A Fatal Night

by Faith Martin

  ‘No, not really,’ she finally said. And now Trudy was sure she could sense caution in the woman’s manner. ‘I met him last year … No, sorry, of course we’re into a new year now, aren’t we, so it’ll be the year before last. I’m sorry, I don’t seem to be … Oh, Jasper, thank you.’

  Her green eyes fastened on her returning son like a drowning woman spotting a ship in the distance. She reached out with unsteady hands for the cup he held, and Trudy wasn’t surprised to hear the cup rattling against the saucer as she drew it towards her.

  Somewhat to Trudy’s surprise, her son sat down beside Millie, gently took the crockery from her and helped guide the cup to her lips. ‘Come on, old girl, take a small sip and then tell me what’s up then, hmmm?’ he asked.

  He shot Trudy a savage glance, then Clement a more thoughtful one.

  ‘Oh Jasper, something t-terrible happened,’ she said. ‘T … one of our guests crashed his car on his way home last night. Oh, darling, he’s dead.’

  For a moment Trudy saw an extraordinary expression cross the young man’s face. That whatever feeling had prompted it went deep, and was ferocious, she had no doubt, but she couldn’t for the life of her have placed it. Anger? Fear? Hope? Guilt? It might have been any of these, or a combination of all of them, or none of them.

  ‘What do you mean? Who are you talking about? Who’s dead?’ Jasper demanded, but he was not looking at his mother. Rather he was looking at Trudy. His face was now perfectly composed, but his grey eyes seemed to darken in shade a little.

  ‘Mr Terrence Parker,’ Trudy said simply.

  Jasper blinked once, then again, and both Trudy and Clement who were watching him closely, saw his lips curl into a faint smile.

  ‘Is he now?’ Jasper said evenly.

  Chapter 8

  For a moment there was a long, odd sort of silence. Jasper was clearly thinking furiously, whilst his mother’s glazed expression said she was probably not thinking at all. Clement was watching the young man with a carefully neutral face, and Trudy wondered what she should do and say next.

  On the one hand, she was here simply to get details about their victim, and begin the preliminary investigation. Apart from Clement not being sure that Terrence Parker’s dilated pupils could definitely be attributed to a brain injury of some sort, she had absolutely no reason to suspect that they were dealing with anything other than a tragic but (in the circumstances) understandable road fatality.

  But instinct and observation was telling her in no uncertain terms that something odd was going on here.

  ‘Can you remember what time Mr Parker left the party last night, sir?’ Trudy fished delicately, turning her attention to Jasper Vander.

  ‘Can’t say that I do,’ Jasper said unhelpfully, holding the cup to his mother’s lips again, giving her no option but to take another sip.

  ‘Did you know him well?’ Trudy persevered.

  ‘Can’t say that I did,’ Jasper repeated, shooting her an amused glance. Since it was obvious that he knew that he was being deliberately annoying, Trudy smiled back at him sweetly.

  ‘Did he come alone or did he arrive with a partner?’ she asked mildly, taking care that she kept her tone distinctly light. No way was she going to let this little toad get under her skin!

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he was alone,’ Jasper said drolly.

  Beside him, Trudy saw Millie stiffen slightly at this.

  ‘I was asking your mother if she had a guest list,’ Trudy said. ‘Would you mind getting it?’

  ‘Oh, I doubt Mother had anything so organised,’ Jasper said, staying obstinately in his seat.

  At this, Millie waved a self-deprecating gesture with her hand, as if sensing that her son’s manner was not winning him any friends. ‘I’m afraid he’s right about that you know – I’m not very well organised. But I think I can probably remember most of those who came. The immediate neighbours, of course, and the women from my bridge club, you know, along with the usual crowd. Oh, and Katherine Morton, such a coup getting her to come,’ Millie added, for a moment the pride of a society hostess shining through.

  Trudy had a feeling she was supposed to know who Katherine Morton was, but she had no idea.

  ‘If you give me a little time, I’m sure I’ll be able to write out a list for you,’ Mille promised. ‘Jasper will help, won’t you, darling?’ She looked at her son appealingly. Yet something about the look that passed between them made Trudy feel uneasy. Although, on the face of it, Millie seemed to be asking for help, there was something else, something hovering just on the edge of her tone and in the look in her eyes that verged on something much harder and steel-like. Almost as if she was giving him orders.

