A Fatal Flaw

by Faith Martin

  Again, Patricia gave an elegant, ladylike snort. ‘You’re wasting your time and breath. You and I both know you won’t find a thing.’

  ‘What about the tricks you played here?’ Clement swept on, indicating the theatre around them. ‘Trailing red herrings across our path, trying to make us think there was a prankster or poison pen lurking about. Can you be certain nobody spotted you up to your tricks? Are you confident those chocolates can’t be traced back to you? Or maybe someone saw you slipping that dead moth into that girl’s pocket. It might not have meant much to them at the time – but in hindsight, it would be a different thing. By the way, that was a bit of a giveaway that, don’t you think? Only people of our generation would remember the old wives’ tales surrounding that insect – modern day youngsters wouldn’t have a clue about it.’

  But again the old lady was scornful. ‘Good luck going into a court of law with piffling little trifles like that!’ she jeered. ‘Any barrister would make mincemeat of you! Don’t forget – I could afford the best defence available should you be so arrogant and pig-headed to try it. Oh, I know all about you, Dr Ryder,’ Patricia mused, almost cordially. ‘You’ve not been the only one to make discreet enquiries here and there. You’re a man with a reputation for not suffering fools gladly. In fact, as odd as this may sound, in many ways, I rather admire you. So please do me the same courtesy and start treating me as someone with at least a modicum of intelligence and backbone!’ she flashed.

  ‘Oh, but I am, Mrs Merriweather. Believe me, I am,’ Clement said, so mildly that both Trudy and the old lady were taken aback in equal measure. ‘Because everything you say is quite right. We almost certainly wouldn’t be able to bring home the murders of Abigail Trent and Victoria Munnings to you in a court of law with the evidence we have at the moment. But then, you and I, as people who’ve knocked about the world for a fair old bit, already know,’ Clement carried on, still in that mild, almost friendly voice that seemed somehow far more menacing and frightening than an angry shout would have done, ‘that isn’t really the point. Is it?’

  Again, the old woman blinked, her face going almost completely blank. But then Trudy was sure she saw a flash of fear cross Patricia’s face, and she could almost hear her brain frantically working, seeking out the answer to the conundrum and trying to anticipate what was coming next.

  Trudy, who knew exactly what was coming next, felt her head literally begin to throb with a tension headache, so intense was the pressure she felt.

  Patricia took a step back, as if literally rocked on her heels. ‘Isn’t it?’ she asked sharply, but the trace of uncertainty and indecision in her tone was clearly audible.

  ‘No, it isn’t. Not to someone like you, Mrs Merriweather,’ Clement said flatly. ‘How long, do you suppose, would it take for the rumours to start? With the police talking to your neighbours, interviewing your staff and questioning your friends. How long would it be before the thread was taken up by the people who use the libraries, where more questions will be asked, allowing them to put two and two together? Then would come the reporters, sniffing around with their sensitive noses on the alert for any whiff of scandal and picking up on a promising spoor. The Merriweathers – the doyens of Parklands – suspected of murder. How marvellous, how titillating would that be? Regardless of what could be proved or not, how long would it take before the whole city knew what you were suspected of?’

  But the old lady, though shaken, was made of sterner stuff. ‘Oh pooh! What would I care what people said or whispered behind their hands?’ she asked, her chin once again rising haughtily and her spine stiffening in defiance.

  ‘Your family might not be so cavalier,’ Clement chided gently. ‘After all, most of them are of the stuffed-shirt variety, aren’t they? They never had your joie de vivre, did they? I’d be willing to bet none of them ever danced the Charleston in their day.’

  Again, she merely shrugged magnificently. ‘It hardly matters. It’s not as if they can do me any harm – I hold the purse strings remember? Or enough of them at any rate not to have to worry about what they have to say.’

  Clement nodded, then said, devastatingly, ‘But what about Millie? At the moment, she’s in the care of doctors. But if she’s to have any hope of recovery, of one day leaving them and coming back to your home on the green, could she do that and be able to cope with all the rumours and innuendo? With all her neighbours and friends convinced that her grandmother is a murderess? Come to that, would your son, Christopher, even let her come back to you? Because he’ll move out the moment the going gets tough, won’t he? Maybe even to another country on a permanent basis. He might even take steps to ensure you’d never be able to see her again. The doctors would be bound to back him up. You’d surely be regarded as a malign or harmful influence on a vulnerable young girl.’

  Even watching only her profile, Trudy could see how deathly white the old lady had become. Her mouth slowly opened, but no words came out.

  Suddenly, shockingly, right at this moment of high pathos, they were farcically interrupted. Three girls, two dressed in fabulous day dresses and one in a colourful combination of skirt, blouse and jacket, came around the dog-leg of the corridor, chattering brightly and nervously, and rushed past them.

  As they did so, the faint call of the ‘prompt’ began to come down the corridor.

  ‘Judges to the stage area, please. Judges to the stage.’

  Trudy leapt back out of the way as the door to the green room opened and Rupert Cowper and his fellow judges began to file out.

