asked the Finch family if they’d come across any such item at the family home, but it seemed unlikely they had. Had the boy’s father found it, he would have produced it at the inquest, especially if, as they suspected, David had been using it to jot down information about his investigations.

  ‘Did David have a favourite hiding place when you were boys?’ Trudy put in helpfully. ‘You know, in a hole in a tree, or under a large stone, or hidden somewhere here, on the farm?’

  ‘Oh, I see what you mean,’ Ronnie said, already shaking his head. ‘To be honest, I never did like that hiding game as a kid. We made the usual “dens” in the woods, and there’s an old abandoned pigsty that we used to pretend was a Roman fort – but it would be too open to the elements to hide something made out of paper.’

  After they made their farewells, Ronnie watched the car drive away, biting his lower lip nervously.

  Was it possible David had kept a journal?

  He felt the sweat begin to prickle on his forehead and on his palms and he began to feel physically sick.

  If he had been keeping a record of what had been happening in his life in the past few months … what the hell might he have he written down in it?

  Chapter 23

  Janet Baines felt both surprised and worried when Trudy and Clement pushed open the gate to her front garden and started up the path. Luckily, she’d been sitting in the window seat overlooking the small garden that fronted the house, and was thus able to bolt out into the hallway and open the door before they had a chance to ring the bell.

  She had hoped that they’d been satisfied with what she’d had to say the last time, and that she wouldn’t have to go through it all over again, and she felt a flash of anger shoot through her, that she quickly suppressed.

  As she stepped outside, she was careful to close the door behind her, preventing them from entering the house and surprising Trudy by the hostility implied in the action.

  Then she smiled uncertainly and said, ‘Mum’s in the kitchen preparing our lunch. Hope you don’t mind, but I’d rather we didn’t disturb her. She can get … well, rather emotional about things sometimes. I don’t want to get her upset if we can avoid it.’

  Trudy nodded, at once seeing Janet’s point of view. It was hardly surprising that she was anxious to keep her mother out of her business; who could blame her? After only having met the woman once, she had had no doubts that she was the kind of woman who liked to know where her daughter was, and what she was doing, every minute of the day. And that must surely be very wearing on a person’s nerves. ‘That sounds like a good idea. Is there somewhere private we could talk?’ she asked with a conspiratorial smile.

  Janet nodded, casting a quick glance nervously over her shoulder. ‘We can go around the side of the house and sit under the apple tree.’

  She led them through the large and well-maintained garden, blooming with columbines and forget-me-nots, wine-red peonies and a rather magnificent double lilac in full and fragrant bloom, to a spot under a blossoming fruit tree. Clement fastidiously brushed aside a few stray twigs and leaves before sitting down on the garden bench that was placed there, with Trudy next to him in the middle, and Janet on the far end.

  ‘We’ve just been talking to Ronnie Dewberry,’ Trudy began, not missing the quick glance Janet threw at them. As Janet flushed slightly and refused to meet her eyes, Trudy wondered, not for the first time, if there might not be something going on between this pretty young girl and the farmer’s son.

  ‘Oh? Is he all right?’ Janet asked casually.

  ‘Well, he misses his best friend,’ Trudy said lightly, ‘but yes, he’s fine. We wanted to ask him something about David.’

  Since she was sitting so close to her on the bench, Trudy was able to feel the way Janet stiffened slightly. Perhaps aware of that, she raised a hand to her face and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear and tried to shift a little further along the bench. Unfortunately, it was a snug fit, and she didn’t quite manage it. ‘Oh?’ she finally managed.

  ‘Did Iris ever mention David keeping a diary?’ Trudy asked mildly. As the other girl had tried to shift away, she had moved very slightly closer, so that the tops of their arms were pressed tightly together, and there was no mistaking the shock the question had given her. Trudy felt it like a quick electrical quiver run through her that came and went in a flash. When she turned to look sharply at Janet’s profile, however, her expression gave nothing away.

