A Fatal Secret
Faith Martin
‘Great characters, great plot and a totally dazzling finish… Wonderful. ’ NetGalley reviewer, 5 stars Oxford, 1961 A family day out at Briar’s Hall ends in tragedy when a young boy goes missing – and his body is found at the bottom of a disused well in the orchard. It looks like a simple case of an eleven-year-old exploring where he shouldn’t: a tragic accident. But Coroner Clement Ryder and Probationary WPC Trudy Loveday aren’t convinced. If Eddie had been climbing and fallen, why were there no cuts or dirt on his hands? Why would a boy terrified of heights be around a well at all? Clement and Trudy are determined to get to the truth, but the more they dig into Briar’s Hall and the mysterious de Lacey family who live there, the murkier things become. Could it be that poor Eddie’s death was murder? There are rumours of blackmail in the village, and Clement and Trudy have a horrible feeling that Eddie stumbled on a secret that someone was willing to kill for… Fans of Betty Rowlands, Agatha Christie and Faith Martin’s DI Hillary Greene series will not want to miss this! Readers LOVE A Fatal Secret! ‘A brilliant book! This is Faith Martin at her scintillating best!… A cracking good read… Highly recommend this book and I give it a delighted 5 stars!’ NetGalley reviewer, 5 stars ‘Gripping suspense that will have you on the edge of your seat. I was hooked from page one. ’ NetGalley reviewer, 5 stars ‘Great plot, excellent main characters and I read it in one sitting! I would highly recommend this book. ’ NetGalley reviewer, 5 stars ‘Gripping… Crime-busting nostalgia at its very best. ’ NetGalley reviewer, 5 stars The Ryder and Loveday SeriesBook 1: A FATAL OBSESSIONBook 2: A FATAL MISTAKEBook 3: A FATAL FLAWBook 4: A FATAL SECRET
About the Author (#uecd00995-81d3-5280-a22e-ea57dadbc2ac)
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 began to become 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.
Readers love the Ryder & Loveday series (#uecd00995-81d3-5280-a22e-ea57dadbc2ac)
‘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’
Also by Faith Martin (#uecd00995-81d3-5280-a22e-ea57dadbc2ac)
A Fatal Obsession
A Fatal Mistake
A Fatal Flaw
A Fatal Secret
FAITH MARTIN
HQ
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019
Copyright © Faith Martin 2019
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.
E-book Edition © September 2019 ISBN: 9780008336158
Version: 2019-08-02
Table of Contents
Cover (#u990ec611-5d73-50d5-8298-0bef3edb6b92)
About the Author (#ub9eea0e3-dc49-501d-a2e3-599509742038)
Readers love the Ryder & Loveday series (#u797e7373-97b9-5b34-8b47-a15de738fabb)
Also by Faith Martin (#u846c3edd-4df7-5f73-83cd-6b852a5a8bc1)
Title Page (#ubf1efce0-6295-5d60-83c9-6433f11133d0)
Copyright (#u456b1fff-0ac2-5773-98a4-a1f7c2bb7748)
Dedication (#uf3f81ca5-6a6a-5b22-96f4-ff754feb8148)
Prologue (#ud833d46e-b776-5977-b436-06723ceae941)
Chapter 1 (#u6a1e6bd6-42ba-583d-bb24-e7959dc04cce)
Chapter 2 (#u52d2b6e1-feb2-5a69-a449-c549445fb82f)
Chapter 3 (#u024a1bae-9cad-5333-b336-989c314bfcf6)
Chapter 4 (#ub08c2fd4-b88c-5aba-85ae-e7a62e47e073)
Chapter 5 (#u6fdf6be6-4de8-5677-9a13-087319f42260)
Chapter 6 (#ua7db5255-6430-567f-8a06-bfa93ba23a8d)
Chapter 7 (#u045926fd-58e8-50d2-b529-7de4b82a1b29)
Chapter 8 (#u3b659d34-7115-50b6-9142-e689021de344)
Chapter 9 (#ud1e8f8ec-c5f9-5596-adf3-d04d202a92cc)
Chapter 10 (#ua36707bb-3006-5d8d-beca-e74cc91fbc49)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Dear Reader … (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
For my sister Marion, with many thanks for helping me out with the research!
