A Fatal Night

by Faith Martin

  ‘Never met him before that night,’ Katherine said, and gave yet another huge yawn. ‘Millie’s too boring to mention, and the only thing I know about the mystery woman is that she has the same taste in negligees as myself.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Clement said, put off his stride for the first time since he’d entered the artist’s lair.

  ‘Oh, didn’t I say? I saw her in town,’ Katherine said, dragging her gaze away from the sideboard and turning to Clement, giving him a lazy, cat-like smile. ‘In Beatrice’s in the High.’ She named a boutique clothes shop that was out of Trudy’s budget, but she knew which shop she meant.

  ‘It was the day before the party, I think,’ Katherine swept on. ‘I was in the shop looking for a Hermès scarf I wanted. I was just browsing, as you do, and noticed this apricot silk dressing gown and negligee. I was just about to go in for a closer look, but this woman beat me to it.’ She shrugged. ‘I let her have it.’ She grinned magnanimously. ‘Not that I wouldn’t have fought her for it if I’d really wanted it, mind.’ The artist frowned thoughtfully. ‘Now that I come to think of it, I never did find that Hermès I wanted,’ she mused, staring down into her nearly depleted glass.

  ‘And you’re sure this woman was the same woman who gate-crashed the party?’ Clement asked, glancing at Trudy, who was looking at him with an excited gleam in her eye. No doubt they were both thinking the same thing. If the woman had bought the nightwear, she might have paid by cheque. Or better yet, asked to have it delivered. Either way, they might, with a bit of luck, have a lead on the mystery woman!

  ‘Oh yes, it was her all right,’ Katherine said, sounding, once more, thoroughly bored. ‘I’m an artist – I don’t forget visual things. Names, dates, yes. Not what people look like. So that’s everything covered,’ she said sadly. ‘Death, tragedy, mystery and gossip. Now I need another drink. Sure I can’t get you one?’

  *

  ‘Let’s hope they’ve cleared the pavements on the High Street and Beatrice’s is open!’ Trudy said eagerly, once they were back in the car.

  They were in luck, on both counts, and Clement even managed to leave the car where it didn’t obstruct too much of the High Street.

  The shop assistant in the underwear section was highly amused by the distinctive gentleman’s obvious unease as the nice police lady and herself talked about ladies’ lingerie. By tacit consent, they both chose to spare his blushes by ignoring him. Within moments they were deep in discussion.

  ‘Oh, you do remember the lady, and the set she bought?’ Trudy was able to get down to business very quickly.

  Again they were in luck, for it turned out that not only had the shop assistant recognised the famous local artist immediately she’d walked in, but she’d also been the one to handle the sale of the items in question to the other customer as well.

  ‘Oh yes indeed, er, madam,’ the shop assistant said, for a moment wondering if she should more properly address Trudy as ‘Constable’. She was clearly not a customer, and therefore a sale was out of the question, but habit won over the day. ‘It was just as you described it – a peignoir and negligee set in apricot silk with ecru lace. Very nice, but not quite our top, top range you understand.’ In other words, affordable, Trudy surmised.

  ‘And the woman who bought it, can you describe her?’ Trudy asked eagerly.

  ‘Yes madam, I believe so. She was wearing a nice two-piece in powder blue, that almost looked as if it was a genuine Balmain. Let’s see, she was several inches shorter than madam, and her hair was almost exactly your shade, but cut short. She had dark-brown eyes, just like madam too, and I should have said she was in her late twenties. Possibly very early thirties.’

  Trudy, who couldn’t remember anybody ever calling her ‘madam’ nodded happily. This matched, more or less exactly, the description they’d got from Katherine Morton before leaving her to her cigarettes and whisky.

  ‘Can you remember how she paid?’ Trudy asked next. But here, it seemed, her run of good luck had run out.

  ‘Madam paid by cash,’ the assistant said firmly.

  ‘Oh. I don’t suppose she took advantage of your delivery service?’ Trudy asked, deflated.

  ‘I believe she may have, madam. Give me one moment to check the register,’ the shop assistant said, reaching down behind the glass-topped counter (displaying the latest French cami-knickers, from which Clement kept his gaze firmly averted) and withdrew a large red flock velvet-covered account’s journal.

