A Fatal Night

by Faith Martin

  Readers love the Ryder & Loveday series

  ‘Insanely brilliant’

  ‘I absolutely loved this book’

  ‘Faith Martin, you’ve triumphed again. Brilliant!’

  ‘If you haven’t yet read Miss Martin you have a treat in store’

  ‘I can safely say that I adore the series featuring Dr Clement Ryder and Probationary WPC Trudy Loveday’

  ‘This book is such a delight to read. The two main characters are a joy’

  ‘Yet another wonderful book by Faith Martin!’

  ‘As always a wonderful story, great characters, great plot. This keeps you gripped from the first page to the last. Faith Martin is such a fantastic author’

  About the Author

  FAITH MARTIN has been writing for nearly thirty years, under four different pen names, and has published over fifty novels. She began writing romantic thrillers as Maxine Barry, but quickly turned to crime! As Joyce Cato she wrote classic-style whodunits, since she’s always admired the golden-age crime novelists. But it was when she created her fictional DI Hillary Greene, and began writing under the name of Faith Martin, that she finally became more widely known. Her latest literary characters, WPC Trudy Loveday and city coroner Dr Clement Ryder, take readers back to the 1960s and the city of Oxford. Having lived within a few miles of the city’s dreaming spires for all her life (she worked for six years as a secretary at Somerville College), both the city and the countryside/wildlife often feature in her novels. Although she has never lived on a narrowboat (unlike DI Hillary Greene!) the Oxford canal, the river Cherwell, and the flora and fauna of a farming landscape have always played a big part in her life – and often sneak their way onto the pages of her books.

  Also by Faith Martin

  A Fatal Obsession

  A Fatal Mistake

  A Fatal Flaw

  A Fatal Secret

  A Fatal Truth

  A Fatal Affair

  A Fatal Night

  FAITH MARTIN

  HQ

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  HarperCollinsPublishers

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  First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2021

  Copyright © Faith Martin 2021

  Faith Martin asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008410520

  E-book Edition © November 2021 ISBN: 9780008410513

  Version: 2021-09-01

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Readers love the Ryder & Loveday series

  About the Author

  Also by Faith Martin

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Extract

  Dear Reader …

  Keep Reading …

  About the Publisher

  For all my readers. After nearly thirty years of being published, I feel more grateful than ever for their continued support.

  Prologue

  Oxford 1962

  It was Christmas Day and the citizens of the beautiful university city of Oxford were feeling replete with turkey and plum pudding. Most of them were looking forward to Boxing Day, thinking only of a lazy day spent by the fire, with nothing more onerous to focus on than the inevitable return to work and the normal, humdrum routine of living.

  But the twenty-sixth day of December that year brought with it a blizzard of epic proportions, presaging a period of bad weather that would rage and rage and never seem to end. It was the start of what would later become known as ‘The Big Freeze’, when the whole of the United Kingdom would be locked in the grip of snow and ice for nearly four months.

  The people first saw the snow as a welcome representative of a white Christmas; the children and the adults alike played in it, starting snowball fights and gleefully building snowmen. But they had no idea of the nightmare that lay ahead of them. No concept of what it would be like when roads would be blocked for weeks on end, when trains couldn’t run, when winter fuel became scarce, and food in the shops dwindled alarmingly.

  Nor could they have anticipated the wearying, will-sapping tedium of constant freezing temperatures, day in, night out, until only and finally on the sixth day of March of the brand-new year of 1963, did the country finally record its first frost-free day.

  Of course, by then, there had been death, and plenty of it – the elderly, the unwary, the unlucky, the ill.

  But not all of the deaths were natural or accidental, or could be blamed solely on the pitiless winter …

  Chapter 1

  WPC Trudy Loveday felt her right foot sliding out from under her in a way that was becoming only too familiar, and instinctively reached out to grab at a railing beside her. It belonged to a small front garden currently blanketed in white, like everything else as far as the eye could see, and obligingly kept her upright. Luckily she was wearing warm woollen gloves, otherwise her bare skin might have stuck to the metal, it was that cold.

  All around her, the city of Oxford lay shivering and miserable. Much like one young, lone WPC, who was resolutely walking her beat.

  Trudy looked around and sighed, her breath, as ever, appearing in front of her in a small puff of vapour. They were in those ‘dead’ days between Christmas and the New Year of 1963, when all thoughts of Father Christmas seemed like weeks ago instead of mere days, and the time to sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ seemed as if it would never arrive.