  But Trudy knew what she’d felt.

  ‘Iris didn’t really talk about David much,’ Janet heard herself lie, and was almost impressed with the casual honesty of her tone. She hadn’t realised, until now, just how well she could act a part. It had always been her best friend who had been so skilled at subterfuge.

  Aware that they were still waiting for an answer, she shrugged lightly. ‘Iris liked to talk about herself and her plans for the future, and what she was doing, and what she wanted, and things like that. Other people didn’t really interest her – unless they could be useful to her, I suppose.’

  Which was all true enough, Janet mused, with an inner smile.

  ‘She sounds like she was a bit full of herself,’ Trudy commented.

  Janet sighed. ‘I suppose she was, in a way. But you didn’t really mind. It’s hard to explain, but she made you feel so alive. You could never be bored with Iris. She was so cheerful and … I don’t know … like a force of nature. You could believe somehow that she really could take on the world and win, somehow. Being with her was exciting … I suppose that’s why all the boys wanted to date her,’ she finished with a wry smile.

  ‘David was beating them off with a stick, was he?’ Trudy teased lightly.

  ‘I suppose he was, yes. And Iris loved it when he got jealous.’

  ‘And she gave him a lot of reasons to be jealous, or so we keep hearing. And it wasn’t just the young, single, unattached men either, was it?’ Trudy carried on, again careful to keep her tone light.

  ‘Oh you mean the older men … that wasn’t anything serious, it was just silly flirting. The men in this village …’ Janet sighed and gave a brief bark of laughter. ‘Well, men can be so silly about girls who like to josh them along a bit, can’t they? Some of them might have taken it a bit too seriously, but Iris would always put them in their place if they did.’

  ‘I don’t suppose their wives liked it much though,’ Trudy said with another light laugh.

  ‘No, but Iris didn’t care about them,’ Janet said off-handedly. ‘She called them boring old housewives. She always said she’d never get married or have a brood of children … and now she won’t, will she?’

  Trudy glanced at her profile, a little surprised by the lack of sympathy in her tone, but again Janet’s face was bland and unhelpful.

  ‘So you don’t know anything about a diary or a journal that David might have kept?’ Trudy returned to the attack, aware that she had allowed the conversation to get slightly off track.

  ‘First I’ve heard of it,’ Janet lied blithely. Inside, she felt proud of herself. There really was nothing to this acting lark, she thought, almost scornfully. Anybody could do it, if they tried. You just had to pretend that things were different, that was all. And to think of all the fuss Iris made about how hard it was to be a great actress!

  ‘And you’ve no idea where he might have kept it, if he had been keeping a record of his life?’

  ‘Sorry?’ Janet said, only having caught the tail end of the question, so caught up had she been in her own personal reverie.

  ‘It’s just that D
avid might not have wanted to keep a private journal at home, say, where his mother might find it. We were wondering if you knew where he might have hidden it where it would be safe?’ Trudy elaborated.

  Janet’s heart gave another little leap, but her shoulders gave a nonchalant shrug. ‘Sorry, but I’d have no idea. Although we all went to school together, I wasn’t close to David,’ she murmured, turning her face away to glance at a robin, peering down at the lawn for anything six-legged that might be moving through the stems of grass. Although she was gaining in confidence, she thought it wise not to look either of her two visitors in the face. The girl seemed rather nice and blissfully clueless, but the quiet, thoughtful Dr Ryder had alarmingly penetrating eyes.

  ‘All right. Well thanks for your time,’ Trudy said, sounding a little disappointed.

  ‘That’s all right,’ Janet said, with rather more obvious relief than she would have liked. She got up with them and walked them around the side of the house and back to the front garden. At the gate to the lane she gave them a brief smile then turned and made her way back towards the house. All the while her knees had felt a little stiff, and she was sure she must be walking awkwardly. She was almost convinced that she could feel both sets of their eyes boring into her back, right between her shoulder blades; but knew that was probably just her guilty conscience playing her up. And sure enough, when she dared to glance back she saw that they were nowhere in sight.

