A Fatal Night

by Faith Martin

  ‘So, do you often get called out by the police to do their work for them?’ Vincent asked, careful to keep his voice light and teasing.

  Clement grunted, stirring the cocoa mix and handing the mug to Trudy, who took it and sipped from it nervously. In truth, she didn’t really want the hot drink, welcome though it was. There was something increasingly odd in the atmosphere between father and son now that made her feel distinctly uneasy.

  She couldn’t for the life of her have said why, but she was sure that the coroner’s handsome son had taken against her for some reason, and she wanted only to make herself scarce.

  ‘As a matter of fact, Constable Loveday and myself are old hands at it,’ Clement said cheerfully. Things had been pretty dull for him of late, and even if a dead, probably drunken driver, wouldn’t amount to much of an investigation, it beat staying indoors, listening to the wireless and rereading Tolstoy.

  Vincent’s head came up sharply. ‘Sorry? What do you mean, exactly? Old hands at what?’

  Clement smiled at his son, and began to explain their previous cases. Trudy, whilst proud of their successes, couldn’t help but feel that Vincent Ryder was less than happy to hear that his father fancied himself as a detective and had actively been working with her to investigate actual crimes.

  ‘So you and … er …’ Vincent looked at the pretty young girl incredulously. ‘Er … Constable …’

  ‘Loveday, sir,’ Trudy supplied helpfully.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Constable Loveday. You’ve been actually working on murder cases?’ Vincent said, his voice rising higher in sheer disbelief.

  He stared at Trudy, trying to guess her age. She looked to him to be barely out of her teens!

  ‘Well, not quite,’ Clement said. ‘That is, nobody knew they were murder cases at the time. Let’s just say,’ he added on seeing his son’s puzzled features, ‘that sometimes things happen that need looking into, but they don’t really seem to require an official investigation, as such. If I get a case in my court where I feel that a verdict of accidental death, for instance, isn’t really justified, that’s when I make a fuss and we’re allowed to dig about a little. Question suspects, follow leads, that sort of thing. And recently, we were asked by the police to do some undercover digging in what was an active murder investigation.’

  ‘Dad! That’s a job for the police, surely?’ Vincent objected.

  ‘Trudy is the police,’ Clement pointed out placidly and with impeccable logic.

  ‘But you’re not!’ he objected. ‘You’re supposed to work in an office or the courtroom.’ Where the old man would be safe and not getting himself into trouble, he mentally added.

  Clement shot his son a knowing look. ‘I’m not a complete old duffer yet, Vincent. And you could argue that making sure people don’t get away with murder does fall under my purview as a city coroner.’

  ‘Don’t give me that,’ Vincent snorted. ‘You’re just having a ball running around playing Sherlock Holmes!’ he accused.

  Clement threw his head back and laughed. ‘And what if I am, son, hmm?’

  Vincent opened his mouth, but catching the steely glint that lit his father’s eye, thought better of the pithy reply that hovered on his lips. Instead, he looked across at the young girl sitting silently at the table, patently unable to meet his eye, and felt another jolt of alarm hit him.

  He remembered, a few months ago now, talking to his sister on the phone, and her remark that their father seemed to have got some of his old vim and sparkle back during the last couple of years. He had to agree, but hadn’t really thought much about why that should be so at the time. Now he suspected that he knew exactly why.

  His father, who liked to be in the thick of things, had found a new way to amuse himself. Tracking down murderers, and ordering people about. It would be just the sort of thing he would relish.

  But what if there was more to it than just that?

  His father had been a widower for some time now. And he was at that age when men could make a fool of themselves over a pretty girl. Worse still, a man like Clement, who had both independent wealth and status, would represent a very attractive proposition to anyone on the lookout for a wealthy husband.

  Just how long had this dark-haired, doe-eyed demure little WPC and his father been working together?

  And exactly how ‘friendly’ were they?