  And Trudy wondered, was this woman really as needy as she appeared to be?

  ‘Sure,’ Jasper said shortly, and the fact that he said nothing more, Trudy also found very interesting. He hadn’t struck her as the type to take hints from his mummy and keep quiet.

  ‘Was Mr Parker a local man?’ Trudy tried next. ‘Did he come from an Oxford family?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Millie said at once. ‘He came to study as a student, I think … or no, I have that wrong. I’m sure he told me once that he actually went to Cambridge, but he liked living in a university city so much, that when he graduated he relocated to Oxford. He was originally from Birmingham, I believe.’

  ‘Funny, he never had a Brummie accent,’ Jasper commented mildly. ‘But then, he probably worked very hard to get rid of it,’ he added snidely.

  Trudy, who was wondering why, if their victim had studied in Cambridge and liked university towns so much, he simply hadn’t stayed in the city in the Fens, shot the man of the house a quick, questioning look. There had been no disguising the dislike in Jasper’s tone, and his mother shot him a stricken look.

  ‘Oh, Jasper, not now!’ she said. ‘I keep telling you! You might think it amusing and oh so modern to be mean about people, but I think it’s the height of ill-breeding.’

  Jasper spread his hands in surrender.

  ‘What have you done to upset our lovely mother now, Jasp?’ a voice drawled behind him, and all four of them turned to watch as the latest entrant to the drama made her appearance.

  It wasn’t hard to recognise the daughter of the house. As petite as her mother, she had the same attractive green eyes, but her hair was as black as that of her brother. She was quite astonishingly beautiful, and dressed in a long white nightgown and peignoir set. Trudy, in her wellingtons and heavy-weight uniform, immediately felt about as huge and unattractive as an elephant.

  ‘Oh, Juliet, it’s terrible. Terry is dead,’ Millie wailed. She said it fast, as if needing to warn her daughter of the situation before she could say anything that Millie didn’t want said in front of strangers.

  Juliet didn’t look at her mother though, but rather looked straight at her brother. Again her expression was impossible for Trudy to fathom. Accusing? Questioning? Amused?

  Trudy was getting annoyed at her inability to read these people. They seemed to have their own language, and she felt resentful about it. She knew she would have to keep a tight hold on her manner.

  She glanced at Clement, who was watching the show silently, his eyes alert but calm.

  Jasper shrugged slightly at his sister’s questioning, arched his brows and stretched out lazily on the sofa. He didn’t look particularly relaxed though, Trudy thought with some satisfaction.

  ‘Dead?’ Juliet said flatly. ‘Really?’

  ‘He crashed his car, in the dark and the snow,’ Millie said, her voice trembling now.

  ‘Finish your tea,’ Jasper said sharply, clearly brutally determined to cut off any approaching histrionics. Again, a strange lightning-quick unspoken conversation seemed to go on between mother and son, after which she lifted the teacup obediently and sipped from it.

  ‘We’re trying to find out more about Mr Parker.’ Trudy kept plugging stubbornly away. ‘His next of kin, for instance? Do you know of any family members that we need
to contact?’

  ‘I don’t think his parents are living,’ Millie said forlornly. ‘He never spoke of brothers or sisters either, now that I think of it. I think he might have been raised by an aunt or something, but she’s probably old and dead by now,’ she added vaguely.

  ‘Poor orphan Terry,’ Jasper drawled.

  ‘Shut up,’ Juliet said to her brother, without any kind of heat. ‘Sorry, but we can’t help much, as you can see,’ she said to Trudy. Her green eyes swept over her appraisingly, rather like someone who has only just noticed another female presence besides her own. They lingered on Trudy’s pinned, lustrous dark hair for a moment, before dismissing her and moving on to Clement. The green eyes looked far more impressed with him, and Trudy could feel the back of her neck begin to burn in a mixture of humiliation and anger.

  ‘Is there anyone you can think of who might help us?’ she asked through gritted teeth.

  ‘Oh – of course, how silly of me. Geoffrey Thorpe! His business partner,’ Millie suddenly said. ‘Terry had his own business selling top-of-the-line sports cars.’

