by Faith Martin
Trudy sighed. She’d known Brian Bayliss all her life, since he lived only three doors down, was the same age as she was, and they’d gone to the same local schools. A raw, big-boned lad, he worked as a mechanic at the same bus depot where her father went each morning to pick up his beloved bus. Perhaps because of this close and constant interaction between their families, her parents (and Brian’s too, probably) had somehow got it into their heads that the two of them were a couple. Or were destined to get together, or some such nonsense.
Worse, she was beginning to think Brian thought the same.
It didn’t help that most of her friends thought he was quite a catch, since he was six-feet-three, with a fine head of sandy-red hair and unusual golden-brown eyes that had been described by one of them as ‘dreamy’. He also had a good job with a good wage. And to top it all off, he also played rugby for the local team, which made a bit of a hero out of him, apparently.
A nice enough lad, but Trudy had no intention of marrying him, or anyone else for that matter, for some time yet.
And although she’d said, over and over again, that earning her sergeant’s stripes was the only goal she had in mind, nobody ever seemed to take that in. Or take her ambitions seriously. Not her parents, or her brother, or her friends, or even Brian himself. It was as if she was one of those little dolls that, when you pulled the string, said something sweet and cute and totally unmemorable. She half-expected everyone to pat her on the head whenever she expressed her determination to succeed at her chosen career, and say how quaint she was, before going on to talk about which local girl had just got engaged. Oh, and had she thought about baby names yet for when she had little ’uns of her own?
Now, with a sigh, Trudy put on her cap and followed her mother out into the street. It was pointless arguing with her. ‘I’ll maybe call him later. If I pass a telephone box,’ she muttered instead.
‘That’ll be nice, dear. It’s Peter Sellers,’ Barbara Loveday said.
‘Huh?’ Trudy blinked.
‘In the film – the one you wanted to see. Brian said something about him being in prison and planning to steal a diamond or something,’ her mother said vaguely.
‘Oh. Right… er…I think it’s called Two-Way Stretch’, Trudy said, remembering saying once, while out with a group of friends, that she’d quite like to see the film when it came round to Oxford. Had Brian been out with them that night?
‘Well, that’ll be nice. Perhaps you can have a bite to eat afterwards. Dad says Brian earns a good screw down at the depot so he can afford to treat you.’
Trudy sighed. ‘Yes, Mum,’ she said wearily.
But as she walked into the station house, all thoughts about her social life disappeared, as it quickly became evident that something was up. There was an air of tense excitement about the place that you could have cut with a knife.
It was Rodney Broadstairs – naturally – who was the first to tell her what it was. Rodney always liked rubbing it in that he was ‘one of the boys’ and she wasn’t. ‘Our nutter’s only gone and taken a run at Anthony Deering! He’s in the hospital. Someone fiddled with his brakes,’ he told her, as he shrugged into his uniform jacket and plonked his helmet on his head. ‘The boss wants us to get out there and take witness statements.’
Trudy, trying not to grind her teeth at being left out of all the excitement, watched as Rodney set off, whistling cheerfully. Then – after a quick glance at her watch – she realised she needed to get herself down to Floyds Row pretty sharpish. She couldn’t see the old vulture taking any excuse for her being late!
She sighed heavily. Although the Fleet-Wright case had its interesting points (and was definitely better than walking the beat), it lacked the excitement and immediate drama of the Deering/McGillicuddy case.
‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that little brother of hers hasn’t turned out to be as batty as Gisela, poor thing.’
They were seated in a rather cramped little den, in a rather cramped little cottage, just the other side of Middleton Cheney, where Mary Allcroft was now living. Along with Mandy Gibson, Mary had been considered a contender for the role of Gisela’s ‘best friend’. Although one of the first things Mary had said to them, when they’d tracked her down and asked if it was all right if they had a chat, was that being a friend of Gisela’s was often something that could be open to interpretation.
Mary currently worked in the market town of Banbury, as a secretary in the offices of a narrowboat yard, so they’d been lucky to find her in on her afternoon off.