  Chapter 6

  ‘I thought the old girl was never going to start,’ Clement Ryder mused ten minutes later, and patted the dashboard of his Rover P4 as they finally and carefully pulled away from his house. There was barely room in the middle of the road for the big car to push past the snowdrifts on either side and even in low gear, the car’s rear end had the unnerving tendency to head off in odd directions.

  Trudy, who was merely grateful that it had started (otherwise she’d have had to cycle up the freezing Woodstock Road) smiled distractedly.

  Once they’d made their way to the more recently cleared and wider carriageway of Banbury Road, Clement glanced across at her thoughtfully and frowned. His young friend wasn’t her usual ebullient and sparkling self today, and he suspected he might know why. He hadn’t exactly been oblivious to the chilly atmosphere in the kitchen earlier – a chill that had nothing, for once, to do with the atrocious weather.

  ‘You mustn’t let Vincent worry you,’ he said casually. ‘He’s always something of a grump in the mornings. It takes him time to warm to people.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mind,’ Trudy said hastily. ‘And he might have been right to be unhappy with me. I didn’t even stop to consider whether you might not want to be dragged out of your warm home on a national holiday!’

  ‘Nonsense! I’m glad you did,’ he said, evidently meaning it.

  Reassured, Trudy began to relax.

  Clement frowned once more as he turned the windscreen wipers on. The snow was coming down again, faster than ever, but it wasn’t the thought of yet more snow that concerned him.

  His son was no fool, and Vincent had seen him take that tumble last week – a result of his Parkinson’s disease getting worse. It had happened in the house too, without even the excuse of a slippery pavement to disguise it. He had simply failed to lift his feet properly – his own fault entirely. Although he tried to make a conscious effort to think about walking normally, sometimes he just forgot.

  Bloody disease!

  It had ruined his career as a surgeon. When he’d first noticed a fine trembling in his hand, and went overseas to confirm his diagnosis, he’d resigned immediately from the medical profession – to the astonishment of everyone who knew him – and retrained as a coroner. At least, in that profession, his medical knowledge didn’t go to total waste.

  So far he’d been able to keep his condition a secret from everyone around him, having travelled abroad to get properly diagnosed and treated. Nowadays, he tracked the progress of the disease himself, and self-medicated when necessary. He’d been confident that no one in his intimate circle even suspected that he might have a problem.

  But now he was worried that Vincent might have begun to wonder if there was something his father was keeping from him. He was a sharp-eyed lad, and not unintelligent. And much as he loved him, Clement wished this bloody snow would stop so that his son could return to his own life, which was lived many miles away from Oxford, before …

  ‘I think this must be it, just ahead. I can see the constable on guard,’ Trudy’s voice interrupted the direction of his morose thoughts.

  They had just approached and made the turn into Five Mile Drive, and up ahead, only a few yards on the opposite side of the road, they could just see, sticking up through a mound of snow, one angle of the rear end of a car. ‘It looks as if he turned the corner and overshot it and hit the tree,’ Trudy mused. ‘He might have hit a really bad patch of ice, perhaps?’

  In front of the snowdrift was the bare trunk of a denuded cherry tree. The whole length of road was lined with them, and they looked lovely in April or May, when all
the blossoms were out. Now this particular tree seemed to stand as a sad sentinel over the place where a man had lost his life, its bare twigs hanging heavily with icicles.

  ‘Either that, or he was going too fast for the conditions and lost control of his car,’ Clement agreed, automatically looking for a place to park, and then realising how pointless that was. The snowploughs, whilst furrowing a path through the road, had simply heaped snow at the kerbside. Instead, he just turned off the engine where they were – in the middle of the road – and opened the door. It was not as if it was likely that traffic would be queuing up any time soon. It was still relatively early on New Year’s Day. Most sensible people would still be in bed – and likely to stay there for some time to come!

  ‘Would he be driving fast? In this weather and the dark?’ Trudy mused.

  ‘Depends how much he’d had to drink.’ Clement shrugged. In his line of work, he was hardly unfamiliar with people who thought they could drink and drive.

  As Trudy stepped out of the passenger side, a young constable, looking miserable and perishing, stepped forward.

