A Fatal Night

by Faith Martin

  Trudy’s mother wanted to know if he’d had breakfast, and in spite of the fact that he had, still asked if he’d like some scrambled eggs on toast. Frank Loveday cast him a knowing smile as he fended her off, and headed for the kettle. This he refilled and set to boiling.

  It took a while, but eventually Trudy was able to extract herself and Dr Ryder from her parents’ understandable but rather persistent questioning about their latest investigation, and once they were out of Botley, she was able to relax a little.

  She read the toxicology report as Clement drove very slowly and in fits and starts to accommodate other drivers who were finding their brakes all but useless. By the time they were approaching the police station – the Rover slipping and sliding a bit more than either one of them would have liked – she had finished absorbing them and had tucked the papers neatly back into the file.

  ‘As you said, once the inspector reads this, he’s going to assign it to someone else,’ she told him gloomily. ‘Probably Sergeant O’Grady, when he’s back from sick leave.’

  ‘Hmmm. I’ve had a thought about that,’ Clement said, pulling the car to a very slow and tentative halt. The front bumper nosed its way rather too deeply into a snowbank, but he didn’t think it would be enough to prevent him from being able to reverse back out of it.

  He turned to look at his young friend, knowing he was going to have to be rather canny about this. Trudy might want to go on investigating what they now regarded as ‘their’ case as much as he did, but she was duty-bound to keep her superior officer informed. And her strong sense of loyalty would have to be handled tactfully if he was to squeeze any more wriggle room out of the situation. ‘I promised Dr Carey, my contact in pathology, that I would inform the police about this right away.’ He nodded at the folder she still held. ‘And so I have. You’re the police, right?’

  Trudy looked at him and began to smile as she understood what he was intimating. Then she sighed heavily, the smile falling from her face as fast as it had arrived. ‘It’s no good,’ she said glumly. ‘I’ve got to tell the inspector.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ Clement said robustly, privately wishing the inspector a million miles away – preferably somewhere without transport. ‘But he won’t be in quite yet, will he? We’re still too early for him?’ Clement sincerely hoped that this was the case – it was the primary reason, of course, for his early-bird attitude to the day.

  He was relieved when she confirmed this by nodding, albeit a little uncertainly.

  ‘And you can always leave the pathology report on his desk, can’t you? You don’t have to hand it over in person, telling him what it is?’ he prompted, careful to keep his voice mild and matter of fact.

  ‘Well, no, I suppose not,’ Trudy said, again tentatively. She could see where Dr Ryder was going with this but … did she dare risk it?

  ‘And if you left the report on his desk, say under a pile of other paperwork …’ Clement mused casually out loud. ‘He’d probably not find it until the end of the day, or maybe not even until tomorrow if luck were on our—’

  ‘He’d have a hissy fit!’ Trudy predicted glumly, interrupting him before she could become even more tempted. ‘And I’d be hauled over the coals faster than you can say Jack Robinson!’ she added bitterly.

  ‘But you wouldn’t have done anything wrong, would you?’ Clement wasn’t about to give up yet. ‘He did give you another day on the case, yes? And you have been presenting him with your findings as and when they’ve come in? You could argue that you’d done the same now, right? You called in to work early, found him out, left the report on his desk?’ he cajoled temptingly. ‘He wouldn’t actually know, not for sure, that he wasn’t the one who’d “lost it” in the pile? You did tell me a while ago his desk was always chock-a-block with paperwork and files, right?’ Although he wouldn’t normally stoop to such underhanded tactics, preferring instead to simply demand that he get his own way, right now he didn’t want to rile the inspector too much. He might just pull Trudy off the case.

  ‘Yes, that’s true enough – he’s not the tidiest of men,’ Trudy admitted. ‘And right now, with the weather, and being short-staffed, he’s been more rushed and careless than ever.’ She knew she was allowing herself to be talked into something she’d almost certainly be reprimanded for later, but right at that moment, she thought it would be worth it.

  ‘All right. I’ll go in and see if he’s there. But if he is, mind,’ she warned sternly, as the coroner began to grin in relief at having successfully suborned her, ‘I’ll have to hand the folder to him and tell him what’s in it.’

