by Faith Martin
There was something almost theatrical about him, Trudy realised, and wondered if he was a stage actor, or someone in the entertainment business. ‘Won’t you both come in then? I can offer you coffee, at least, since my housekeeper always keeps me supplied with a constant stream of the stuff,’ he said, with yet another engaging grin.
Clement had to smile back, not at all surprised to hear this. Obviously any woman tasked with ‘doing’ for this man would have quickly learned that coffee, and plenty of it, was a necessity.
Their host led them through to a very nice, but extremely untidy, study-cum-library, with a large bay window overlooking a rather beautiful garden. Books lined the walls, but didn’t have that much-thumbed look of a true bibliophile. Probably inherited the house from someone who liked to read, was Clement’s first thought.
‘Take a seat, won’t you?’ Rhys said, slumping into a comfortable armchair and leaning back against it. The scent of wine seemed to seep from his pores in a rather pleasant way as he regarded them amiably through heavy-lidded eyes.
He’d clearly forgotten his offer of coffee and for a moment Clement was worried he was going to fall asleep on them. His trousers and shirt had a crumpled look, and Trudy wondered if he’d just collapsed onto his bed last night fully clothed, and then had simply got up and carried on wearing them this morning.
‘Mr Owen, we were hoping you could tell us something about Iris Carmody?’ Clement said, deciding the man needed a nice brisk shock to wake him up a bit.
‘Hmmmm?’ Rhys opened one eye, then another and forced himself to sit up straight. ‘Iris? Oh, Iris,’ he said, grinning widely. ‘I’ll say I can tell you things about Iris! What a sport that girl was.’
Clement leaned forward amiably in his chair. ‘Ah, like that, is it? And we gentlemen have good reason to be grateful for sporting girls, don’t we?’ he said, letting his voice become warm and suggestive. The quick glance he shot at Trudy told her that he wanted to lead this interview, since he was sure that he could get more out of their sybaritic host. Whereas Rhys would waste time merely flirting with Trudy.
Trudy, coming to the same conclusions, didn’t object in the least, but settled back in her chair, content to watch and listen.
Rhys Owen gave another sudden snort of laughter as the coroner’s words finally penetrated the fog in his brain. ‘I’ll say we do. And you can always trust good old Morty to find ’em for you.’
‘Mortimer Crowley?’ Clement said, just for the sake of clarification. ‘Yes, he’s a great friend of mine too.’
‘Really. Don’t remember seeing you at any of the special parties.’ Rhys frowned, then shrugged and gave a sly smile. ‘Bit shy, are you?’ he taunted archly.
Clement felt himself tense a little, realising that here he had a great potential source of information only so long as he didn’t scare him off. In his experience, men of this type could become very sober and very reticent very fast if they sensed they were treading on dangerous ground. And since he wasn’t sure exactly what was ‘special’ about Mortimer’s parties, he knew he was going to have to play this very carefully. Should the Welshman ever suspect that his visitor didn’t share his particular set of peccadilloes, then things could sour very quickly. As it was, Clement needed to keep him talking before his befuddled brain had a chance to start wondering exactly why he should be answering Clement’s questions at all.
‘Well, a man in my position …’ The coroner tailed off suggestively and shrugged.
‘Quite right, say no more, say no more,’ Rhys said happily. ‘Lucky for me, I never had to earn my own crust, so don’t have a job or any position to lose!’ He almost laughed again, but remembered just in time the pain that usually followed, and contented himself with a chuckle instead. ‘And I was too wily to ever tie the knot. No little woman waiting for me at home, to go all sour as vinegar and disapproving of my shenanigans,’ he boasted proudly.
‘Ah, a sensible man,’ Clement said approvingly. ‘As it happens, I have been to one or two of Morty’s little shindigs, but I’m not sure who was there and who wasn’t. I’m very discreet.’ He added to the lie with a knowing wink. ‘I can be blind as a bat sometimes. It’s shocking!’
