A Fatal Night

by Faith Martin

  Katherine shook her head and again gave that harsh, bitter bark of laughter that made Trudy feel like crying. It sounded so hopeless and lifeless.

  ‘I recognised him at once, of course. Not that he knew me,’ she informed them. ‘I attended Amy Jean’s inquest wearing this big floppy hat and enormous sunglasses so that the press vultures wouldn’t get a good likeness of me. And I wore the same thing about a month after my daughter died. I went to the place where she’d bought the car, you see – I just couldn’t help myself. I remembered how she’d laughed when she told me that a handsome young man had sold it to her, and I just wanted to see him for myself. Oh, I knew that it wasn’t healthy, but I just couldn’t stop myself.’

  The artist sighed and shook her head. ‘It was a mistake, of course. I watched him on the forecourt, going about his business without a care in the world, and felt so impotent and so full of rage. What did it matter to him that a lovely young girl had died so young, just so long as he’d made his pieces of silver on the sale of that damned car?’ She looked out of the window, clearly battling tears. At last, she turned once more to face them. ‘I never went back there again,’ she said quietly. ‘I think, even then, I realised that it would be dangerous – both for him, and for me. Something deep inside told me that I was close to a deep and dark precipice, and that I must never allow myself to look over it. So I forced myself to put him and his bloody cars out of my mind. It wasn’t easy, but I managed it.’

  Suddenly, she gave another harsh bark of laughter. ‘And then, just when I thought all that was behind me, I went to a party and there he was. Just right there, right in front of me. When I first saw him, I froze. Just as well I was sitting down with a drink in my hand, I can tell you,’ she added bitterly.

  ‘It must have been awful for you,’ Trudy murmured, meaning it. ‘Suddenly finding yourself in the same room as the man who’d played a part in your daughter’s death.’

  Katherine’s eyes flickered. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said, her voice more slurred now, but still perfectly understandable. ‘You’re thinking that his part in Amy Jean’s destruction was so small. That I was the more guilty one …’

  Trudy, in fact, hadn’t been thinking anything of the sort, but she didn’t correct the other woman. She could plainly see that Katherine Morton was so steeped in guilt and self-loathing that it would be pointless to try and comfort her. Besides, what could she possibly say?

  ‘And you’re right, of course,’ the artist swept on wearily. ‘I was to blame. But at least I am suffering for it,’ she added defiantly, almost proudly. ‘And so is her father, in his own way, I suppose,’ she conceded grudgingly. ‘But as I watched that man, laughing and drinking, I could see that he hadn’t suffered for even a moment. And when he began to dance with that rich widow he was soon to marry, I realised that his life was only going to get better and better.’

  Slowly, she leaned forward in her chair and placed her drink, with just a little difficulty, squarely back in the middle of the table. She fixed her gaze intensely on Trudy, who stiffened slightly under the onslaught. The artist’s face was now ravaged by some emotion so strong it made Trudy want to cringe back in her own chair to avoid being contaminated by it.

  Of course, she didn’t move a muscle.

  ‘I could see it all, you see, Constable,’ she said softly. ‘He was going to enjoy all the many years that he still had left, helping to spend Millie Vander’s money, dining at the Ritz, going on holidays in the south of France, enjoying everything that this world had to offer. Whilst Amy Jean, my Amy Jean, was lying in the ground, in the dark, with all those years she should have spent doing the same sort of things now lost to her, forever. And do you know …’

  At this, Katherine’s voice lowered and she leaned forward even further in her chair. Around her, the two men in the room instinctively leaned forward too, ears straining, both utterly fascinated and repelled but desperate to hear what she was going to say next.