  Most of the shops around her were closed, some because the proprietors weren’t convinced that any customers would be foolish enough to venture outside when the roads and pavements were so slick with ice and the dark days so uninviting. Others belonged to owners who lived out of town rather than over the shop, and were themselves snowed solidly into surrounding villages, unable to come in and oversee their business premises. No buses ran, and most trains were eith
er hours late, cancelled, stuck on frozen points, or halted by last night’s snowfall, which a nasty wind had driven into drifts that covered open spots on the railway tracks.

  She set off down the pavement again, her calves aching from the constant slipping and sliding she was doing, although so far she hadn’t taken a total tumble. By dint of shuffling and hardly lifting her feet, she was managing to get along, but her lower back was starting to feel the strain of walking so unnaturally. She would be glad when she could return to the station and thaw out with a hot cup of tea.

  Although it was nice to have a white Christmas, or so everyone kept saying, she’d be glad to see the back of snow. Pretty though it might be – and it had certainly given the already lovely city an almost magical appearance, covering spires and clinging to rooftops like a layer of icing on a cake – there was no denying it was beginning to cause serious issues.

  Traffic that did manage to take to the streets seemed to end up in ditches, or ploughing into other stationary vehicles when traction was lost on the ice. Old folk were accumulating in hospitals with their fragile bones broken after a slip on the garden path, or with hypothermia after they huddled too long in inadequately heated homes.

  And to make matters worse, a nasty cold or flu bug was going around, incapacitating not only members of the general public, but also decimating the ranks of the police and other emergency services, just when more and more calls were being made on their resources.

  Not surprisingly, her inspector was not in the best of moods.

  Trudy sighed, but DI Harry Jennings’s foul temper notwithstanding, she headed determinedly for the police station with its noisily clanging but blessedly warm radiators.

  *

  In his Victorian terraced home, with a pretty view over the nearby park, Dr Clement Ryder, city coroner, watched his son move around the kitchen, preparing breakfast. It wasn’t often that either of his two children, now long grown up, visited him for any amount of time, so he was making the most of it. Not that he didn’t heartily approve of them living their own lives, for he’d always thought that was how it was meant to be.

  When his wife had died a number of years ago, the twins had been twenty years old, and already both away at university, getting ready to begin their own journeys through life. His daughter, Julia, had taken her mother’s death particularly hard though, and he was glad that she was now happy and well and settled. He’d seen her on Christmas Eve, and had hoped to see her again for New Year’s Day, but he doubted, unless there was a sudden thaw, that she’d be able to make it. The roads were still impossible to navigate.

  As if reading his mind, Vincent, waiting by the toaster, sighed heavily as he looked out of the window. ‘I’ve checked, but there’s no chance of making it back to Cheltenham any time soon, Dad. No trains or buses and the roads are blocked everywhere. What’s more, the weather forecast last night said that there would be more snow flurries in the next two days. So it looks as if you’re stuck with me for a while yet.’

  Clement grinned. ‘I’ll cope! There’s no problem with your office, I hope? You being snowed in here, I mean?’ His son was a junior member of a small but well-respected architect’s firm. Fortunately, he’d brought with him some plans for a private boys’ school that he was currently working on, so it wasn’t as if he didn’t have something to be getting on with.

  ‘No, I managed to get through to Chris on the telephone at last. Apparently nearly everyone is stuck at home. And it’s not as if I can’t continue to work on the plans here. The new pavilion for the indoor sports facility isn’t urgent or particularly taxing.’

  Clement grunted. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be designing power stations by the time you’re my age,’ he prophesied proudly.

  Vincent grabbed the toast as it popped up, laughing and juggling the hot bread onto two nearby plates. ‘Hope I won’t have to wait that long!’

  ‘Cheeky pup!’ his father mock-growled.

  Vincent glanced at him then quickly away again. Like his father, he was six feet tall. Unlike his father though, whose hair was steel-grey with touches of white, his own light brown hair had near-golden touches here and there, and he’d inherited his mother’s rather striking green-flecked hazel eyes. A former girlfriend had told him that he had an expressive face, and he hoped that none of his growing concerns about his remaining parent were on his face when he brought the buttered and marmalade-bedecked toast to the kitchen table.

  ‘You going into the office today?’ he asked, careful to keep his voice casual. When his father confirmed that he would, he was even more careful to keep his face blank.

  ‘You’re not going to try and take the car though, are you?’ he added casually. He thought he’d managed to sound nonchalant and offhand, but the quick, sharp look his father sent his way made him wonder if he’d succeeded.