Prologue (#ulink_a524e152-d735-5873-9c09-9124cde37130)
Oxford, England. 1st April 1961.
It was a lovely Saturday morning, and less than three miles away as the crow flies from the city of dreaming spires, someone was contemplating how ironical it was that it should be April Fool’s Day.
The daffodils were just beginning to bud in the small woods surrounding Briar’s Hall. Birds were busy building their nests, and a weak and watery sun was promising that spring really was on its way.
But the person leaning against a still-bare ash tree, moodily observing the fine Georgian building below, cared little for the promise of bluebells to come.
That person was thinking of only one thing: death, and how best to bring it about.
Perhaps, not surprisingly, that person was feeling not at all happy. Not only was death on its own something that you would never consider in detail unless given absolutely no choice, contemplating cold-blooded murder was even more unpleasant.
Not least, of course, because if you were caught at it, you’d be hanged. Which was terrifying.
And yet death – and murder – there would have to be. The person in the woods could see no other way out.
Which instilled in that person’s heart yet another, stronger emotion. Rage.
It was simply not fair!
But then, as the person in the woods had already learned very well indeed, life had no interest in being fair.
A woodpecker struck up its rat-a-tat-tat drumming on an old dead horse chestnut tree deeper in the woods, its resonance vibrating through the air. But the human occupant of the wood barely noticed it.
Tomorrow, the silent watcher in the woods thought, would be a good day for it. With so much happening, there was bound to be confusion, which would almost certainly provide the best opportunity for action.
Yes. Tomorrow someone would have to die.
Chapter 1 (#ulink_54b90373-3d09-5492-aa5a-f2bb27b31e1c)
Easter Sunday morning saw probationary WPC Trudy Loveday going in to work as usual.
DI Jennings, true to form, saw no reason why she should be exempt from working through the holiday. Even though, before the week was out, she was due to attend a sumptuous lunch at the very swanky Randolph Hotel, where she would be the ‘star’ guest and feted as something of a heroine by members of the local press – as well as a certain Earl of the realm.
After being angry with her for initially keeping the seriousness of the event from them, her parents were now, naturally enough, as proud as punch about it all. But whilst they were eagerly looking forward to the event, Trudy herself was not so sanguine.
Although it was true that some months ago she had tackled and arrested a murder suspect all on her own, at the same time preventing the suspect from murdering the son of the Earl, she did not feel particularly heroic. Worse still, when the news had broken that the Earl intended to set up the dinner and have her presented with a formal letter of gratitude in front of the city’s press and various high-up members of the constabulary, she’d been ragged about it constantly by her peers.
And to no one’s surprise (least of all hers!), her immediate superior had made it very plain what he thought about it all. Which was not much. In Inspector Jennings’ opinion, the only woman police officer under his command was in danger of getting above herself. And it was his job to make sure her head was not allowed to swell! But no amount of protestations on her part that she had known nothing about it had convinced him that she wasn’t secretly thrilled with the attention.
So it was that she found herself at work during the Easter break, which in truth she didn’t really mind much at all. After all, others had to do it and lowly probationary constables (as the inspector had told her with a hard gleam in his eye) were very low down the pecking order when it came to being given prime time off.
Even so, it was a skeleton staff in the police station that morning, as the city’s many bells rang out for Easter. Not that Trudy minded that. At least DI Jennings wasn’t there to keep on giving her sharp, annoyed looks, and Sergeant O’Grady, as the senior officer present, was in a mellow mood. Some kind soul had brought in a huge chocolate Easter egg, which was very quickly being consumed by the few officers minding the store and, all in all, a holiday air prevailed.
Even the telephones were mostly silent, as if the city’s thieves and lawbreakers, too, were all sitting at home, presumably eating chocolate eggs of their own. But at just gone three-thirty, the phone rang, and from the look on Sergeant O’Grady’s face, it was clear that their quiet day had just been cancelled.