  But just in case they might be watching her through a gap in the hedge or something, she opened the front door and went inside, shutting the door gratefully behind her. Her heart pounding, she leaned on it for a few moments, taking deep, calming breaths.

  Although lying to them the way she’d just done had felt surprisingly wonderful, the strain of it had also taken a toll. Grimly, she wondered if Iris had been right when she used to mock her and call her a goody-two-shoes who’d never be able to have any fun in life.

  ‘Hello love, did I hear the front door?’ her mother’s voice came through from the kitchen, making her almost jump out of her skin.

  ‘No, it’s just me. I thought I heard the postman, but it was nothing. I’m going upstairs to read, Mum.’

  ‘All right, love. Lunch will be at twelve.’

  Janet ignored this, and went upstairs, her legs still feeling curiously rubbery beneath her.

  She clutched her secret close, savouring it like a miser gleefully savours the feel of gold. Because, of course, Iris had long since told her all about not only David’s diary, but also about his habit of using other little notebooks too, that he used to keep on him to write down ideas or thoughts as and when they occurred to him. It was probably the budding engineer in him, Janet had supposed, but Iris often laughed about it. ‘Really, Jan-Jan, I wonder what on earth he ever finds to write about! He’s so boring, and his life is so boring, and everything here is so boring …’

  As she threw herself on her bed and lay staring up at the ceiling, Janet could almost hear her dead friend’s voice in the actual room, so clear did it sound.

  Trust Iris to make a joke about something so private, Janet mused now. She’d asked Iris once if she’d ever read David’s personal diary, but her friend had denied it. She’d said she was hardly interested – she knew all there was to know about him anyway.

  Which was probably true, Janet concluded, her lips twisting into a grim smile. If there was one thing you could say about Iris, it was that she had a way of learning everybody’s little secrets … especially those of the opposite sex.

  She turned onto her side, wondering if Ronnie had any secrets … But the thought displeased her, so she pushed it away and concentrated instead on the here and now.

  For a long time she lay on the bed, forcing herself to relax, to try and calm down, and to think rationally. But it wasn’t easy. She felt so excited! For it was slowly dawning on her that for once in her boring life she knew something that nobody else did. And with it, came a feeling of power.

  Which was a unique feeling indeed for Janet.

  Normally her mother always knew best, or Iris had the upper hand, or the old dragon at the shop was lording it over her, or, well, anybody else in her life, if it came to that. All her life, she’d done as she was told, and been a good girl, and played everything safe.

  And now it felt just so deliciously heady and wonderful to feel as if she might have the upper hand at last.

  Possibly.

  Slowly Janet sat up and hugged her knees under her chin. She needed to think. Really think. She had to be very careful about what she did next. Very careful indeed.

  Chapter 24

  ‘Was it me, or do you think Janet is getting over Iris’s death pretty quickly?’ Trudy asked. They were walking away from the Baines’ cottage and further into the village, where the Finch family lived.

  ‘No, I got the feeling her mind was on other things too,’ Clement said.

  ‘She nearly jumped out of her skin when I mentioned David’s diary,’ Trudy said. ‘I’m sure she—’

  ‘Sssshhh,’ Clement hissed a warning, but he had a feeling he was too late. Three children, two girls and a boy, aged between eight and ten or so, suddenly shot out of the bushes where they’d been hiding, and ran off giggling.

  ‘Oh damn!’ Trudy said in frustration. ‘Do you think they heard me?’

  Clement sighed. ‘I’m afraid so.’

  Trudy could have kicked herself. She knew how villages worked. Before tea-time, the entire inhabitants of Middle Fenton would be talking about the dead boy’s diary.

