A Fatal Affair

by Faith Martin

  The door indicated by the drunken young man opened to reveal a large and rather fine library. Two tall windows, probably as much as ten feet high, allowed the sunshine to fall on a colourful Persian rug that lay on well-polished floorboards. Row after row of bookshelves lined all four walls, full of books of all descriptions, their mostly leather bindings glowing richly in the light. The room had the slightly dusty, musty but infinitely pleasant smell of old books. It also contained a large, round and highly polished mahogany table that was littered with upmarket magazines and a selection of daily newspapers. Four green leather button-back armchairs (that reminded Clement of so many gentlemen’s clubs in London) were scattered around, offering a comfortable seat in which to sit and read.

  It was also, alas, empty of human life. Consequently, they shut the door and tried the next one down. This opened onto a long sunroom, flooded with light from yet more enormous windows. And standing looking out across the gardens through a set of French doors was a man who barely acknowledged the sound of the opening door.

  ‘Want some hair of the dog, Froggo?’ he drawled over his shoulder, without bothering to look around.

  ‘Depends on the hair and species of dog,’ Clement drawled back.

  The man’s shoulders stiffened slightly and he spun around.

  Trudy’s first impression of Mortimer Crowley was one of lazy, effortless elegance. He was slim, and maybe a shade under six feet tall. His dark hair was just going silver at the temples, reminding her of the pictures of the romantic heroes on the front of the romance books her mother liked to read so much. He was dressed in well-fitting bottle-green slacks and a paler green jacket of some kind that seemed to be made of velvet. Trudy had never seen anything like it before.

  ‘Who the hell are you pair?’ the man said, his eyes narrowing slightly. With the light behind him, Trudy couldn’t tell what colour they were, but she guessed they’d be pale – blue, or grey maybe. ‘And how the hell did you get in?’ he added as an afterthought.

  ‘A young man opened the door to us, but became rather indisposed shortly afterwards,’ Clement said with a man-of-the-world smile. ‘He indicated you could be found down here somewhere. You are Mortimer Crowley, I take it?’

  ‘I am. Care to share the knowledge around?’

  Clement swept forward, hand out. ‘Dr Clement Ryder, coroner of the city of Oxford. This is my assistant, Miss Loveday.’

  Mortimer’s stiffened form relaxed visibly – too visibly for it to be real, Clement thought. And right on cue, his square, good-looking face creased into an affable smile.

  ‘That sounds rather ominous,’ he said mildly. ‘I didn’t think coroners made house calls. I know my dissolute lifestyle isn’t likely to let me see old bones, but I hadn’t realised you fellows actually came touting for business.’ He flashed them a smile to show that it was all in good fun, giving them a view of some very impressive white teeth.

  Clement obliging exposed his own molars in a similar flash of manufactured humour. ‘Oh, it’s frowned upon, no doubt about it,’ he shot back. If he wanted to go down the hail-fellow-well-met route, he could be as insincere as the best of them. ‘Which is why we’re not here on your behalf, but on that of another unfortunate resident of the village.’

  Mortimer sighed heavily. ‘Oh hell, not more about that poor wretched girl Iris?’ He moved from the window with a heavy sigh, and indicated a long, traditional sofa, done out in chintz, wordlessly inviting them to sit. ‘I’ve been so thoroughly grilled by the local police about her, I’m beginning to sympathise with lamb chops. Well, sit down, we might as well all be comfortable.’

  It was interesting – but perhaps understandable – that their host had assumed they were here to talk about Iris rather than David Finch, and neither Clement nor Trudy, for the moment at least, were in any hurry to disabuse him.

  Instead they sat down, watching as Mortimer selected a smaller two-seater sofa opposite them, and spread his legs out in front of him, neatly crossing his legs at the ankles. Under the velvet jacket, Trudy now saw that he was wearing a silk cravat so white it almost made her want to squint.

  ‘Poor Iris. I really do hope you find out who killed her, you know,’ Mortimer said, having clearly decided to tackle them head on. ‘I rather liked her. She had spirit, you know, and ambition.’ He smiled and shrugged. ‘You don’t really see much of either of that around here,’ he added, glancing out of the window, where, in truth, little of the village could actually been seen. Just a few roofs from the cottages facing the house across the lane. ‘And, of course, she was lovely to look at. And as an art-lover, you can forgive anyone or anything so long as it’s beautiful.’