‘That’s the ticket!’ Rhys said approvingly. ‘Not that I give a fig what people say about me, mind. Give an old dog a bad name and … er …’ His brow puckered as his befuddled brain groped for something witty to say, and then gave up the effort. ‘Oh, something or other.’ He waved a hand airily in the air. ‘No, I don’t mind being thought of as a bit of rogue. Ladies like that, don’t they, my dear?’ He startled Trudy somewhat by suddenly leering across at her.
Trudy, thinking of Duncan Gillingham for some reason, felt herself blush a little.
Delighted with the response, the Welshman again roared with laughter, then winced.
‘I take it that Iris liked the rogues too? And the excitement of it all?’ Clement said, forcing the lecherous old reprobate’s attention back to himself.
‘Oh yes, Iris liked it well enough, for all the fact that I can smell a gold-digger a mile off,’ Rhys said, with a fond smile of remembrance. ‘Girl like that, she could wrap me around her little finger. Not that I ever let her get her delightful fingers on any of my gold, mind, unlike some I could mention. I never knew a girl like her for getting you to spend your cash on her. And make you feel as if you were privileged to do so,’ he laughed again. ‘So, whilst I never kidded myself that I was special, Iris surely did have a way with any man. Could make even the stiffest of stuffed shirts melt like toffee in a saucepan.’
‘You knew her well, did you?’ Clement asked archly.
‘Ah, not as well as I might have done,’ he admitted, sounding rueful. ‘I wasn’t much into threesomes myself. I like to have a girl’s attention all to myself, sport, know what I mean?’ Rhys said with another knowing grin.
For a moment, Trudy didn’t understand what he’d just said. Then she felt her face flame in embarrassment.
Clement was less taken aback. He was pretty sure he had it now. ‘Trust good old Morty to come up with the goods.’ He forced his voice to come out in a rich purr. ‘I take it his London pals were always appreciative of his efforts?’
Rhys Owen yawned hugely, and again rested his head back against the back of the chair. He was clearly fighting to stay awake now. ‘Oh, no doubt,’ he mumbled.
‘And Iris got what she wanted too?’ Clement pressed.
‘Oh, I can guarantee that,’ the Welshman said with another snort of laughter. ‘She always did all right for herself, never you fear.’
Clement wanted to ask more, like who actually paid the girls – Morty or the gentlemen in question – but realised that, since he was posing as a guest of these parties, he should be in a position to know.
Checkmated, he decided to change tack a little. ‘It was really awful what happened to her, wasn’t it?’
‘Bloody shocking, so it was,’ Rhys said sadly. ‘Why tie the poor girl up to the maypole like that. That showed a nasty mind at work, if you ask me,’ he opined, before giving a huge yawn.
‘I think it’s put the wind up Morty,’ Clement said craftily.
‘Huh?’ The Welshman yawned again. Clearly he was soon going to fall asleep, and Clement wanted to get as much information out of him as he could before that happened. Memories of his own misspent youth told him that once you needed to sleep off a bender, nothing short of an earthquake could wake you.
‘You know, he must have been scared one of the party guests might have …’
Rhys blinked, then – to his credit – looked genuinely appalled. ‘No! You don’t think one of us could have done that to the poor girl?’
Clement shrugged elaborately.
‘No,’ Rhys said again, shaking his head in growing agitation. ‘I just don’t believe it, man. We like to party, but it’s all in good fun.’
But whilst Clement was inclined to accept that this amiable soak truly did believe what he said, he was a long way from accep
ting his conclusions.
To his mind, men who liked kinky sex at kinky parties were prime candidates for strangling a beautiful playmate before displaying her on the village green for all to see.
Chapter 29
Janet Baines left her house as the grandmother clock in their hall chimed six. She was feeling ever so slightly sick. Ever since Dr Ryder and that young girl had mentioned David’s journal, she had been kicking herself for being so stupid. How was it that it had never once occurred to her that it could possibly be important?