  ‘No, there’s no point. The roads are like an ice rink right now. And I’m not sure that last night’s snowfall will have been cleared everywhere in the city. Besides, Floyds Row isn’t that far.’ His workplace was handily located next to the city’s mortuary. ‘The fresh air and exercise will do me good,’ he concluded, his own tone having a definite ring of finality to it.

  And his son knew better than to say anything more. Besides, what could he say? Be careful to wrap up warm. Remember to take the stick. Don’t fall over again. Do you want me to come with you? He’d sound ridiculous. And his father would almost certainly snap his head off, and say something cutting about not being in his dotage just yet!

  Nevertheless, after consuming their breakfast over some more father-and-son banter, Vincent Ryder went to the window of the sitting room to watch his father’s figure as it set off into the snow. Clement, he was relieved to see, was wearing his heaviest overcoat and a fur-trimmed hat, and had on a pair of warm sheepskin gloves. And he had, indeed, taken a walking cane. This was something new, for he’d never known his father use a walking stick before, and he’d like to think his father was carrying it solely because of the weather conditions.

  But something about the familiar and confident way he used it made him wonder.

  And although the former surgeon and now city coroner seemed to step out with all the verve and vigour that Vincent had always associated with his parent, he felt a trickle of unease nonetheless.

  For there was no getting away from the fact that he’d become rather unnerved when seeing his father this Christmas. Clement had seemed more than a year older somehow. A little frailer, and perhaps a little thinner too? What’s more, Vincent was sure that he’d seen his father’s hands tremble – once when he’d been carving the goose that they’d enjoyed for their Christmas dinner, and once when they’d been playing backgammon and he was moving his counter.

  And, though it might be comforting, he didn’t think he could put the shakes down to the old man imbibing a bit too much of the Christmas spirit either. Although he liked the odd drink, his father had never been one to overindulge in alcohol, his former career as a surgeon no doubt having a lot to do with it.

  Perhaps Vincent was just imagining that slightly slurred word last night too? It had, after all, been late, and both of them had been tired. And perhaps all the times that he’d imagined he could see fatigue in his father’s eyes were actually no more than a reflection of the harsh white light bouncing off the snow that lay everywhere outside the windows.

  Still, Vincent shifted uneasily at the window as he watched his father’s figure until it was out of sight. Perhaps he was just kidding himself, not wanting to face up to the fact that Clement was getting older, just as everyone did.

  As Vincent Ryder watched his father disappear, he felt himself shiver. Which was silly – the fire in the grate was roaring away.

  And his father was invincible, indomitable, even. Everyone knew that. Right?

  Chapter 2

  A few days later, the dawn was cold but bright.

  Finally, New Year’s Eve at last, thought Millie Vander as she rolled over in bed, a happy smil
e on her face. She had been planning her party for weeks now, and everything had to be perfect for her guests, the rotten weather notwithstanding.

  She could just feel in her bones that this was going to be a night she’d never forget. For tonight, surely, he would finally propose.

  She climbed out of bed and went moodily to the window, scowling out at the relentlessly white vista that lay outside. She’d been hoping all week that there’d be a thaw and the snow would have gone by now, so the sight of it made her lips curl in something that was part pout, part sneer. She could almost believe that nature had conspired against her on purpose to put this annoying obstacle in her way.

  Already five of her guests who had to come from outside Oxford had called to cancel, saying they dared not risk the roads. Still, at least she’d had the good fortune to hire a famous local caterer, and she’d already had the evergreen arrangements delivered for Christmas Eve, so they were in place. They’d just need a little sprucing up.

  She sighed and went out onto the landing, crossing over to the largest of the bathrooms, glad that her daughter, Juliet, was still in bed. She liked to have the best bathroom to herself for a good hour or so in the morning. At the age of forty-three (thirty-eight to her friends and acquaintances) she needed just that little bit more time nowadays until she felt ready to face the world.

  Not that she hadn’t done well, she mentally congratulated herself. She stood in front of the long mirror that hung on the back of the bathroom door, turning her figure this way and that, checking for any signs of sagging or unsightly bulges, and finding none.

  At only five feet and three inches, she could almost see her entire length, and she liked what she saw. She’d always been curvaceous in all the right places, and slender where it mattered. A proper pocket Venus, George, her late husband, had always called her. Bless him.

  She sighed and turned away from the mirror, her mind going instantly to the day ahead. So much to do, but she was confident it would all go well. She only hoped her nineteen-year-old twins, whom she’d reluctantly agreed could bring one friend each to the party, would have been careful in their choices.