  ‘You my relief then?’ he asked hopefully, looking Trudy up and down without much favour. He was probably the same age as Rodney, and from the dismissive look in his eyes, shared Rodney’s opinion of women in the police force.

  Trudy smiled wearily. ‘Inspector Jennings has asked me to do the preliminaries,’ she said brusquely and got out her notebook. As she began to take down the particulars from the local beat bobby, Clement approached the crashed car cautiously.

  It was a Riley, he thought, and a path through the foot or so of snow surrounding it had already been cleared somewhat to the driver’s side door – probably by the constable who’d originally been called out to the scene.

  He bent down and peered through the frosted glass of the door’s window. It was hard to see much, as the icy film on the glass distorted the picture of what lay within, but Clement could make out the bare details.

  A man in a fashionable coat lay slumped forward, forehead resting on the steering wheel and looking, incongruously, as if he’d decided to just take a nap. His arm on the nearest side to where Clement was looking in, hung down by his side, his bare hand and fingers pale against the darker interior of the car. Clement’s own hands, clad in thick warm gloves, tingled in sympathy for their cold, blue nakedness.

  The coroner knew that it had been well below freezing last night, but he’d have to get the exact temperature from the local meteorological people. If they could find out when the victim was last seen alive, it might be possible to make a fairly accurate guess at time of death.

  He opened the door and crouched down, feeling a twinge in his lower back as he did so. Ignoring it, he peered closely at the dead man. Then he lifted his gloved right hand to his mouth and, using his teeth, pulled his glove off by the fingertips. He made a quick check for any pulse or other sign of life, unsurprised when he didn’t find any.

  Young, around thirty or so, Clement guessed. Good-looking too – for in spite of the fact that his face was a ghostly white, his features hadn’t been affected much. Lots of dark hair, in need of a good cut, in Clement’s opinion. But the trend among the young nowadays was to wear their hair longer, he knew. There was no obvious blood or sign of severe injury. Gingerly, Clement leaned in closer to peer at the forehead where it was lying against the wheel. He could see no sign of significant bruising yet – but that, as he well knew, needn’t necessarily mean anything. Some bruising only became obvious on cadavers after twenty-four or more hours.

  But on first glance, it didn’t look to him as if the driver had sustained fatal injuries from the crash. Although the front of the car rested against the tree trunk, it didn’t look all that dented in, and he suspected the bank of snow at the side of the road had softened the actual impact. But perhaps it had been enough to jolt him forward, banging his head against the wheel? Enough to knock him out? Especially if he was already three sheets to the wind anyway? Clement gave a mental shrug. Most likely it would turn out to be the cold that had finished him off, poor soul.

  With a grunt, Clement leaned even further forward, putting his nose close to – but not touching – the dead man’s lips. He sniffed and thought he detected just a faint whiff of alcohol. In the intense cold, he couldn’t be sure. Delicately, he reached out and lifted one of the man’s closed eyelids.

  And for a long, long, moment, he regarded the large, darkly dilated pupils thoughtfully. Then he gave an almost imperceptible nod, closed the man’s eyes again respectfully and stood up. He again ignored the twinge in his back.

  He put his glove back on, and carefully closed the door.

  By the time he’d finished all this, Trudy and the other constable were watching and waiting for his verdict in silence.

  ‘I can confirm death,’ Clement said flatly, glancing out of habit at his watch.

  Trudy too made a note of the time in her notebook, and nodded at him. ‘Constable Wilkins here was called out just after six-thirty this morning, by a man who’d been walking his dog and found the car.’

  ‘Beats me why anybody would be up at that hour on New Year’s Day, let alone walking a dog. And in this weather too!’ the constable muttered resentfully.

  ‘People are often creatures of habit,’ Clement commented mildly, looking at the scene. All around, white, hard-packed frozen snow, overlaid with a softer blanket of the snow that had fallen recently, made everything look uniform and ill-defined. Trudy, also looking at the scene, pointed to the obvious set of footprints leading to the car.