  Suddenly, the corridor was full of brightly chatting, nervous girls, most of them looking startled to see Trudy in her police uniform, and almost equally excited middle-aged men, and Patricia Merriweather, with a last contemptuous look at Clement, let them sweep her away with them.

  * * *

  Trudy, forced to stand at the back of the theatre and watch the Miss Oxford Honey beauty pageant unfold, could hardly drag her eyes away from watching the backs of the heads of the judges at the tables. Since Clement was at one end of the long table, and Patricia Merriweather the other, it was impossible for them to converse.

  She was distracted from her vigil once or twice during the next few hours – once by Candace’s comedy skit, which brought the house down. Unsurprisingly, it won her the first prize for that segment – a brand new record player (donated, of course, by one of the judges who owned an electrical store) plus vouchers that would allow her to purchase ten 45-records over the course of the next year. Although she was happy enough with the prize, she was clearly far more delighted by the warm and enthusiastic applause she was given.

  A little while later, she found herself listening to Betty Darville, talking to the compere and being by far the most interesting and engaging girl of the entire evening. Again, she won first prize, and Trudy, along with the rest of the audience, applauded wildly.

  Slowly, as the competition wound on, she began to stare less and less at the two white heads of Patricia and Clement at the table, and take more interest in what was happening on stage. When the final line-up was called, and it came time for the great moment to arrive, she was feeling almost as nervous as most of her new-found friends must have been feeling, up on the stage.

  The final segment had been the beachwear competition, and now all the girls were lined up, waiting nervously in their swimming costumes and bikinis, as the compere hammed it up and made a great show of gathering the voting slips from the judges.

  Christine Dunbar went up on stage, carrying an ostentatious and glittering tiara, which rested on a plump, dark purple velvet cushion, very much the cynosure of all eyes. The girls looked at the glittering crown hopefully, the audience with tense speculation.

  When the name of the first runner up was called – a tall red-headed girl called Veronica Palmer – Trudy clapped with the rest of them as she accepted a huge floral bouquet from Robert Dunbar, along with a discreet envelope containing the cash prize for third place.

  The second
runner up was Sylvia Blane – who, it seemed, couldn’t quite make up her mind whether to be delighted at coming so close, or chagrined not to have actually won. She accepted the flowers and cheque graciously, of course, and gave the judges’ table – and a certain handsome widowed judge in particular – a long and lingering look as she went by.

  It was time for the winner to be announced, and Trudy, along with everyone else, felt herself holding her breath.

  ‘And the winner of the first Miss Oxford Honey – who will automatically be entered for the Miss Oxford round of the Miss Great Britain competition – is… number fourteen, Miss Caroline Tomworthy!’

  There was a roar of general approval from the audience, which carried on as Caroline, dressed in a deep, ruby-red costume walked forward elegantly to claim her prize. She smiled dazzlingly as the sparkling crown was placed on her ebony locks, and then sashayed gracefully and elegantly across the stage.

  But by now, Trudy’s gaze was once again fixed on the judging table – and the two white-haired individuals who, along with the rest of the panel, had politely risen to their feet in order to add their applause to that of the auditorium.

  Trudy couldn’t help but wonder. What on earth were they both thinking?

  Chapter 29

  The evening ended with a celebration backstage, but when Trudy made her way there, she found that Patricia Merriweather was conspicuous by her absence.

  Working her way towards Clement, she handed out hearty congratulations to everyone who stopped to talk to her. By now, they all knew that she was an ‘undercover’ policewoman – a phrase that still sent thrills down her spine and made her feel faintly embarrassed in equal measure. They all wanted to thank her for ‘looking out’ for them.

  The glow of a successful show – helped by a free-flowing variety of wines and spirits – gave everyone a rosy glow, and it was almost as if the prankster who had cast such a long shadow over their lives had never existed.

  Trudy, with a pang, wondered what the two dead girls would have made of all this merriment and triumphant celebration. She made a mental promise to herself that – no matter what happened – she would call on the families of those dead girls and tell them what she suspected. Even if they could never have justice, they would know what had happened to their daughters.

  And if that resulted in her being reprimanded by her superiors… well, she just didn’t care.

  ‘Have you seen her?’ Trudy hissed as soon as she’d managed to make her way to the coroner’s side.

  ‘No,’ he admitted bleakly. ‘She must have left the moment the judging finished. I don’t like it. We didn’t get the chance to finish our conversation.’

  Trudy shrugged helplessly. ‘I don’t know what more we could have said or done. I think she’s just going to call our bluff,’ she added gloomily.

  It was only now that she realised how much she’d been taking for granted. Just because they’d successfully solved their first two cases, and brought the killers to justice, she’d assumed and always blithely believed that they’d do the same this time.

  But now everything felt so… wrong, somehow. So unfinished. So… anti-climactic. ‘I just can’t believe we’ve come this far and now…’ She gave a graphic shrug. ‘Nothing. It’s all over.’

  Clement shook his head. ‘Oh, something tells me it’s not over yet,’ he said bleakly. Something in his tone made her look at him nervously.

  ‘What do you mean? You don’t think she’s going to kill anybody else, do you?’ she whispered appalled. ‘From all we’ve learned, it was only Abby and Vicky who did the bullying. There’s no one else she can have in her sights, surely?’