A slightly chubby man, with a big quiff of sandy-coloured hair and pale-blue eyes, he began scribbling furiously, then glanced up at the station clock. ‘Right. Yes, it’s a little early maybe to fear the worst just yet, but it doesn’t sound good. And the parents are sure he wouldn’t miss his dinner? Oh, right, I see. And the address is…’ He scribbled quickly, then nodded. ‘OK, I’ll help organise the search from this end. I dare say you already have some volunteers out and about? Right. And the local constable’s already there? Fine, we’ll have our own officers at the grounds within half an hour. Bye.’
When he hung up, Trudy, PC Rodney Broadstairs and Walter Swinburne – the oldest constable at the station – were all looking at him expectantly.
‘Right, everyone,’ the sergeant began briskly. ‘We have a missing child, I’m afraid.’ The words were guaranteed to make everyone’s heart sink, and Trudy felt her breath catch. She knew that the majority of missing children were found within the first few hours of them being reported missing, of course, but still. They were words you never wanted to hear.
‘His name is Eddie Proctor, and he’s 11 years old,’ Sergeant O’Grady swept on. ‘This morning he attended – along with nearly twenty or so other youngsters from the local primary school – an Easter egg hunt in the grounds of Briar’s Hall.’
Trudy vaguely recognised the name. Briar’s Hall was located in Briar’s-in-the-Wold, a village just on the outskirts of north-west Oxford. It consisted, if she remembered rightly, of a pub, a church, a handful of mostly farmworkers’ cottages, and a modest but pretty, classically Georgian square-shaped house made out of local Cotswold stone. The big house itself, she felt sure, was surrounded by a small patch of woodland, and boasted reduced but still admirable gardens, which is where, presumably, the Easter egg hunt had been arranged.
‘Kiddie’s probably just wandered off to eat his eggs without having to share them with his friends,’ PC Rodney Broadstairs said hopefully. He was a tall, blond, good-looking young lad, who thought far too much of himself, in Trudy’s opinion, but she could only hope that, in this case, he was right.
‘Be that as it may, he should have returned home at one o’clock for his Sunday lunch. And didn’t,’ the sergeant said crisply. ‘Since it’s Easter, the family were going to have roast chicken with all the trimmings, and the boy’s favourite pudding – a chocolate sponge pudding with custard. And the boy’s mother is adamant he wouldn’t miss it for all the tea in China. So…’
For the next few minutes the sergeant was busy ringing around the division’s other stations, which were also short-staffed, rounding up as many volunteers as he could find. Meanwhile, Trudy, old Walter and Rodney Broadstairs were dispatched in one of the police cars to make the short journey to Briar’s-in-the-Wold. Walter drove, since Rodney was still on the police-sponsored driving course and didn’t have his licence yet. Naturally, Trudy’s name had never been put forward.
Not that such a minor detail like that was going to stop her. Her friend, Dr Clement Ryder, had offered to teach her how to drive on their own time, and she was going to take him up on it!
But thinking of her friend, the city’s coroner, made her feel suddenly pensive. Their last case together hadn’t ended exactly how he’d thought it had, and she felt uneasy about keeping secrets from him. Oh, they’d found the killer all right, a very vindictive killer who had chosen to end their own life rather than face justice. But true to form, they hadn’t done so before leaving behind a very curious letter about the coroner, designed to do as much harm to him as possible.
A letter that Trudy had been the first to read, and – given no chance or time to consider what to do about it – she had then been forced to make a split-second decision on what to do about her unwanted knowledge. And giving in to her instinctive impulse to conceal it from her superior officers had left her feeling in something of a quandary ever since.
Withholding evidence was such a taboo that she still couldn’t quite believe she’d actually done it. But what other choice, really, had she had?
As she sat in the car, vaguely watching the scenery go by, Trudy still wondered if she could have – should have – done things differently.
Although, after much soul-searching, she had burned the letter, all she had to do was close her eyes and she could read it as if it still existed on actual paper.