  She ran a bony, perfectly manicured finger down the lists on first one page, then the next. ‘Let me see, this would be December the 30th … Ah yes! I thought she had. The purchases were sent to the Raven’s Rest later that day.’

  ‘The what?’ Trudy asked, startled.

  ‘I do believe it is a rather nice bed and breakfast in Summertown, madam,’ the assistant proffered helpfully.

  Trudy thanked her with real gratitude. Clement tipped his hat to her and beat a thankful retreat.

  Chapter 19

  The Raven’s Rest, alas, lay off a small side street somewhere between the Banbury and Woodstock roads, which had last seen a snowplough many days ago.

  Forced to abandon the car on the main road, they were relieved to find a path of sorts, which had been forged by the street’s residents, hacking a narrow corridor through the three-foot-high snowbanks. They had to walk in single file, and by the time they reached the bed and breakfast – a nice-looking Victorian house in pale stone – they were both shivering.

  The house had probably once belonged to a respectable merchant and his extended family over a hundred years ago, but now boasted ‘vacancies’, a ‘television lounge’ and a telephone in the lobby.

  The owner didn’t look happy to see a police uniform cross her doorstep, and listened, stony-faced, as Trudy described the guest she wished to see. The landlady, about fifty, round and looking like a disapproving pouter pigeon, reluctantly agreed that she did indeed at present have a guest staying in her establishment, such as the one described. With a haughty sniff, she gave them the guest’s name – Mrs Phyllis Raynor – and her room number.

  After being very careful (under the owner’s gimlet eye) to knock their boots free of any lingering snow on the sisal mat in the small reception hall, they walked up the carpeted steps to the top floor.

  The woman who answered the summons looked at them blankly for a moment, then slowly turned her head a little to one side.

  ‘Yes?’ she said uncompromisingly.

  ‘Mrs Raynor? Phyllis Raynor?’ Trudy asked. She was aware her voice sounded portentous and wished it didn’t. But she’d reacted instinctively. Perhaps it was the way the woman’s face became instantly shuttered when she saw her uniform. Or perhaps she was gaining enough experience to know when a witness was going to be uncooperative. But she just knew that there was going to be no cosy or revealing chat with this witness, and it brought out the officialdom in her.

  ‘Yes,’ Phyllis said again. Her tone wasn’t aggressive but it wasn’t neutral either, and made it very clear that she wasn’t interested in whatever it was they were selling.

  ‘I would like to ask you a few questions. It’s in connection with a police inquiry,’ Trudy said firmly.

  The woman, who stood uncompromisingly foursquare in the doorway, blocking any view of the room beyond, cocked her head slightly to the other side. She didn’t look intimidated, angry or worried.

  ‘Yes? What it is you want to know?’

  ‘Did you attend a New Year’s Eve party a few nights ago?’ Trudy began.

  ‘I did not.’

  Trudy blinked. That had been flat, clear and unequivocal. She took a breath and girded her loins for a tussle.

  ‘Do you know a Mrs Millicent Vander?’ she tried again.

  ‘I do not.’

  ‘Are you sure you weren’t at her party, here in Oxford, on New Year’s Eve?’

  ‘I’m very sure,’ Phyllis Raynor said flatly.

  ‘What would you say if we had witnesses who c
ould put you at that party?’ Trudy said, feeling on surer ground now. Surely Mrs Vander would recognise her, and probably several other party guests, if it came to that?

  ‘I would say they were mistaken,’ Phyllis said calmly. ‘Is there anything else you need?’

  Trudy wanted to say yes. Her back was up, and she wanted to throw Terry Parker’s name at Phyllis and see how she reacted to it. But caution held her back. For a start, she was on very shaky ground already. They didn’t know, yet, that there was anything criminal in his death, and her remit to investigate the case probably didn’t include aggressive questioning. Besides, something told her that she would need more ammunition before seriously tackling this woman in earnest.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Raynor, that’s all,’ Trudy forced herself to say, and gave a tight smile.

  The door shut instantly in her face.