  ‘Used cars,’ Juliet corrected her. ‘A rather tawdry trade, I’ve always thought. Selling silly little cars to middle-aged men who can’t properly afford them, and certainly don’t need them.’

  ‘And can’t drive them properly,’ Jasper added with a laugh.

  Millie flushed at this evidence of her children’s contempt, but said nothing. Her lips, though, had tightened into a thin, stubborn line.

  Trudy got out her notebook and jotted down the name of the garage and the address that Jasper dutifully recited for her. She also made a note to contact her counterparts in Birmingham and ask them to see if they could find a next of kin for their victim. But she wouldn’t hold her breath. The whole country was covered in snow, and she doubted that her request would be a priority.

  ‘Thank you, sir. Perhaps your sister could also help in making up that guest list?’ she added.

  ‘Sure, but we’re not going to thrash that out right now,’ Jasper told her bluntly. ‘You’ll have to call back in a couple of hours for it. Right now, I think Mother needs to rest and get over the shock a bit. I’ll run you a hot bath, shall I?’ he added to his mother, who nodded gratefully.

  ‘Perhaps her daughter could stay in the bathroom with her?’ Clement said quickly. He didn’t want Millie to remain unchaperoned in a bath full of water.

  ‘Yes, she can make herself useful for a change,’ Jasper said sardonically, looking at his sister mockingly, who promptly poked her tongue out at him.

  ‘Twins,’ Millie said to Clement with an unhappy smile, embarrassed by their behaviour. ‘They’ve always been like this. They don’t mean anything by it,’ she added feebly.

  ‘I’ll just see you out, shall I?’ said Jasper, getting to his feet and looking thoroughly unabashed. It was not an offer so much as an order, and one Trudy was in no position to quibble with. Well, not yet anyway, she mused grimly.

  Once on the doorstep, however, she had a few last questions. ‘Did anything unusual happen at the party, sir? Was Mr Parker, shall we say, a little worse for drink?’

  ‘That would hardly be unusual at a party, Constable dear, would it?’ Jasper drawled.

  ‘So he was drunk then?’ Trudy snapped.

  ‘Not that I saw. But then, I wasn’t paying that much attention to him,’ Jasper snapped right back.

  And then he shut the door firmly in their faces.

  Chapter 9

  ‘Well that was interesting,’ Clement said mildly, the reverberation of the slammed door still echoing in their ears. He was looking at her with a half-smile on his lips. The handsome, cocky young pup had really riled her, he could see.

  ‘Hmph!’ Trudy grunted. ‘Did you get the impression that our hostess had, shall we say, a distinct fondness for our victim?’

  ‘Oh yes, it was as clear as a pikestaff,’ Clement agreed. ‘As was the fact that both of her children most definitely did not!’

  ‘Scared he might be about to upset their very comfortable apple cart no doubt,’ Trudy said bitterly. ‘If either of those two spoilt brats do a day’s work in their life, I’ll eat my hat!’

  *

  According to the information Jasper had provided, Terry Parker’s place of business – Regal Cars – had set up their forecourt out near Osney Mead, but Trudy was sure that they wouldn’t be open on New Year’s Day. In fact, given the weather, she doubted they’d open tomorrow either – especially if it kept on snowing and the snowploughs didn’t get out that way.

  Luckily, it didn’t take her long to get a home address for one Mr Geoffrey Thorpe, who lived less than a quarter of a mile away from the centre of town.

  Unlike the dead man, Geoffrey Thorpe lived in a larger, more obviously family-friendly terraced house, with a bigger front garden. Now that the morning was advancing somewhat, they’d seen just a few more people out and about as they drove, but when Clement was forced to leave the car, yet again, in the middle of a road piled high on either side with snow, nobody was around to object.

  As they made their way with some difficulty up a path that, as yet, hadn’t been dug clear of the latest snowfall, they could hear the sound of children’s excited voices coming from inside the Thorpe residence. So Trudy wasn’t surprised when a middle-aged, somewhat harassed-looking woman opened the door to them.

  She looked instantly surprised, then alarmed, to see Trudy.

  ‘Good morning, madam, is this the Thorpe residence?’ Trudy asked, wishing her uniform didn’t have to scare everybody so whenever she called on them. Although she understood why it did, it made her feel like a proper pariah.