To whom it may concern
I feel it my duty to inform the Oxford City Police that I have, on a number of occasions, observed Dr Clement Ryder, a coroner of the city, to show symptoms of what I firmly believe to be some kind of morbid disease.
I have noticed him to suffer from hand tremors on several occasions, and also a dragging of his feet, leading him to almost stumble.
Since a coroner is an officer of the law and holds a position of great responsibility, I feel it incumbent on me to point out that, very unfortunately, it may be possible that he is unfit to continue to serve in his present position.
I therefore advise, very strongly, that he be assessed by one of his fellow medical practitioners as soon as possible.
Faithfully—
Of course, she knew that the killer had written the letter out of sheer spite, intending to make as much trouble and inconvenience for the coroner as possible. But it had been a very clever letter, making no outright or unbelievable accusations, merely stating that Dr Clement Ryder was ill, and should thus be removed from his office as medically unfit.
On the face of it, it was a ludicrous claim. And now that she’d had ample time and space to think about it, she wondered if she shouldn’t have just left the letter where she’d found it, for wouldn’t her superiors have simply scoffed at it? Surely they would have regarded it as sour grapes on the part of a double killer, filed it away and forgotten about it.
Or would they?
Her immediate superior, DI Harry Jennings for one, was no fan of the coroner, since Dr Ryder would insist on sticking his nose into what the DI considered to be strictly police business. So he would have been very interested in pursuing anything that might help rid him of his troublesome nemesis.
And what if it turned out that there was some basis to the accusations? Trudy shifted uncomfortably on the back seat and suppressed a small sigh.
Yes, if she was going to be truly honest with herself, that was what really worried her. It wasn’t so much whether or not her chickens might come home to roost and one day blight her career. After all, nobody had seen her take the letter or even suspected its existence. No, she felt safe enough from the prospect of having to face any disciplinary proceedings.
But her suspicion that what the letter had alleged might just be true wouldn’t go away.
Because, for as long as she’d known him, she’d noticed a few odd things about her friend. The way Dr Ryder’s hands would tremble every now and then. She’d tried to put that down to age – after all, old men sometimes did have the shakes, right?
Then there was the way he would sometimes stumble slightly, as though he’d tripped over an obstacle that wasn’t there. Again, she’d put that down to him shuffling his feet. She’d noticed that sometimes he didn’t pick his feet up properly – ironically a failing that her father had often scolded her for as a child!
Of course, she’d half-suspected that he might drink a little more than he probably should, which would account for most of the things she’d noticed. A colleague had once told her that secret tipplers often kept popping breath mints to disguise the smell of booze on their breath, and it was true that, just lately, the coroner had started chewing on strong mints.
But what if he didn’t have a fondness for too much drink after all? What if the trembling hands and unsteady gait meant something else? Because if he really was ill…
Yet the only way she could know that for sure would be to ask him about it. It sounded simple enough, but Trudy had a feeling that it was going to be nothing of the kind. The coroner was a private and sometimes intimidating man, and she doubted he would take kindly to her dabbling in what he was certain to feel was none of her business.
But that was a problem for another day. Right now, Trudy thought anxiously, they had a missing child to find.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_362ec832-4d0c-5dcf-a687-2012434bd4f0)
It was apparent from the moment they arrived at Briar’s Hall, and reported to the officer in charge, that the boy had not yet been found.
The village Bobby wasn’t quite as old as Walter, and introduced himself as Constable Watkins.
‘Right. At the moment, we’re concentrating on the area around the lake, for obvious reasons,’ Watkins began grimly. ‘You two men make your way to the south side.’ He pointed across a small paddock. ‘You’ll see where the others are. Follow the path, but don’t bother searching the reeds where someone’s already left markers. Here…’ He handed Rodney and Walter a bunch of small wooden sticks, with red and white tapes dangling loosely from their ends. ‘Stick them in the ground at more or less twenty-yard intervals.’
Trudy glanced around, trying to get the lie of the land. They’d travelled through the length of the small village, which now sat in a shallow valley to the east of her. They were at the bottom of a slight rise, and surrounded on three sides by woodland. Presumably, the rise and the trees were keeping Briar’s Hall itself from view.