  ‘As we began to wait for the clocks to strike midnight, I knew, just knew with an absolute certainty, that I couldn’t allow him to live one minute longer than necessary,’ Katherine said simply. ‘It wasn’t something I’d ever thought of before – taking revenge, I mean. Like I told you, I’ve tried and tried not to think about Amy Jean and that car crash at all – that fatal night when everything changed. And that included trying to forget everything to do with it, including her father and that man. But at that moment, with the old year counting down, and seeing him laughing and cosying up to Millie Vander … it was as if something just came over me. I can’t really describe it. It was like a blanket, only it wasn’t warm and comforting, but rather the opposite. Cold and lifeless. A compulsion, a certainty, a … oh, it’s no use, I can’t explain it in words. Without planning it, without even almost knowing it, I just knew I had to stop that man from living one day longer in a world where Amy Jean no longer existed. I felt so calm it was almost inhuman. It was as if a … a … fatal chill had crept into my blood. It was all-consuming and overpowering, and I didn’t even try and fight it.’

  Remembering that moment must have been more than she could take, because Katherine reached desperately for her glass and drained it again. Then she slumped back into her chair.

  ‘So what did you do?’ Trudy asked, her voice little more than a whisper now.

  ‘Hmmm? Do?’ Katherine looked at her vaguely, then smiled wryly. ‘Oh, I didn’t do anything, really, except think. How could I kill him? I had no weapon, and even if I got a knife from the kitchen or something and launched myself at him, all the others would stop me. His car was outside, and I’d have loved to see him die the same way my Amy Jean died, all alone at night in his car, but I’d no idea how to go about sabotaging it. The only things I had on me were in my handbag.’

  As she spoke, her eyes went to that very item, lying on the floor beside her chair, large and voluminous and bulging with items. Trudy remembered how full of stuff it had been on their first visit.

  ‘I keep practically everything you can think of in there,’ Katherine said, and smiled slowly. ‘Including the pills my doctor gave me to help me sleep. Bloody things stopped working after a time and I had to take more and more of them in order to get any sleep at all. But the funny thing is, that gave me a good idea of how they worked, you know, about doses and things. And suddenly it was obvious. All I had to do was wait until everyone had raised their glasses after midnight, then kept a close eye on that man, and his glass. The moment he set it down – in order to take the last dance with his lady-love, as it happened – I slipped two and a half doses into it, being careful not to be seen, of course, and simply waited.’

  Everyone in the room let out a small sigh.

  ‘Of course, it would have all gone wrong if he’d drunk it and then stayed for more than ten minutes or so,’ she said, almost casually. ‘But I was counting on the weather, and our Millie wanting her other guests to see him leave in good time. Just to prevent any more gossip than usual, obviously,’ the artist said drolly. ‘They couldn’t have anyone thinking he was going to stay the night! Oh no. Too, too shocking!’ She laughed mockingly. ‘And sure enough, just as I thought, he obligingly drank the rest of his glass down, and made a show of saying goodnight and leaving. And I … I just watched him leave the house, then said my own goodbyes and went home myself.’

  Katherine said this last sentence as if it surprised her somehow. ‘It felt … odd. Walking home. Wondering if it would work. If he’d crash the car before he got home. If it would be enough to kill him – and if not, trying to think of some other way of killing him.’

  At this blunt, matter-of-fact, indeed almost offhand statement, Vincent gave a slight shiver.

  ‘And you would have tried again?’ Trudy asked quietly.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Katherine Morton said, looking at Trudy with a slight smile. ‘I’d made my mind up, you see,’ she said simply.

  Chapter 33

  Trudy, afraid the other woman might become too
drunk if she didn’t act fast, quickly wrote out a statement of that night’s events, as the artist had described them, into her notebook in longhand and got Katherine to sign it. Clement then witnessed it.

  They then guided the malleable, now almost content Katherine to the police station in Clement’s car. Trudy sat in the back with her, but asked no further questions. She knew the sergeant would want to conduct his own, formal interview as soon as they arrived.

  She wasn’t surprised that Katherine seemed to feel almost satisfied now. Content even. The relief of confession must have been enormous.