  ‘Yes, we’re getting the impression she was quite something in that department,’ Clement said blandly. ‘No surprise she was elected May Queen then?’

  At this, their host snorted disparagingly. ‘Oh, this village and their bloody May Queen! Just because the village elders made such a song and dance about the celebration of it in days of yore! No doubt it gave them an excuse to leer at all the village maidens. You’d think this bloody village invented May Day, the fuss they made about it! Still, she thought it was a great feather in her cap to be chosen and she was pleased to bits about it. Iris would have made a great May Queen, the poor cow, no doubt about it.’

  Although the words sounded shockingly derogatory, Trudy thought she detected a genuine note of pity under all the man’s posturing. He might be trying hard to come across as the uncaring sophisticate, but she also sensed a wariness and nervousness that was distinctly making her policewoman’s nose twitch.

  Clement sighed gently. ‘It must have come as a shock for the whole village – what happened to her.’

  ‘Oh, you bet. Hit it like an earthquake,’ he said flatly. ‘Nothing of the kind could have happened here since the first peasant built his first hovel back in the time of the great plague! The excitement! Such high drama!’ His lips twisted grimly. ‘Mind you, it gave all the self-righteous old biddies the chance to nod their heads sagely and say I told you so. Makes me sick! Just because a beautiful young girl had a bit of vim and get-up-and-go about her … oh hell, what’s the point?’ He raised his arms and then let them fall. ‘It’s always been the same – the old and ugly always despise the young and beautiful.’

  At this he glanced at Trudy appreciatively. ‘You have lovely hair,’ he said abruptly.

  At the unexpected compliment, Trudy felt herself instantly blush, and wished she could get out of this schoolgirl habit. She knew her long, dark, wavy hair was one of her best features, but she was used to it being hidden beneath her policewoman’s cap.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said somewhat primly. She wasn’t sure that she liked a man like this paying her that sort of attention. It made her feel gauche and out of her depth.

  Mortimer Crowley blinked at her decidedly cool tone, then grinned. ‘Sorry, don’t mind me. I have a habit of looking at people with an artist’s eye.’

  ‘Do you paint yourself?’ Clement came to her rescue, forcing the man’s attention back to himself.

  The other man’s lips twisted wryly. ‘Only as a hobby, and purely for my own pleasure. I sell art and appreciate art, but alas, I haven’t any real talent for it myself. My own particular skills lay more in being a facilitator. Matching buyers with artists, finding and encouraging new talent, that sort of thing.’

  ‘A regular patron of the arts then?’ Clement said.

  Mortimer gave him an assessing, slightly unhappy look. ‘If you like,’ he admitted.

  Clement nodded. Like Trudy, he was picking up on the fact that underneath the act, this man was not all happy to be answering their questions.

  Which, of course, only made him want to ask a lot more.

  ‘Was Iris one of the talented ones?’

  Mortimer snorted in laughter. ‘Good grief, no! I doubt she could draw a daffodil. At least, she never had any daubs that she wanted to show me, which is a relief, I can tell you. The amount of people who seem
to think I’m interested in their etchings and insist on showing them to me … ugh!’ He gave a shudder. ‘I wouldn’t mind, but they’re never even remotely interesting.’

  ‘But you seem to have known Iris well?’ Clement put in, letting the insinuation drift along at its own pace.

  Mortimer gave a long-suffering sigh. ‘This bloody village! What’s the gossip been saying about us? No, don’t bother, I can imagine. I was debauching her, or maybe she was debauching me? It has to be one or the other. The way people’s minds work around here. Bourgeoisie doesn’t begin to cover it! But I can assure you we weren’t lovers. I like my women a little older and far more sophisticated. Not that Iris wasn’t … well. And she was eager to become …’ Again he paused and then smiled ruefully. ‘I’m trying to find a nice way of saying this, a way that doesn’t make it sound worse than it is, but …’

  ‘I think I get the picture,’ Clement said, with another man-of-the-world smile. ‘Would it be fair to say that Iris was a girl who meant to make something of herself, and was eager to learn how?’