And yet, the more she’d thought about it, the more it had loomed large in her mind until it was almost shrieking at her. Now, as she walked through the village that she’d lived in all her life, blind to the children playing hopscotch in the street, and the gossiping of housewives she’d been polite to for all her life, Janet forced herself to remain calm.
But it wasn’t easy. She couldn’t really make herself believe that she was about to do what she was about to do, so to distract herself from it, she concentrated on something else instead. And pondering the personality of David Finch seemed as good a way of doing that as any.
Right from the start, she’d been a little surprised that Iris had made a play for him. Yes, he was a good enough looking boy, and his family had more money than Iris’s – but then, nearly everyone in the village did! Even so, he’d never really struck her as Iris’s type, somehow. He was too unsophisticated, too clever, maybe. Too ordinary – and most significantly of all – all but useless to her in terms of helping her to get on in life and pursue her dream of ‘making it’ in the big wide world.
But when it became clear that Iris really only wanted him as camouflage, someone to bring out on ‘date nights’ to reassure her parents and distract the village from what she was really up to, it quickly made sense.
However, what neither of them had ever really thought about was what David Finch must have thought about of all of this. Granted, Iris might have pulled the wool over his eyes to begin with, but no matter how infatuated he was by her beauty or feminine wiles, he must eventually have begun to suspect the truth of things? He was, at his core, an intelligent young man and the son of a police officer to boot. So he wasn’t your average, gullible village idiot, like most of the boys she’d grown up with.
Now Janet could scream at how dense she’d been. Of course David wouldn’t have let things rest, with Iris dead and himself standing, if not openly accused, then at least generally suspected of killing her. And with a policeman father as an example, what else could he do but try and track down her killer?
He had always been a careful, methodical sort of lad, she remembered now, from their shared days in the village schoolroom. The kind of boy who was interested in how things worked, and why – the type to make careful notes of everything.
Aware that she was coming to the end of the village houses now, she cast a very quick glance around, and only when she was confident that she was not being observed, did she dart off the lane, and, skirting a hedgerow, make her way stealthily across country.
Her heart was thumping in her chest, and she felt even more nauseous than ever. But she wasn’t going to stop now. She couldn’t. She had to be sure. Her hands felt clammy and she swallowed hard. Soon, she told herself, it would all be over. One way or another, things would be settled.
She had to hold on to that to give her courage. Iris was not the only one who could be brave and reckless when the need arose, she thought defiantly, surprised to find a smile on her face. If only her mother could see her now, she’d be shocked to her core! Who’d have thought she had it in her, she could almost hear the denizens of the Middle Fenton saying to themselves, if they knew just what she was doing.
But once again she shied away from contemplating just what might happen in the next hour, and turned her thoughts back to David Finch again – and his diary.
It was funny how fate could change your life in just one infinitesimal moment. Because as soon as the coroner and his pretty assistant had mentioned it, she’d been almost certain that she knew exactly where it might be hidden.
As a little girl, all the children of around the same age had played the same sorts of games, in the same sorts of places. And one of their favourite games had been hide-and-seek. And one of David’s favourite hiding places had been, of all places, behind the village primary school. Whilst she herself had always been happy, as a girl, to leave that place every afternoon at a quarter to four and never look back, David had enjoyed his lessons. So perhaps the place felt comfortable to him. And behind the village school was an old sports pavilion that gave way to the village playing field. Mostly used for the storage of cricket bats and footballs, oars and tennis rackets, it had never appealed to her as a particularly edifying place to visit.
But David, like most boys, had been fond of sports. And crawling under the space behind the wooden steps leading to the only door had been one of his favourite hiding places. So much so that once, when stuck for a place to hide herself, she’d used it too. And it had been whilst she was lying there, waiting for the ‘seeker’ to come, that she’d noticed that one of the wooden boards that blocked off the second step was a little ajar.