  Clement, who hadn’t said a word, backed up to let his young friend pass him, then followed her equally silently down the stairs. There, the landlady – who hadn’t budged from the reception hall – watched in silence as they left.

  Once outside in the frigid, deeply unpleasant air, Trudy pulled her coat tighter around herself and sighed. ‘I didn’t like Mrs Raynor,’ she admitted with a wry laugh. ‘She was lying, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Oh yes, I think so,’ Clement agreed at once.

  Trudy sighed. ‘Well, I wasn’t in any position to really question her properly, and Inspector Jennings would have had a fit if she lodged a complaint against me. And speaking of the inspector, I’d better get back to the station and report on everything we’ve found out,’ she said without enthusiasm. The day was wearing on and he’d no doubt have any number of other duties to allot her that had nothing to do with the fatal car crash.

  ‘Yes, and I should get back to Vincent,’ Clement said. ‘I promised to beat him at nine-card brag. I’ll just pop into the office first and see if anything urgent has come in.’

  And so it was that Clement dropped her off at the station to face the music, and then set out for his place of work, where he found his secretary had failed to arrive, and admin had all but ground to a halt.

  He went back to his house, grumpily wishing that the snow would clear so that everything could get back to normal. Surely this blasted arctic spell wouldn’t last much longer?

  *

  Jennings listened to his WPC’s findings with a scowl. He’d been hoping by now that he could put this blasted case to bed, but the more his constable discovered about the victim, the less he liked it. Reluctantly agreeing to allow her one more day, he then tossed a hundred-weight of paperwork at her and told her to get on with it, and commented that if she expected to be paid overtime, she wasn’t as bright as she thought she was.

  Trudy retreated to her desk with a respectful, ‘yes, sir,’ and rejoiced that the case was still hers.

  *

  That night Dr Douglas Carey rang Clement with news about the toxicology report he’d been asked to perform on the coroner’s road traffic fatality.

  ‘You were right about the barbiturates,’ he said jovially, once the preliminary hellos and mutually unflattering insults had been swapped. ‘Nothing exotic – just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill sleeping concoction prescribed by GPs and quacks the country over,’ he added unhelpfully.

  ‘Was the dose fatal?’ Clement asked, reaching for a pen and jotting down notes as the two medical men swapped facts and theories.

  ‘I wouldn’t have said so, no,’ Douglas said cautiously, giving him the technical details. ‘I think you’ll agree, if our chap was otherwise fit and healthy enough, that wouldn’t have polished him off. Can’t say for certain, of course, without the full autopsy – which I’ve now had to bump up as a priority,’ he warned his old pal, his tone now apologetic. ‘If our cadaver turns out to have a hitherto unsuspected heart condition or underlying asthma or any other number of nasty conditions – well, you know as well as I do, all bets are off.’

  Clement grunted. ‘It’s all right, old man, you don’t have to protect your rear end with me. I think, on the whole, he’s likely to turn out to have been as fit as a flea, but you never can tell,’ he admitted. ‘All things being equal though – you don’t think the drug killed him – even with a fair bit of alcohol in his system?’

  ‘Unlikely, I’d say. But it would have made him woozy, and he’d have dropped off to sleep fairly soon after taking it. Maybe within fifteen to twenty minutes or so – depending on his constitution.’

  ‘Not ideal, that, if you’re behind the wheel of the car after a snowstorm,’ Clement said wryly.

  His friend concurred.

  ‘So, he either took it by accident,’ Douglas said, ‘took it deliberately, the fool, or …’ He trailed off, leaving Clement to pick up the thread.

  The coroner duly obliged. ‘Or it was slipped to him shortly before he left the party he’d been attending,’ Clement said with satisfaction. ‘I doubt he took it deliberately since he knew he would soon be driving. And people intending suicide, as you well know, tend to do so tucked up in bed or in a chair, with a large dose of some alcohol or other of their choice at hand,’ he theorised out loud. ‘Taking a sleeping dose and then driving is a pretty haphazard way of going about it too. There would be no way you could be sure of dying, even if you did bury your car in a brick wall. Not to mention the possibility that you might crash into another car and take some poor innocent soul with you.’