  ‘No, it’s not that so much,’ Clement said. ‘And with the beauty pageant over, she’s not even going to carry on with the pretence of being someone with a grudge against flawed beauty queens. So everyone here can breathe easy.’

  Trudy slowly nodded, letting out a long-relieved breath of her own. ‘You’re sure then that all that prankster stuff was just a smokescreen?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Clement said. ‘None of the girls here were ever in real danger. The odd note, laxative in chocolates, a dead moth! That was nothing but so much window dressing designed to lead us up the garden path and obscure the real motive. Oh, I don’t doubt she probably had no time for them all. After all, they were young, healthy and pretty girls, and her granddaughter was a plain, poor little thing. I dare say whenever she thought of them it was with a certain amount of bitterness and she probably quite enjoyed upsetting them. But she had no intention of ever harming anyone else, I think.’

  Trudy nodded, abruptly aware that she was feeling exhausted. She wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and sleep for a week.

  Noticing the signs, Clement said with a smile, ‘You might as well go home now, WPC Loveday. I’m sure that sergeant of yours and his boggle-eyed PC shadow will stay on and keep everyone safe until the theatre finally shuts down.’

  Trudy gave a wan smile. She wouldn’t have been human if she hadn’t been delighted that someone else as well as herself had noticed Rodney’s over-enthusiastic attitude for his latest assignment.

  ‘All right.’ She gave a huge yawn. ‘I think I will. I’ll call around at your office tomorrow?’

  Clement nodded somewhat absently, and watched her go. His mind, however, was racing. Unlike Trudy, he was far from convinced that everything that needed to be said to Patricia Merriweather had, in fact, been said.

  On the contrary, he was very much worried that it hadn’t been.

  For after pointing out to the old lady the dangers of having the police investigate her activities, and the consequences it could have on her family, he’d wanted to go on and tell her how much better it would be if she would just quietly confess and admit her guilt. That way, things could be handled with much more discretion.

  True, the scandal would still be great – but at least it could be managed better. For a start, there wouldn’t be the need for a prolonged period of investigation, and the media speculation that would generate. Nor would there have to be the spectacle of a long, drawn out public trial, which could often linger in the public mind long after the event.

  Who knows, he could have pointed out to her, there might even be room for some sort of a deal to be made – a life-long commitment of herself to a secure mental home maybe? Given poor Millie Merriweather’s predicament, he could well see how the old woman might find the ironies of that particular solution a source of bitter amusement.

  Now he looked at his watch, and wondered. Should he call in at her house and discuss all this? Or should he leave it, and give her time to think things through –and perhaps come to some of these same conclusions for herself? As she herself had pointed out, she was intelligent enough to figure all this out without his help.

  For a long while he pondered the problem.

  In the end, he decided to leave it.

  * * *

  Patricia Merriweather had indeed left the theatre immediately after the judging. She’d secured a taxi with ease, and now she paced restlessly about her quiet, all-but-deserted home, still dressed in her finery and steadily drinking her way through a decanter of rather nice Cognac.

  Her housekeeper – who slept in a converted flat over the stable block – had long since retired, and her son, as usual, was pursing his own pleasures somewhere on the Algarve. Not that he would have been of much use to her now. He had always been something of a dilettante, and happy to leave the management of his offspring, the family business interests, and all the tough decisions to his mother. Clement Ryder had done his homework into her family dynamic very thoroughly.

  She marched agitatedly up the stairs, and in her bedroom, began to alternately curse the coroner, her son, Abigail Trent, Victoria Munnings, fate, and finally herself, in about equal measure.

  However, by the time the grandfather clock in the hall struck midnight, and sent its mellow chimes upwards, she was sitting in the chair beside a large sash window, looking out
over the dark green, and thinking quietly and steadily.

  She was not quite drunk, but neither was she quite sober.

  But she was feeling tired. Dreadfully tired.

  When she’d heard from the doctors three months ago that Millie had again attempted suicide, and that, in their opinion, the chances of her ever recovering enough to lead a full and happy life were all but zero, she’d felt nothing but a cold and overwhelming rage. A rage that had swept everything else out of her mind but the need for revenge.

  For some time now she’d borne an immense burden of guilt whenever she thought about her granddaughter leaving this house to go to school, and stepping into a nightmare world of fear and bullying. And she, the girl’s own grandmother, had never even guessed or dreamed that such a thing might be happening. That her granddaughter, a Merriweather, was being bullied by a pair of local, insignificant upstart harpies!

  At first, it had been almost fun to plan the removal of the two heartless witches who had ruined Millie’s life and happiness forever. At times, she’d even wondered if she herself might not have been a little insane, so intense was her glee as she’d gathered the yew berries and researched the sabotage of domestic heaters.

  But now she felt only old and tired and, really, rather stupid.

  She’d thought she was being so clever, but Dr Clement Ryder and that pretty little WPC sidekick of his had worked it all out, seemingly with no trouble at all. And now… now she was faced with the ultimate humiliation of a trial – either in a court of law, or, far worse in many ways – the court of public opinion.