  In the front seat, Vincent looked at his father’s tight but composed face, and couldn’t help but admire his old man. He himself felt distinctly shaken. Never in his life had he ever thought that he would sit in a room with a killer and hear her confession – let alone feel genuinely sorry for her. Even though, at times, he’d felt chilled to the bone by what she’d said.

  At the station, once they’d all trooped in, Trudy saw at once that Sergeant O’Grady was back at his desk. The door to Inspector Jennings’s office also stood open. Relieved that both men had dealt with the Vanders and Phyllis – who were probably booked and in cells by now – she led Katherine gently but firmly to the sergeant’s desk and sat her down.

  O’Grady regarded his visitor with sharp, assessing eyes, then looked up questioningly at Trudy.

  ‘Sergeant, this is Miss Morton. She’s just confessed to the murder of Mr Terrence Parker,’ she said calmly. ‘I’ve taken down her preliminary statement and she’s signed it.’ She handed over her notebook, knowing that she’d have to type it up later.

  The sergeant’s eyes, which had been widening more and more throughout her short report, flickered to the suspect, who gave him a brief smile and an even more brief nod of her head.

  ‘I see,’ O’Grady said calmly, beginning to read Trudy’s neat longhand. ‘You’d better report to Inspector Jennings,’ he ordered her, without looking up.

  With not a little trepidation, Trudy got up. Whilst she couldn’t help but feel proud of herself and happy to have solved the case, she wasn’t expecting any rosy congratulations or heartfelt thanks from her boss.

  Clement and Vincent, she noted with an inner smile, were wisely nowhere in sight as she headed through the open door!

  *

  Later that night, Clement stood at the sink washing up the supper dishes. He wished he’d been able to see Harry Jennings’s face when Trudy had told him they’d just brought in the killer, a confession already in hand, but he was pretty sure his imagination was up to the job!

  He was still grinning widely at his mental image of Harry Jennings spluttering, as he wiped up one of the glasses. Then his hand began to tremble uncontrollably, and before he could prevent it, the glass slipped through the folds of the tea towel and onto the kitchen floor, where it broke noisily.

  ‘Damn!’ Clement growled. Behind him, he heard his son approach and turned around quickly. ‘Pass me the dustpan and brush, will you?’ he asked casually.

  ‘Later,’ Vincent said firmly, taking the towel from him. Quickly Clement turned away, hiding his hand between his side and the kitchen sink.

  But Vincent calmly reached around him, took his father’s still-trembling hand in his and pulled it out into the light. Clement stiffened.

  For a few seconds, both men watched his trembling fingers, and Vincent felt dread kick off inside his stomach.

  ‘All right, Dad,’ he managed to say through a throat tight with alarm. ‘Don’t you think it’s about time you told me just what’s the matter with you?’

  Gripped by A Fatal Night? Don’t miss the next book in the Ryder and Loveday series. Available now!

  Click here if you’re in the US

  Click here if you’re in the UK

  Keep reading for an excerpt from A Fatal Affair …

  Prologue

  Tuesday 1st May, 1962

  No one in the city of dreaming spires on that chilly May Day morning would have been thinking about death. Why would they, when the birds were singing, and everyone was congregating around Magdalen Tower, counting down the moments until it was 6 a.m.; that magical moment when the city began its celebrations in earnest?

  Certainly, the excited young choristers clustered at the very top of the college building had no reason to ponder on tragedy. Rather, their minds were firmly fixed on their soon-to-be-given rendition of that lovely piece, ‘Te Deum Patrem colimus’, the singing of which had been customary from Magdalen Tower on May Day since 1509.

  Even the influx of foreign visitors to the city on that special morning were far more interested in watching, with bemusement and disbelief, the quaint and colourful antics of the morris dancers that thronged the city streets, with their jingling bells and clacking sticks, than in contemplating murder.