  Clement leaned back in his chair, aware that he was feeling pleasantly excited. Oh, not because a man had died, but because it was beginning to look more and more likely that someone had thought they’d got away with murder.

  And they hadn’t.

  But he shouldn’t rush things. ‘How likely is it he could have taken it by accident?’ Clement asked, then realising he wasn’t being clear enough, he added, ‘I mean, could you tell in what form the barbiturate had been administered? Because if he had to be injected with it …’

  ‘No, not by needle,’ Dr Carey said at once. ‘I think it was probably taken orally – and more likely than not in a regular sleeping draught form. We’re running more tests now to be sure, but I think it’s almost certain that a powder was dissolved in water or some other liquid. So it’s possible he didn’t know what he was drinking. I think when we’ve got it narrowed down, it’ll turn out to be a fairly bog-standard sleeping powder. You know – the kind that millions of sleepless souls and insomniacs toss back every night with their Horlicks.’

  ‘Over-the-counter stuff even?’ Clement asked, with a sigh. If that was the case, they would not catch their killer by being able to track down an incriminating purchase of some obscure poison. Or from a GP’s prescription.

  ‘Probably,’ Dr Carey said cheerfully.

  Clement called him something distinctly slanderous. His friend responded by informing him even more cheerfully that Clement, as coroner, now needed to inform the constabulary of the fact that they had – at the very least – an ‘interesting’ death on their hands.

  Clement had to agree. ‘Send the reports directly to me, and I’ll pass it on to WPC Loveday,’ he said. At least, that way, they could keep Jennings out of the loop for a while longer, giving them a bit more time to gather conclusive evidence. It was inevitable, of course, that the case would be taken away from them sooner or later, but he was sure that Trudy would agree with him that they were still the best people for the job.

  ‘I’ll do that, old sport,’ his friend said. ‘Happy hunting.’

  Clement grunted and hung up.

  It wasn’t until he looked up that he saw his son was watching him from the doorway of his study, a gentle smile on his face.

  ‘That sounded all very promising and cloak-and-dagger,’ Vincent said with a grin. ‘You look disgustingly like the proverbial cat that just ate the canary. Is it something to do with the case?’ he added eagerly.

  Clement regarded his only son with a grin of his own. ‘You’ve changed your tune,’ he accused amiably. ‘I thought I
was overworking?’

  Vincent shrugged. ‘Yes, well, since you’ve been telling me all about this Terry Parker fellow, I admit, I’ve become intrigued.’

  Clement leaned back in his chair, his eyes impish. ‘Fancy lending a helping hand?’ he offered magnanimously. He was sure Trudy wouldn’t mind if he brought Vincent in on things, just as an added pair of hands.

  Chapter 20

  Trudy was surprised to hear a knock at her door just before eight o’clock the next morning. Her Land Rover taxi wasn’t due for another half-hour, and she hoped that there wasn’t an emergency call-out somewhere. She quickly picked up her piece of half-eaten toast and trotted to the front door, where she found Clement Ryder standing on her doorstep.

  ‘Dr Ryder! Please, come in,’ she said, backing away. Upstairs, she heard a creak, and realised that her voice had carried to her parents upstairs, who were, she was sure, about to get dressed and make a hasty appearance. They both liked and approved of the professional man, and were secretly proud that he thought so highly of their daughter that he insisted she act as his police liaison.

  ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ She led him to the small kitchen, where the electric bars on the fire had chased away the worst of the freezing temperatures.

  ‘Thank you,’ Clement accepted, sitting at the table.

  By the time her parents came quickly down the stairs, he’d given her both the good news and the bad news about the toxicology results. Good, because at least now they could be reasonably certain Terry Parker’s car crash had not been due to the bad weather or drunken driving. Bad, because once DI Jennings knew about it, they both understood that the case would quickly be yanked out from under them.

  ‘Dr Carey had these sent over from his office this morning,’ he was saying, tapping a slim buff folder he’d brought in with him. He looked up as first Barbara Loveday, and then her husband Frank, pushed into the kitchen. He rose with a smile and greeted them in order.

  ‘Mrs Loveday, Mr Loveday, I hope you don’t mind me dragging your daughter off to work early. There have been developments in the fatality we’re looking into.’