  Clement sighed, but reluctantly agreed. He could only ask so much of her, after all. He sat in the car for an anxious few minutes as his friend went inside the station, and it wasn’t until he saw her emerge, smiling, that he felt himself relax.

  ‘He wasn’t in,’ she said needlessly and happily, as she got back into the car beside him. ‘But we’d better make the most of our time. What do we do first?’

  ‘Well, first we go to my place, and discuss things. We’ve a lot to do, as you said, and not much time left to do it in. But we’re in luck there,’ he added, turning the ignition on the car, and cautiously backing his car’s nose out of the snowdrift.

  ‘Oh?’ Trudy said.

  ‘Yes. Vincent has offered to help,’ Clement said brightly.

  Trudy’s heart fell a bit as she contemplated that mixed blessing. ‘Oh,’ she said faintly.

  *

  But any fears that she might have had that Vincent Ryder would turn out to be a bit of a wet blanket fell by the wayside the moment they started to discuss the case.

  In the coroner’s warm and cosy study, with chairs gathered around the roaring fire as they had their council of war, it quickly became apparent that the younger Ryder was definitely going to be an enthusiastic part of the team.

  On the drive to the house, however, Trudy had had to insist that any contribution Vincent might make had to be kept a total secret from Inspector Jennings, who really would have apoplexy if he learned that a member of the public had been given intelligence into an ongoing investigation. Which meant, unfair or not, it would be left to Trudy to claim any credit for anything Vincent might contribute. And if, deep inside, she doubted that Clement’s son would be of any viable use at all, she was tactful enough to keep her opinion from Dr Ryder.

  Now, as they sat in front of the fire, Clement spoke first.

  ‘All right. So, what do we know?’ he began briskly. ‘We know Terry Parker is a bit of a ladies’ man. We know he’s very reticent about his past. We know he’s a thief, who quite happily stole from his business partner. We know – or at least can reasonably surmise – that he was planning on marrying Millie Vander for her money. We know he attended Millie’s party, where he must have, somehow, ingested a commonplace sleeping draught. I did some preliminary research on the barbiturate used, which would probably have started to take effect within fifteen minutes of consumption, depending on a person’s individual physical tolerance to such drugs. Some patients can start to feel drowsy very quickly, whilst with others it can take longer.’

  ‘So he must have been given the dose at the party,’ Trudy said, nodding her head. ‘At least that gives us a set list of suspects, which is something.’

  ‘Right, anybody who was at the party,’ Vincent chimed in, looking and sounding excited. It was certainly an improvement, Trudy mused, to his earlier frowning appearances! She had been able to tell, originally, that he hadn’t been too keen on his father doing what he considered to be strictly police work. But both she and Clement knew only too well how infectious ‘detective fever’ could be, and she was happy that he’d now become intrigued by the case. ‘Which lets off the business partner – what’s-his-name?’

  ‘Geoffrey Thorpe,’ Clement helped out.

  ‘Yes, because he wasn’t at the party. We can be sure of that, yes?’ his son shot back.

  ‘He wasn’t on the invitation list supplied by th
e hostess,’ Trudy corrected him cautiously. She had learned the hard way never to take anything for granted. ‘And when we interviewed him, he claimed to be elsewhere at the time – at a neighbour’s house for a small party. But we’d better check on that,’ she said, starting a fresh page in her notebook, under the heading ‘Things to do’.

  ‘Who at the Vanders’ party would have a motive to kill him?’ Vincent asked eagerly.

  ‘Well, the hostess for a start, if she found out her lover wasn’t the golden boy she thought,’ Trudy said at once. ‘And I think there’s a reasonable chance that Millie might have begun to suspect that, given all that seems to have been going on at the party that night.’

  ‘Right, the gate-crasher,’ Vincent put in. ‘She denied being there, you said?’

  ‘Yes, but we both think she was lying, don’t we Dr Ryder?’ Trudy said, looking at the coroner.

  Clement, who’d been watching and listening to the two young people with a small, indulgent smile, nodded obligingly.

  ‘We don’t know exactly what her motive was,’ Trudy added cautiously, ‘but Katherine Morton thought they were arguing about some love affair or other.’

  ‘What, the triangle going on between herself, Millicent and the dead man you mean?’ Vincent sought clarification.