  ‘These the dog walker’s?’ she asked.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Wilkins agreed. ‘He was waiting by the passenger door when I got here. When I cleared a path to the car myself, I made sure not to disturb them,’ he added smugly, clearly expecting praise. Receiving none, he sighed.

  ‘What are these, do you know?’ Trudy asked, hunkering down and looking at some slight indentations in the snow that also seemed to circumnavigate the stranded vehicle.

  ‘Dunno,’ Wilkins said, looking at where she was pointing.

  Trudy frowned. Two sets of tracks – the dog walker’s in deep snow, and the constable’s where he’d trampled down a path – were clear enough. Both men, sensibly, had come and gone using the same set of tracks each had made. If you had to plough through nearly two feet of snow, it was hard work. Instinctively, you’d put your feet in the same holes coming as going, and in the bottom of each set of tracks, she could just make out the individual boot patterns of each man. Those of the dog walker, though, were fast disappearing in the falling snow.

  But the other indentations in the snow had no marks in them at all – nor were they so deep. ‘It looks as if someone might have been here already – perhaps last night when it happened – and then fresh snow partially filled in the holes?’ she hazarded, looking up at Clement.

  ‘Or they might have been caused more recently by someone or something that was not heavy, and didn’t sink so deeply into the snow?’ Clement pointed out. He glanced at the constable. ‘What was the breed of dog?’

  ‘Sorry?’ Wilkins blinked at the older man in consternation.

  ‘The dog walker’s? Was it a small dog, or a big one? Could it have been prancing around, making these marks?’

  ‘I don’t see any pawprints,’ Trudy said, peering into one of the smaller indentations. Might a fox have made them in the night, she wondered, sniffing around and disturbing the scene?

  ‘It was a collie,’ Wilkins said to the coroner, sounding bored. ‘One of those daft, friendly, black-and-white ones.’

  Trudy shrugged and stood up. ‘Well, Dr Ryder has confirmed death. Why don’t you see if you can find someone up in one of these?’ She glanced around at the houses. ‘And ask to use their telephone and get the mortuary van out here? I’m sure someone will give you a cup of tea – maybe even offer you breakfast if you’re lucky,’ Trudy added quickly, when it was obvious that Wilkins was about to object to having to hang around. />
  She saw the allure of bacon and eggs work its magic and the constable nodded and walked off, looking almost jaunty, to the nearest house.

  Trudy braced herself then walked to the car, stepping in Dr Ryder’s footsteps, and inspected the body inside. She was glad it wasn’t gruesome, but she still felt slightly queasy as she reached into the dead man’s coat pockets in search of identification.

  She found it in his wallet.

  ‘Terrence James Parker,’ she said, glancing down at the dead man sadly. ‘I wonder what he was looking forward to doing in this brand-new year?’

  Clement shook his head. Although he heard her comment, he wasn’t feeling in a philosophical mood.

  ‘Trudy, I don’t like the look of his eyes,’ he said flatly.

  Chapter 7

  When Trudy shot him a quick, surprised look, he explained about the dilated pupils.

  ‘Could too much drink be the cause of that?’ she asked, after a startled moment of thought.

  ‘I don’t think it’s particularly likely,’ the doctor in Clement proclaimed cautiously. ‘Of course, he could have hit his head far harder than it appears he has. Head injuries are notoriously hard to quantify until a proper post-mortem has been performed. Concussion might be the cause of it.’

  ‘But?’ Trudy asked, one dark eyebrow raised quizzically.

  ‘But,’ Clement echoed with a small smile, ‘I have to admit, my very first thought was that he might have ingested some kind of drug.’

  Trudy thought about that for a moment, then sighed. ‘We really need to find out what he’d been doing last night then, don’t we? And if he was at a party, as his clothes suggest, just what kind of a party was it?’ So far in her career, she had seldom come across problems caused by drugs – as a lowly beat cop, she was kept well away from the investigation of narcotics cases. But she knew that drugs weren’t exactly unheard of in the city – especially among the student body and the bored and wealthy set, to which their corpse seemed to belong.