‘You, WPC…?’
‘Probationary WPC Loveday, sir,’ Trudy said smartly, earning her a sharp, beady-eyed look.
‘Oh yes? You’re the one who’s got herself in some bigwig’s good books eh?’
Trudy flushed painfully. ‘I didn’t do anything that anyone else wouldn’t do, sir,’ she began defensively, wondering how long she’d be forced to eat humble pie with her fellow officers. ‘It was the Earl who insisted on all this fuss.’
The now infamous letter of thanks, due to be doled out to her by the Earl’s secretary during the upcoming bash, would no doubt be instantly snaffled by her mother. Much to her daughter’s horror, Barbara Loveday had insisted that she was going to get it framed so that it could hang in pride of place over the front-room mantelpiece. Next thing she knew, her father would be charging the neighbours sixpence to come and admire it!
‘Huh. Well, I suppose he would, considering it was his son’s neck you saved,’ Watkins conceded, obviously willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. ‘All right, you can take the far edge of those woods.’ He pointed directly north and behind him. ‘I haven’t allocated anyone there yet. You’ll see the woods there come almost right up to the outer walls of the gardens of the Hall in places. But there’s a bit of an orchard area between, where formal gardens meet the farmland. Take these with you’ – he handed her a pile of the sticks – ‘and place them wherever you search. You’ve got your whistle?’ he asked abruptly.
Trudy obviously had, and lifted it from where it was hanging around her neck.
‘All right then. If you find the boy, give three short blasts. If you find anything you think needs further investigation and you need help, give two long blasts. Clear?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Trudy said smartly, and set off briskly with her pile of markers.
It was a cool but pleasant day, with the April sun playing tag with the clouds. She walked through the woods, as instructed. They felt, as most woods do, slightly damp. She kept walking uphill and through growing clumps of wild garlic and jack-by-the-hedge, carefully avoiding the freshly growing and vicious stinging nettles, until she came to the edge of the treeline.
There, below her, as she had suspected, was Briar’s Hall. She set off towards it quickly, aware of movement all around her. In one field off to her left, she could see several of her colleagues checking out a hay barn. Below, two more volunteers (villagers she presumed, as they weren’t in uniform) were tracking the line of a hawthorn hedge that separated two fields, which were both already showing green with barley shoots. If the boy had fallen in the ditch that usually accompanied a hedge, he would soon be found.
She barely paused to assess this however, instead marching quickly downhill, where she spotted the acreage of smaller, bent fruit trees that Constable Watkins had allocated her.
She could see it was surrounded by an old and mostly broken-down dry-stone wall, which would present no barrier to inquisitive children, and the ground between the trees was high with thistles, sedge grass, dock and various other weeds. No doubt, in the autumn, the estate manager let pigs from the farm estates in here to graze on the fallen or rotten fruit. As it was, she could see she had her work cut out for her avoiding the thistles – although in a few weeks’ time they’d be even higher than they already were.
With a sigh for her stockings, which she knew stood no chance of surviving this search unladdered, she set off carefully to place the first stick.
‘Eddie! Eddie Proctor? Can you hear me?’ she called, but after the first, initial moment of hope, which insisted there had to be a chance that a high, fluting child’s voice might answer, there was only silence.
Grimly, Trudy began to circumnavigate the orchard, hoping against hope that they would not find the boy’s drowned body in the lake.
*
It was nearly five o’clock when Trudy’s ever-decreasing circle of investigations had brought her almost to the middle of the orchard. Despite the cool April clouds, she was feeling warm in her uniform after so much walking and swishing of the sticks, hoping to catch a glimpse of a sleeping child in the grass.
She spotted a low, round circular wall of red bricks in some surprise, then, after a moment’s thought, realised that it could only be an old well. Indeed, the T-shaped thick wooden bracket that would have covered the top of the circle, and from which a bucket would have dangled, allowing water to be drawn, was still lying in the grass beside one edge of it. Over the years, it had been almost covered by a vicious-looking wild bramble and a particularly dense patch of dock, and she surmised that the big house probably hadn’t had need of the water supply since before the war.