  ‘Maybe,’ Trudy said.

  ‘But not necessarily,’ Clement felt compelled to caution them. ‘Whilst it’s possible the victim and our gate-crasher had been having an affair, an accusation of infidelity cast against the victim might not have been about Millicent. From what we know of our victim, Terry Parker might have been cheating on his wealthy lover, and the gate-crasher both!’

  ‘It’s beginning to get complicated,’ Vincent said, sounding not a whit put out.

  ‘And let’s not forget the horrible twins,’ Trudy said darkly. ‘Both of them had a reason for getting rid of Terrence. I can’t see either one of them being thrilled at the idea of having him foisted on them as a stepfather.’

  ‘That’s a bit drastic though, isn’t it?’ Vincent put in doubtfully.

  Trudy snorted inelegantly. ‘Huh! You weren’t there. Believe me, those two are a right poisonous pair. When it comes to hanging on to their own creature comforts, I think they’d be willing to do almost anything. Dr Ryder, don’t you agree?’ she again appealed to Clement to back her assessment.

  ‘Yes, they’re used to being the apple of their mother’s eye all right,’ Clement agreed at once. ‘And Millie struck me as being a very indulgent mother,’ he added for his son’s benefit.

  ‘Got it – they were worried she might start spending her money on the fancy man and not on them. Is that the lot?’ Vincent asked.

  ‘There’s the possible passenger in the car,’ Trudy added, a shade uncertainly, and explained about the unsatisfactory sighting of a passenger in Terry’s car, which might tie in to the indistinct footprints that were found leading away from the crash scene.

  ‘But presumably the passenger can’t be the killer,’ Vincent objected after a moment’s thought. ‘You don’t give someone a sleeping dose then get in the car with them, do you? You might end up wrapped around a tree yourself.’

  Clement and Trudy, who’d both already considered this, nodded in agreement. ‘Unless he or she wanted to make certain Terry died,’ Clement felt obliged to play devil’s advocate. ‘He or she gave him the dose then got in the car, just to make sure he didn’t make it home in time to stumble into bed, safe and sound.’

  ‘Yes. It is, when you think about it, a rather iffy way of trying to kill someone, isn’t it?’ Trudy mused out loud. ‘Presumably the killer knew the dose itself wouldn’t be fatal, so would have been counting on Terry crashing the car and dying as a result, or freezing to death afterwards. Hold on!’ She sat forward suddenly as something occurred to her. ‘So he or she would have had to have got the timing just right!’ she pointed out, her voice rising with excitement.

  ‘Yes!’ Vincent cried, her excitement catching. ‘If they’d given it to him too soon, he’d just have got sleepy and fallen asleep on the couch or something. And Mrs Vander would have been sure to let him just sleep it off.’

  ‘How was it done?’ Trudy asked, momentarily stumped. ‘How could the killer have known just when to give him a doctored drink?’ she asked, looking and sounding baffled.

  ‘I’m not so sure it would be as hard as you might think,’ Clement interposed, feeling like a bit of a spoilsport. He hated to ruin their fun. ‘Don’t forget, it was a New Year’s Eve party. At midnight, or just before, I imagine Mrs Vander topped up the champagne glasses for the traditional toast. After which, I think the killer could be fairly sure that most of the guests, given the snow and conditions, would all leave pretty soon. Including our victim. Hence … an ideal time to slip the dose into his champagne glass. The bubbles would also have helped to disperse the drug quickly.’

  ‘Oh yes, that makes sense,’ Vincent said, a little deflated.

  ‘I still say it sounds a bit risky to me,’ Trudy said mutinously. ‘What if they’d been seen? Or if Terry had simply decided to stay longer?’

  ‘Hmmm, you’re right of course,’ Clement said. ‘It sounds as if we’re dealing with an opportunistic killer, rather than a meticulous planner.’

  ‘So, we’re saying then,’ Trudy summarised, ‘that Terry was killed by someone at the party. This someone put a dose of sleeping powder in his glass sometime around midnight and … what … just hoped that he’d crash the car and either die of his injuries or freeze to death before he managed to get himself home?’