  ‘Yes, that’s fair to say.’

  ‘And in you, she had found an obvious target for a mentor and … shall we say, a facilitator? An older, sophisticated, well-to-do man from the big bad city who could show her the ropes?’

  The art dealer shifted a little uneasily on his chair at this. ‘Well, if you want to be blunt, then yes, that was no doubt what she had in mind. But really, there was in truth little that I could do for her. I wasn’t in the market for a mistress myself, so as a potential source of pretty baubles and fashionable clothes I was a bit of a washout.’ He grinned a little at that. ‘In fact, I rather think I was a disappointment to her all round. I even refused to invite her to my parties. But really, as keen as she was to grow up and spread her wings, I would have felt a right bast … er … rotter, throwing her to the tender mercies of some of my circle. They’d have gobbled the poor girl up and spit her out.’

  He said this casually, as if it was taken for granted, and Trudy could feel herself growing ever more disapproving, and wondered if she was being silly and prudish. But the truth was, she simply didn’t like this man. She didn’t like his attitude to life, or the careless way in which he talked about a girl who had been so brutally murdered. Not only as if she didn’t matter, but as if his indifference to it didn’t matter either.

  ‘But she was often seen in your company,’ Clement repeated, and Trudy felt a flush of pride and pleasure that her friend wasn’t letting him get away with anything.

  Mortimer flushed slightly, his first real sign of anger, and then shrugged. ‘Yes, all right, she was a bit of a pest and hung around, and I didn’t like to give her the total brush off. She was so desperate to get to London and get a high-profile job, something to make her parents go grey overnight and give the old village biddies something to really get their tongues wagging. It was like having a puppy following you around, looking at you with big pleading eyes. In the end, I sort of introduced her to a few artists I trusted not to treat her too shabbily, and who were in the market for a pretty model. I knew if nothing else they’d at least pay her well. And if they promised her that they could get her a break into real modelling, or introduce her to someone from a proper modelling agency …’ He shrugged fatalistically. ‘Well, who was I to rain on her parade? Anyway, that seemed to satisfy her.’

  ‘That was big of you,’ Clement said with another flash of his teeth, and again Trudy felt pleased to see their handsome host look discomfited. ‘Do you think you could give us the names of these artists you … introduced her to, out of the goodness of your heart?’

  Mortimer sighed ostentatiously and rapidly shot off a few names. Trudy wished she had her notebook with her and could jot them down, but she was sure she could remember them.

  ‘But I don’t know if any of them ever did get her to model for them, you understand,’ Mortimer warned.

  ‘So who do you suppose did supply her with her baubles?’ Clement asked out of nowhere. ‘You said you weren’t in the market for a mistress, but we know that Iris had been given a rather fine pearl and gold necklace, amongst other things.’

  ‘Oh, right. How on earth should I know?’ he asked indifferently, beginning to sound bored.

  Clement nodded. ‘Of course, the death of Iris wasn’t the only tragedy the village has had to cope with, is it?’

  ‘What?’ For a moment, the art-lover looked genuinely bewildered, but then his face cleared. ‘Oh, you mean the boyfriend – the one who hanged himself? No, that was rough. Poor little sod. Fancy dying when you’re not even twenty-one yet. Or had he got that far?’ he asked nonchalantly.

  ‘Did you know David Finch?’ Clement asked shortly.

  ‘What, a policeman’s son?’ Mortimer said, mock-scandalised. ‘No, not well,’ he added more gruffly, when neither of them responded to his wide grin. ‘I mean we’d spoken once or twice, but since he’d mostly got the wrong end of the stick about me and Iris, we didn’t exactly get the chance to become best buddies.’

  ‘Oh?’ Clement almost felt Trudy begin to quiver alertly, and only hoped his own interest wasn’t so obvious. Like his young friend, Clement didn’t like this man much, and wasn’t in any rush to make life easier for him. ‘How did he get the wrong end of the stick exactly?’

  But if he’d hoped to penetrate their host’s determined bonhomie, or even disconcert him a little, he was to be disappointed, for Mortimer merely shrugged.