Curious, she’d investigated and found that someone had loosened one nail enough so that the board could be lifted up, like a window, revealing the space in between. And in that space she’d found a biscuit tin.
Naturally, she’d looked, and been disappointed to find no biscuits within, but only a motley collection of ‘treasure’ of the sort favoured by boys. A homemade catapult made out of willow and an elastic band, some colourful marbles, and a book – Treasure Island in this case. Inside, the name of David Finch had been written in pencil, so she’d known whose stash it was.
Funny how she hadn’t thought of that in years, until now. Now that the boy who’d created the hidey-hole was dead. Along with the girl he’d so foolishly, pointlessly, loved.
But she remembered that David had always had a secretive side to his nature, so it was perhaps not so surprising that he would choose to hide his precious journal there as well, and not at his home or anywhere else where it could be easily found. Especially if it contained something he might want to keep secret from his parents. He wouldn’t want to cause more worry for his mother for one thing, and perhaps had good cause to make sure that some of his more furtive activities didn’t reach the ears of his policeman father!
And so, last evening, she’d waited until it was getting dark and no one could see her, and then she’d made her way to the pavilion and regarded the steps thoughtfully. She knew it was pointless to try and struggle underneath the crawl space. Although she was slim, she wasn’t ten years old any longer! But, with the reach of her now-adult arms, she’d been able to grope around behind the steps, and sure enough, her questing fingers had managed to find the same plank of wood, which still swung open on its now rusty nail. And a larger, newer, airtight biscuit box had been hidden there – and within it, a small, dark leather-bound journal.
How her heart had leapt!
It had been too dark for her to read it then and there of course, so she’d had to take it home and sneak it into the house so that she could read it once she and her mother had gone to bed.
And what she’d read in that book, in David Finch’s neat and careful handwriting, had changed her world forever.
Of course, it would be just like David, she thought angrily now, to investigate what had happened to Iris with such a plodding, methodical obsession that it had finally led him to the truth.
Damn him! Damn him! Damn him!
Janet paused, aware that she was breathing hard now and almost sobbing.
Once again her mind went back to the moment, last night, when the village church clock had been striking eleven, and she’d read the final, momentous lines in that awful journal.
She’d read the initial pages impatiently at first, not caring about the details of who he’d talked to, and what they’d said, and how he’d pieced it all to
gether with that bit of evidence or this bit of corroboration. What on earth did all that matter?
But then it had started to penetrate into her feverish, frustrated mind, where it was all going. And the conclusions the dead boy was making.
And it had made her heart almost stop in horror.
So when she’d read the final line, that concluded with his stark belief that he knew who had murdered Iris – and named the suspected killer – she knew that she might never be safe, and things could never be the same for her again.
All through the night, she’d lain, shaking and cold on her bed, trying to find a way around things. Time and time again she’d tried to work it all out – following every possible scenario, desperate to find an escape route somewhere.
But with the cold light of day she finally had to admit defeat.
There was only one thing left for her to do if she was going to have any chance at all of having a decent life of her own.
And she was going to do it now.
How Iris would laugh and laugh and laugh if she could see me now. Janet could almost hear it, the mocking, ironic, jeering tone Iris had used whenever Janet had tried to stand up for herself.
But of course, Iris would never laugh again, would she?
At this thought, Janet paused, turned aside, abruptly knelt down and was violently sick into the base of a hawthorn bush.
After that, she felt a little better.
Chapter 30
In spite of everything, Trudy did take that Saturday off, since Dr Ryder wasn’t available that day either, and thoroughly enjoyed her rare day of leisure.
But she wasn’t particularly surprised when her friend and mentor called her Saturday evening and asked her if she’d like to accompany him to church the following morning – at Middle Fenton’s St Swithin’s Church, naturally.
And so it was that Trudy found herself – literally dressed in her Sunday best – at eleven o’clock the next morning, listening to the service with only half an ear, as she gazed curiously around at the congregation.