  ‘Yes. Is everything all right?’ the woman, presumably Mrs Thorpe, demanded quickly. She was a fleshy but pretty woman, with fading fair looks but nice blue eyes.

  ‘We need to speak to Mr Geoffrey Thorpe as a matter of some urgency,’ Trudy prevaricated carefully.

  ‘Oh, please, come along in – you must be freezing,’ the woman said, casting an apologetic glance at Clement, who had begun stamping his feet as his toes threatened to go numb. They followed her gratefully into a small hallway.

  ‘Head on right in here.’ She led them to a door, which opened off to the right. It was clearly their ‘best’ room, because it had that seldom-used feel to it. There was no Christmas tree here, or children’s toys scattered around. Only lace antimacassars on the backs and arms of the furniture and a nice Oriental rug on the linoleum in front of a Draylon sofa. It was also freezing.

  ‘Oh, let me put on the fire,’ the woman said, scuttling over to the fireplace where a three-bar electric fire stood in the grate. She put in the plug and turned it on, and then hurried to the door. ‘I’ll just fetch Geoff,’ she said, casting them one last anxious glance and then closing the door behind her.

  The electric fire began to make ticking sounds and finally glowed with a promising red heat, before infusing the room with that nose-wrinkling scent of burning metal. Clement nevertheless went over to it, took off his gloves, and held his hands gratefully over the bars.

  The noise of children abruptly abated, and Trudy could imagine their mother – or possibly she was their grandmother – demanding that they pipe down.

  A moment or two later the door opened and a man walked in. He was in his late forties or maybe very early fifties, Clement gauged, around five-feet-ten, with grey hair and eyes. He was starting to thicken around the middle, and was wearing warm tweed trousers and a matching blazer with a knitted V-neck jumper underneath.

  ‘Hello, this is unexpected,’ the man said, holding out his hand first of all to Clement, then to Trudy. ‘Geoffrey Thorpe. My wife says you need to see me?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I’m afraid I may have some bad news,’ Trudy said. She saw the man stiffen and his eyes fixed on hers steadily.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘About your business partner. You do own a used car business with a Mr Terrence Parker?’ Trudy lifted her voice at the end, to make it a question. A
s she did so, an undeniably wary look, perhaps tinged with imminent panic, fleetingly crossed the other man’s face, before it was almost instantly smoothed out again.

  ‘Terry? Yes? Why, what’s he done?’ Geoffrey Thorpe asked mildly. He looked, in some puzzlement, at Clement.

  It was, Trudy thought, an interesting way of putting it. What had he expected the dead man to have done?

  ‘I’m sorry, I should have introduced myself sooner,’ Trudy apologised. ‘I’m WPC Loveday, and this is Dr Clement Ryder, city coroner.’

  ‘Coroner?’ Geoffrey echoed, startled. ‘Is Terry dead then?’

  ‘We believe so, sir,’ Trudy said. ‘A man was found dead in his crashed vehicle early this morning. His wallet had documentation in it, which leads us to believe it was Mr Parker. Naturally, we need a formal identification, and so far we’ve been unable to track down any next of kin. I was wondering if you would mind making your way to the morgue at Floyds Row to view the body?’

  Mindful of her need to obey the inspector’s orders to get as much of the preliminary work done as possible, she was relieved to see Geoffrey blink, then nod and mutter abstractly, and a little reluctantly, ‘Yes, of course I can do that. Yes … er …’

  He looked around, as if not sure what to say next, and Trudy said gently, ‘There’s no immediate rush, Mr Thorpe. But if you could do it today, sometime, that would be very helpful. And best to do it when it’s still light, I think. We’ll arrange it with the morgue staff that someone’s there to meet you and walk you through the process. It’s not at all frightening. Although it will probably be upsetting,’ she felt obliged to add.

  ‘Oh, yes, yes I’m sure,’ he said vaguely, still looking around in a sort of helpless way. Spotting a chair, he walked to it stiff-legged and sat in it abruptly. ‘I just can’t believe … Terry was such a good driver … He wasn’t in the Sprite, was he?’ he added quickly, his voice rising an octave in panic.