  ‘It probably won’t matter,’ Clement tried to console her. ‘So far, we only have Mortimer Crowley’s word that it ever existed.’ Inside, though, he couldn’t help but feel a little uneasy. If the journal or some sort of notebook did exist, then there was a good chance that its contents might just pose a threat to whoever had strangled the May Queen; and more and more he was inclined to believe that that somebody was not David Finch.

  So once the killer got to hear the rumours about the possibility of the journal’s existence, they’d surely become desperate to get their hands on it, and that thought wasn’t a pretty one. Especially since Clement was inclined to believe that the person who had murdered Iris Carmody in such a dramatic way must have been in a very emotional state to begin with. To give vent to his (or her?) feelings in such a way that he needed to leave the poor girl’s body trussed to the maypole in full public view, spoke of a very disturbed mentality indeed. The act screamed of someone crazed with love, rage or despair – or maybe a combination of all three.

  And he doubted that such high emotions could easily be repressed. Now that they would soon have to add fear to the mix, the combination could turn the killer even more volatile. Because when a killer feared for their safety …

  ‘I wish we had our hands on that damned diary,’ Clement muttered.

  Trudy nodded. She wished she hadn’t been so careless as to talk about the case out in the open in the village. She’d certainly never do so again – that particular lesson was well and truly learned. She should have realised that their presence was bound to attract the curiosity of the village children, and learning what they were doing would be high on any kiddie’s list. The bragging rights it would give them with their friends would be phenomenal.

  She felt distinctly deflated as they made their way to the Finch residence in taut silence, and tried to snap out of her gloomy mood as Clement knocked briskly on the door. Castigating herself wasn’t going to help anyone or anything, and she couldn’t let herself get distracted. As Dr Ryder had just pointed out, they needed to find that diary of David’s and his parents were likely to be their best chance of doing so.

  She was expecting Mrs Finch to answer the door again, and was therefore very disconcerted, when the door swung open, to find herself in the presence of Superintendent Finch himself. Not that she’d ever met him in person, but she recognised him from when he’d given his evidence at the coroner’s court.

  She felt herself i
nstinctively straighten to attention. ‘Sir,’ she said smartly. She was half-expecting him to barely acknowledge her, so used was she to men in authority always seeking out other men in authority to engage with first. So she felt utterly stunned when her superior officer’s face creased into a welcoming smile, and he reached out his hand to her.

  ‘WPC Loveday, I’m very glad to see you. Congratulations! I can’t tell you how pleased I am by your progress. Come on in and tell me all about it. I knew I was right to ask you two to investigate David’s case!’

  Trudy blinked and shot Clement a baffled look. Congratulations? On what, exactly – and what progress had they made?

  Clement shot her back an equally blank stare and gave an almost imperceptible shrug of his shoulders.

  Feeling full of trepidation, Trudy stepped into the Superintendent’s hallway and followed him through to the small front room. There was no sign of his wife, and he indicated a pair of armchairs impatiently as he took a seat on a small sofa.

  ‘I can’t tell you how glad I was to get DI Jennings’s call last night,’ he swept on. ‘That was a very clever piece of deductive reasoning, Constable,’ he added, running a hand over his face. In spite of his ebullient mood, he looked tired and pale, and Trudy felt her heart go out to him, even as her mind scrabbled to understand what this was all about.

  ‘Er, thank you, sir,’ she said, a shade helplessly. Although she reported to the station every morning, that morning DI Jennings hadn’t been in his office, so she was literally in the dark.

  ‘Although in itself the evidence isn’t conclusive, it’s certainly suggestive. Oh yes, I think we can say that. Certainly it’s cast the verdict of suicide into doubt.’

  Trudy gulped, realising that she could put it off no longer – there was nothing else for it. She was just going to have to admit, humiliatingly, that she had no idea what the Superintendent was talking about, and feel like a perfect fool. Just when she was already still kicking herself for her earlier mistake with the village children, too.