  ‘Putting it like that, it does sound a bit half-hearted, doesn’t it?’ Vincent asked. ‘Are you sure we haven’t got that wrong, and it was all very carefully thought out and planned after all? And we’re just not seeing it?’

  ‘You’ve been reading too many Sexton Blake or Sherlock Holmes novels, my boy,’ Clement reproved, grinning at him. ‘You want us to be up against a veritable Moriarty or a criminal mastermind. The truth is bound to be a lot more prosaic, and probably sad and pathetic than that. Real life often is.’

  ‘There is the question of the sleeping dose though,’ Trudy said. ‘I mean, if it wasn’t premeditated, why did the killer bring the drug to the party in the first place?’

  Clement sighed and rubbed a hand across his forehead. ‘Yes. It’s a bit of a puzzler, either way you look at it, isn’t it?’ he admitted, and grinned widely. He couldn’t help it. As much as he might like to be the voice of reason and adult caution, he was as intrigued and gung-ho as the youngsters.

  Trudy and Vincent glanced at each other, similar smiles on their own faces.

  He looks a lot more handsome now that’s he stopped being so disagreeable, Trudy thought.

  She’s really quite something, this police constable. I can see why Dad likes her so much, Vincent thought.

  ‘OK what’s our first move?’ Trudy asked, turning back to the coroner.

  ‘I think we have to go back to the beginning,’ Clement said. ‘We need to talk to Millicent Vander again.’

  Chapter 21

  Trudy and Clement left the disgruntled Vincent with the far less interesting task of ruling out Geoffrey Thorpe once and for all. Although he’d agreed to be a ‘silent’ partner given Trudy’s superior officer’s likely reaction to his interference, it didn’t mean he had to like it. Besides, although they’d given him Thorpe’s address, he wasn’t all that sure how, exactly, he was supposed to find out if the dead man’s business partner really had been at his neighbour’s house on New Year’s Eve.

  It was all right for his father and Trudy – they had experience of this sort of thing.

  Did he just go to the houses either side of the Thorpe address, ring the bell, and ask them straight out? Or was he supposed to come up with some ruse or other? Either way, he knew he had to figure it out, as he was due to meet Trudy at a café near her police station at twelve-thirty, to give her an update over lunch.

  *

  Oblivious to Vincen
t’s predicament, Clement and Trudy drove cautiously along St Giles, and on up the Woodstock Road, having to stop on the way to help the driver of a black Austin 35 dig his car out of a snowbank. They weren’t the only good Samaritans out on the road, however, and all together they made quick work out of hauling the water-beetle-shaped car out of its difficulties and allowing it and its driver to get back on their merry way.

  Millie Vander hadn’t yet risen when they knocked on her door ten minutes later, and it was left to Juliet to go and rouse her, whilst Jasper reluctantly ‘entertained’ them in the drawing room until his mother could put in an appearance.

  Trudy and Clement both took a seat at opposite ends of a large, four-seat sofa whilst Jasper lounged against the mantelpiece of an unlit fire. Since the whole house was toasty warm from the central heating, the inhabitants of the house didn’t have to worry about lighting real fires.

  ‘So, Mr Vander,’ Trudy said, not about to miss an opportunity to question a witness for a second time. ‘We’ve heard that Mr Parker may have had a passenger in his car when he left your house the other night,’ she began, rather surprised to find her opening gambit got an instant reaction. For there was no doubting Jasper jerked visibly, and a flash of alarm shot across his handsome, petulant face, before he could prevent it.

  ‘Did you see who it was, sir?’ she asked quickly, not wanting to give him time to recover.

  ‘Me? No, why should I?’ he instantly blustered. He was dressed today in black woollen trousers that fitted him tightly and a plain white sweater, which made the most of his black hair and muscular, if small, stature. He really was good-looking, Trudy acknowledged grudgingly, but his tendency to play the spoilt brat was, in contrast, totally off-putting.

  ‘Besides, I can’t imagine that you’ve got that right, you know,’ he said now, succeeding only in sounding more condescending than persuasive. He folded his arms protectively across his chest. ‘I can’t think offhand of any guests we had here that night who might have been a candidate for a lift. Most of them either walked here, or lived on the other side of town. I can’t think of anyone who lived that far north.’ He studied his fingernails with feigned boredom.