They’d been sipping strong, hot tea from slightly grubby mugs as Mary, after comfortably tucking her hair neatly behind one ear and settling down into an overstuffed armchair, happily answered any questions they put to her.
Which had started with her expanding on her remark about what being ‘friends’ with the dead girl actually entailed. Which was, apparently, to worship at her altar and put up with her moods.
‘Gisela was a funny thing,’ she’d explained. ‘One moment you were flavour of the month, and the next – for no fathomable reason – you were out in the cold.’
Both Trudy and Clement had agreed she sounded like hard work, but Mary had remained touchingly loyal to her dead friend. A short, round sort of girl, with an unruly cap of curly yellow hair and big blue eyes, she’d simply shrugged and told them she’d always felt sorry for her, and had been willing to put up with her ‘eccentricities’.
‘She was so clearly unhappy, you see, most of the time,’ Mary told them simply.
This had led to a general discussion about Gisela’s constant battle with depression and mood swings, which, in turn, had led to Mary’s latest comment about her little brother, Rex, being just the same way. It was almost as if she saw unhappiness like a physical trait you could inherit in your genes, along with the colour of your eyes or hair.
‘The little brother,’ Clement said now with a slight frown. ‘I don’t remember him being called at the inquest.’
‘Oh, he wouldn’t have been,’ Mary said promptly. ‘He was only a kid when Gisela died.’
‘What – five or six?’ Trudy asked. She, too, had seen no mention of the younger Fleet-Wright sibling in the records.
‘Oh, no. A bit older than that,’ Mary said. ‘Thirteen or fourteen maybe?’
Clement nodded. As a general rule, the court preferred not to call minors to the stand to testify, unless it was absolutely necessary.
‘How did they get on?’ Trudy asked, genuinely curious now. ‘I get the impression, from all I’ve been learning about her, that Gisela liked to be the centre of attention.’
‘Oh, Gisela didn’t mind him,’ Mary surprised her by saying airily. ‘Of course, she was always daddy’s little princess, and Mr Fleet-Wright doted on her. She could always twist him round her little finger.’ Mary laughed. ‘And it didn’t hurt that Rex adored his big sister either.’
Ah, Trudy thought with a wry smile. That would explain it.
‘He used to follow her around like a little puppy dog sometimes, which amused her and pandered to her ego.’ Mary paused and frowned slightly. ‘To tell you the truth, I found it a bit creepy sometimes.’
‘How so?’ Clement asked sharply.
‘Well – with boys, it’s usually all “mummy” this and “mummy” that, isn’t it?’ Mary said comfortably. ‘But with Rex, it was as if the sun and moon shone out of Gisela, not out of Beatrice. Maybe Rex picked up early on the fact that Gisela was the real focus of the family dynamic, making his mother more or less irrelevant.’
‘And Gisela’s health problems…’ Trudy chose her words very carefully. ‘Those would naturally have concerned her parents greatly, taking up all their time and anxiety.’
‘Yes, quite,’ Mary said. ‘Everyone worried about Gisela, which only played to her dramatic side.’ Mary paused and shrugged. ‘Even Rex fretted over her constantly, making sure she was warm enough, or ate her dinner. Of course, it didn’t help that Gisela used to play up to him eithe
r. I remember once, me and Mandy were round their place one summer, and Mrs Fleet-Wright had told Rex he couldn’t have a sherbet dip because it would ruin his appetite for tea. And Gisela immediately sneaked off to the local shop and bought him one and gave it to him. I wouldn’t have paid any attention to it if I’d thought she was simply being kind. But Gisela deliberately engineered things to make sure Rex was caught eating it. Naturally, that put her mother in a bind. If she took it off him, it would make Mrs Fleet-Wright the villain. And if she didn’t, it would just undermine her authority all the more.’
At this point, Trudy glanced thoughtfully at the coroner. Clearly, the Fleet-Wright family had its issues.
‘So, what happened?’ Clement asked, careful to keep his voice calm and neutral.