  After all, who in that beautiful and ancient city could believe on such a wonderfully auspicious and bright spring day that anything dark and fatal could be happening anywhere? Weren’t the daffodils and tulips, the forsythia bushes and polyanthus, blooming in multi-coloured glory in all the gardens, proclaiming that life itself was good? Little children, perhaps bored with Latin hymns, were laughing and playing and singing their own, far more down-to-earth, songs, every bit as traditional to May Day, and carried on the breeze – ‘Now is the Month of Maying’ competing with ‘Oh the Little Busy Bee’ for dominance.

  Tourists took photographs. The choristers, flushed with triumph, eventually left the tower. The people in the streets, flushed with having witnessed proper ‘English culture’ sought out any cafés that might be open so early in the morning in search of that other British stalwart, a hot cup of tea.

  And less than seven miles away, in a small country village that had for centuries celebrated May Day almost as assiduously as its nearest city, a plump, middle-aged woman made her bustling way through the quiet lanes and barely stirring cottages, towards the village green.

  Margaret Bellham had lived in Middle Fenton for all her life, first attending the village school there, and then marrying a lad who’d grown up four doors from her down the lane, and moving into a tied cottage on one of the farm estates.

  In her younger days, she had missed out on being chosen May Queen for the day by the narrowest of margins, and had long since mourned the fact. Still, such disappointments hadn’t stopped her from cheerfully ruling the roost on the May Day Committee for the last twenty years.

  It was her job to see that the May Day Procession, including all the infants and juniors from the school went like clockwork, with the flower-festooned ‘crown’ and four lances being allocated to only the most responsible (and strongest) children to carry. It was she who organised the village ladies who would be producing the food for the afternoon picnic, traditionally held around the village duck pond. And, naturally, it was her responsibility to ensure that the village maypole, a permanent structure erected in pride of place on the village green nearly two centuries ago, was ready for the maypole dancing by all the village maidens under the age of eighteen, which would start promptly at noon.

  Margaret puffed a bit as she crossed the lane in front of the school, and looked across to check the time on the church clock opposite – barely 7 a.m., so she was well on schedule. Nevertheless, she was mentally making a list of all the things she still needed to do as she turned the corner that would take her past the duck pond and on to the village green proper.

  She only hoped, she thought with a scowl, that Sid Fowler had remembered to secure the ribbon-bedecked wooden crown on top of the maypole before it got dark last night. For whilst the stone maypole itself was left in situ to withstand the weather all year round, the wooden piece at the top, with multiple slats carved into it through which the long, colourful ‘ribbons’ were secured, was always kept stored in the school shed.

  Sid wasn’t the most reliable of men, though, and she had the spare key to the school shed in her pocket, just in case. She had delegated Rose Simmonds, the barmaid of th
e village pub, to make sure that all the many ribbons, traditionally the seven colours of the rainbow, had been cleaned and would be bright and sparkling for when the children began their dances.

  As a child who had once danced around the maypole herself, weaving and ducking around her fellow schoolmates in order to create the intricate patterns so iconic of the maypole, she knew how much better it all looked when the ribbons were bright and fresh. Spider’s Web and Gypsies’ Tent were her favourite dances, but the Twister …

  At that moment in her reverie, Margaret looked towards the maypole to check all was as it should be, and stopped dead in her tracks. For a second or two, she merely stood and blinked, not really sure that she was seeing what she thought she was seeing.

  Falteringly, her brain buzzing like a hive of disturbed bees, she stumbled forward, but as her feet stepped onto the soft green grass of the green, she felt the strength leaching out of her, and she sank awkwardly onto her knees.

  She felt her mouth open, but was incapable of making a sound.

  Instead, she just stared at that year’s May Queen.

  Nobody had been surprised when Iris Carmody had been chosen. Traditionally, all the village men (in a closed ballot) elected a village girl between the age of sixteen to twenty to be Queen of the May. And Iris, with her long pale fair hair, big blue eyes, heart-shaped face and hourglass figure had been breaking the hearts of local boys since she’d hit puberty. And probably even before then! Now, at the age of seventeen, she had swept all other challengers before her.