  ‘Oh, he’d been listening to the gossip I suppose,’ he yawned widely and settled himself more comfortably on the sofa. ‘Seemed to have some sort of a bee in his bonnet that I’d been giving her fancy ideas, promising her a new life in London, or some such rubbish. Turning her head, and generally interfering with his precious courtship of her.’ Mortimer laughed. ‘Naturally, I soon put him right. Told him flat out she’d been too young and silly for me.’

  ‘And did he believe you?’ Clement asked sceptically.

  Mortimer’s pale eyes (pale blue, Trudy noted, now that she could see them properly) narrowed slightly. He obviously didn’t appreciate the older man’s patent disbelief, but then he was once again flashing his big white teeth.

  ‘Not at first, you’re right,’ he admitted affably enough. ‘But eventually I was able to convince him that girls like Iris are far more trouble to me than they’re worth, and he got the idea. In the end he went off quite happily, I think. Mind you, not before jotting down something in that ridiculous little journal of his though.’

  Chapter 20

  Seemingly totally unaware of the bombshell that he’d just dropped, Mortimer yawned again. ‘I think I was meant to consider myself “warned”. That my words were being noted!’ He gave the last word a dramatic twist. ‘Naturally, I couldn’t care less how I came across in his grubby little diary or whatever it was.’

  He stretched luxuriously. ‘Why is it that people seem to think you care a tinker’s cuss about their lives?’

  ‘What journal?’ Clement said.

  ‘Hmmm? Sorry, what was that? I didn’t get much sleep last night.’

  Clement held onto his temper and repeated cordially, ‘You said he wrote something down in his journal or diary or something?’

  ‘Yes, he did. He didn’t think I’d seen him, but after he walked away I watched him for a bit, just curious I suppose, and he stopped and pulled what looked like a small notebook or pocket diary – you know the kind, one of those black or brown leather things? – out of his pocket and jotted something down.’

  ‘Did it make you feel uneasy? It sounds as if he thought you were a person of interest, or had said something important. Did that worry you?’ Trudy couldn’t help but ask, earning herself a patronising smile in return.

  ‘Hardly! What do I care what people think of me?’ came the somewhat predictable response.

  It was also, Trudy supposed, a rhetorical question.

  ‘And is that the only time you saw David Finch?’ Clement asked.

  ‘As far a
s I know,’ the other man responded, making no effort to hide his boredom now.

  ‘You never saw him on the day he died for instance?’ Clement probed.

  ‘Don’t think so,’ Mortimer said.

  ‘Not out of the window, perhaps. Going by? Maybe on his way out of the village, towards the farm track that leads to the place he died?’

  ‘I doubt I was paying that much attention. The comings and goings of the village don’t really interest me that much.’

  ‘Yet you own some real estate here. You have this place.’ Clement swept a hand around the room, indicating the house and environs beyond.

  ‘Oh well, sometimes I like a bit of peace and quiet,’ Mortimer smiled widely.

  Clement hid another rush of temper with a smile. More likely, he thought sourly, this man liked to indulge himself in a quiet village where he didn’t have the eyes and the ears of the city watching him. It made Clement wonder just what sort of parties he liked to throw out here, in Middle Fenton. And whether or not a pretty girl like Iris Carmody had been drawn to them and welcomed with open arms, despite his denials that she’d ever been invited?

  ‘What sort of things do you think he might have wanted to note down?’ Clement, determined to keep his mind focused on the job in hand, went back on the attack. ‘David Finch, I mean? I doubt that he was interested in simply jotting down your denials about having designs on his girlfriend. That, after all, was to be expected. And from what I’ve been hearing about him, he was a bright lad.’

  Mortimer’s brow furrowed slightly, perhaps suspecting some sort of a dig, but after a moment’s thought, he merely nodded. ‘No, you’re quite right,’ he agreed. ‘He was, I think, after specific information about Iris. When I’d last seen her, what she’d said, did I know of anybody who she might have been planning on meeting – you know, artists or photographers or such. More especially, if she’d asked me if I could ask my contacts in London if they could do her any favours or help her find work. Or if I’d seen her talking with anyone in the village, maybe arguing with them, in the last few weeks or so. That sort of thing.’ He shrugged and smiled. ‘He seemed intent on becoming a rural version of Sherlock Holmes, in fact.’