‘Oh, Mrs Fleet-Wright simply shook her head and said that if he didn’t eat all his tea there’d be trouble. In the event, Rex ate all the sherbet dip and seemed to adore Gisela all the more.’ Mary shook her own head now as she thought back. ‘The trouble was, Gisela was as inconsistent with Rex as she was with everyone else. One moment she’d make a proper pet of him; the next she’d be scornfully telling him to go away, that he was being a pest, and that nobody in their right mind would want him around. Rex would be heartbroken and wander off like a whipped puppy, and Gisela would just laugh.’
‘That sounds rather cruel,’ Trudy felt compelled to say.
‘Oh, it was. But then, in a way, it wasn’t,’ Mary said, rather enigmatically. ‘I mean, I don’t think Gisela did it to be deliberately cruel – I think she just didn’t understand it was cruel. Do you see the difference?’
Trudy smiled. ‘She didn’t set out to hurt her brother, it was just that she didn’t care if she did.’
But again, Mary was inclined to remain loyal to her dead friend. ‘Not quite. With Gisela, the only thing that mattered was how she felt. How her life was going. How she could entertain herself. Oh, I’m not explaining this very well!’ Mary said, cross with herself. ‘Gisela was the sort of girl who always had to be feeling things. To her, life wasn’t really being lived unless something was happening. She loved rows and arguments because she could become heated and indulge in clever language, and fire things up. She loved melancholy, and feeling sad, because at least then she knew she was alive. That’s why she kept that diary of hers. She was always writing in it, dramatising herself and what was happening to her. She’d spend hours writing in it, as if she expected somebody to publish it one day! She never let us read it, of course, but I suspect it was pretty sensational.’
Trudy nodded. ‘Gisela saw herself as a heroine in a novel?’ But as she spoke, she wondered: where was this diary of Gisela’s now? She was sure she’d seen no mention of it in the case files.
‘Yes. Exactly.’ Mary beamed. ‘And most of all, of course, Gisela loved being in love. And that was why that thing with Jonathan McGillicuddy really threw her for a loop, because, for the first time, I think it was the real thing. And not just one of her fantasies or self-indulgences.’
‘Ah,’ Clement said, nodding his head. ‘Gisela actually fell in love, instead of just playing at it.’
‘Yes. With Jonathan it was different. That’s why it really broke her up – and for real, I mean, not pretend. It shocked her to the core when he left her,’ Mary said sadly. ‘I don’t think it had ever occurred to her that any man could leave her.’
Trudy made a brief note in her notebook. Here again was independent confirmation that Jonathan had been the one to break off the relationship, not Gisela, as the dead girl had tried to insist.
‘Did you know Jonathan well?’ Trudy asked. Mindful as she was that the coroner’s interest lay in getting to the truth about the Fleet-Wright case, she knew DI Jennings expected her to keep the McGillicuddy murder and Deering case at the forefront of her investigations.
And she was determined to prove to her boss that she was reliable.
‘Not really. I knew him because he was Gisela’s boyfriend, but we didn’t get to meet him that often. Her friends, I mean. Gisela kept him guarded as if he was treasure. She wanted to make sure none of us stole him from her.’
‘She was possessive then?’
‘Very!’ Mary confirmed wryly.
‘What did you make of Jonathan?’ she asked next.
‘Oh, he was a bit of a catch, I suppose. Even though he was only her parents’ gardener, he was really good-looking and just that bit older than us, which made him intriguing! And the fact that he was a widower with a young daughter just made him even more glamorous.’
‘Did he seem to have any enemies?’
‘No,’ Mary said, her normally cheerful and open face looking openly dismayed now. ‘I read about his murder in the paper. It’s terrible! I hope you catch who did it.’
‘We will,’ Trudy said grimly, earning her a sharp, not entirely approving look from her companion. While she knew the police didn’t always solve their cases, and that she shouldn’t really throw out promises so rashly, she didn’t care. Let the old vulture be cynical – she could just feel it in her bones that they were going to catch the poison-pen killer of Jonathan McGillicuddy. ‘So, when you knew him, you weren’t aware of any problems he might have had?’ she pressed on.
‘Problems?’
‘Drinking, gambling, running around with a bad crowd?’
‘Oh, no. Nothing like that,’ Mary said.
Trudy sighed but nodded. It was as she’d always thought. Jonathan had died because he’d been Marcus Deering’s son, and some madman had a grudge against Deering. And with Jonathan being the illegitimate, secret, unprotected and unsuspecting son, he had presented a far easier initial target than the much more cosseted – and beloved – Anthony.
Still, she’d had to ask.
Ten minutes later they left the little cottage and headed back to Oxford. ‘It’s looking more and more likely that it was suicide, isn’t it?’ Trudy said, as Clement tried – and failed – to overtake a trundling tractor that was blocking two-thirds of the narrow country road ahead of them.
But it was as if the older man hadn’t heard her. ‘I want you to go and talk to former PC Richard Gordon,’ he said out of the blue, then gave his horn an impatient blast.
Ahead, the tractor made no obvious signs of moving over to accommodate him.
Trudy instantly recognised the name. ‘The PC who was first on the scene when the doctor called in the police? Why?’ she demanded. ‘As the local beat officer he’d have been asked to make an initial assessment and then report back, but it would have been the officer who then took over the case – DI Harnsworth – who’d have the best handle on it.’ Unfortunately, they wouldn’t be able to talk to Harnsworth, as he’d died shortly after retiring from the force last year.
‘Humph!’ Clement grunted then blasted on the horn again. In front, the tractor trundled placidly on down the middle of the road.
‘I tried to talk to Gordon right after the inquest,’ Clement admitted reluctantly. ‘He wasn’t helpful. He seemed to think I was questioning his competence. Clearly, members of your profession have fragile egos,’ he stated flatly.
Which, coming from the old vulture, Trudy thought with a catch in her breath, was truly an example of the pot calling the kettle black!
‘Which is why I want you to talk to former PC Gordon on your own and without me. Perhaps he’ll be less prickly with one of his own.’
But Trudy (apart from being much entertained by thoughts of how the ego-laden coroner had been put in his place by a lowly constable) wasn’t so sanguine about this. As a young probationary WPC, she doubted very much that the retired Richard Gordon would think of her so much as ‘one of his own’ as someone who had no right to be wearing the uniform in the first place.
Which was what everyone else at the station thought as well, with the possible exception of Sergeant O’Grady and maybe the old desk sergeant, who seemed to like her.
Not that she’d let any of that stop her!
Her chin came up as
she said evenly, ‘I’d be happy to talk to Mr Gordon.’
Clement Ryder turned his angry eyes away from the stubborn tractor driver in front to give her a thoughtful look. And noting the determined thrust of her chin, his lips twitched.
‘Thank you, Constable Loveday,’ he said mildly.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The editor of the Oxford Mail was intrigued and a little puzzled by the piece submitted by Sir Marcus Deering for inclusion in the next issue of the paper. But, like the good newspaper man he was, he scented a story in it somewhere, which was one of the reasons he’d agreed to include it. It was hardly breaking news, but Sir Marcus was a rich and powerful man, and his department store in the city centre paid well to be a regular feature in their advertising section – which was always something to keep in mind.
That, and the fact that Sir Marcus regularly dined with the newspaper’s owner.
There was also that little matter of his son’s recent minor car accident, which had barely merited a line or two on the bottom of page nine. Now he wondered about that. Could there be a connection?
And so the piece, outlining the great man’s humble beginnings in business, and his angst, regret and horror over a warehouse fire that had happened when he’d been employed in one of his first positions, ran on page five, with a nice little publicity shot of the entrepreneur himself. Along with the mention that he’d just donated five hundred pounds to a local orphanage.
And, apart from a mental note to himself to ‘watch this space’, the editor thought no more about it.
Trudy found the Gordon family residence easily enough. Situated in Kidlington, on the leafy outskirts, where the Oxford canal ran close to the railway line, the now-retired PC Richard Gordon lived with his wife, Glenda, and the youngest of his five children, who had yet to marry and move away.