She sat down gingerly on the outer wall to take a breather, glad to feel that the old red bricks still felt pretty stable beneath her. At some point, she noted with relief, the old well had been safely covered by a lid of thick, roughly nailed-together wooden planks, shaped into a circle and then placed on top – probably to stop wildlife from falling inside.
But as she looked down at it, she realised that it wasn’t fitting properly. Or, more likely, had it just eroded away at one edge? For as she looked more closely, she could see that there was now a small gap, perhaps a foot and a half wide, at one side.
Feeling her heartbeat rise a notch, she walked around until she was level with the crescent-shaped gap and without taking the time to think about it, bent down and peered into the Stygian darkness inside.
Instantly the smell of damp, stale water and algae assailed her nostrils. But the well was obviously deep, and she couldn’t really see to the bottom of its depths.
‘Eddie! Are you down there?’ she called.
Silence.
Trudy stood back. She would have to take a proper look, of course, so there was nothing for it but to pull the rest of the lid away – allowing more light to filter inside, giving her a better view. But she quickly found, much to her annoyance and chagrin, that tug and pull and heave as she might, she simply couldn’t shift it. It didn’t help that, over the years, the wood had warped and sunk into the outer rim of the well, making it hard to get a proper grip on it.
Grimly, she realised she was going to have to get some help. Which would just give her colleagues something else to crow about! A poor little girlie who needed a big strong man to help her. She could already hear them sniggering. As if she hadn’t already been the butt of enough jokes all day, thanks to a grateful peer of the realm!
Grunting and groaning, and almost wrenching her shoulder out of its socket, she finally admitted defeat and stood panting for a moment.
Of course, it was unlikely that the boy had climbed through the gap and gone into the well. But you never knew. A boy eagerly on the hunt for chocolate might not have stopped to consider that the people in charge of hiding the Easter eggs might have considered the inside of a disused well an unfit hiding place!
So she took a breath then blew two long blasts on her whistle. It rent the quiet air, and sent a flock of peewits in the nearest field shooting up into the sky, giving their iconic call of alarm.
After a minute had gone by, she repeated the process, and soon heard a voice hail her from the edge of the woods. Her heart fell when she recognised Rodney Broadstairs’ figure moving quickly down the hill towards her.
It had to be him, didn’t it, Trudy thought mutinously. The golden, blue-eyed boy of the station. As she’d known he would, he started to grin at her the moment he saw her predicament. ‘Hello, what have you found then, gorgeous?’
Trudy nodded at the well. ‘I can’t get the lid off – I think it’s stuck. But there’s a gap at the side, big enough for a boy to get through. It needs to be checked out,’ she said, feeling annoyed that she sounded as if she needed to justify herself to him.
‘Yeah, I suppose. Hey, you down there Eddie?’ he bellowed, leaning over and peering into the darkness. Trudy had already done the same, without any result. And once again, the silence remained stubbornly unbroken.
‘Right then – let’s get this lid off,’ Rodney said, rolling up his sleeves a little and taking an awkward grip on the edge nearest the middle of the well. Since he had a longer reach than she did, he did eventually manage to lift and drag the cover to one side, but Trudy wouldn’t have been human if she hadn’t smiled at how hard he found it. The language he used was colourful enough to make her mother blush.
Sweating and red-faced, he finally let the heavy wooden circle fall onto the ground. And as one, Trudy and Broadstairs leaned over the edge of the circular red bricks and peered inside.
Trudy hadn’t really expected to find the boy in there. So the sight of a dank circle of unbroken water didn’t surprise her. But then she saw what looked like hair, floating just below the top of the water surface. And below that, a slightly lighter shade of something submerged showed through under the dark, stagnant water.
‘Eddie was wearing a white shirt, wasn’t he?’ she heard Rodney say gruffly beside her. His voice was hoarse and dry, not at all like his usual, confident, cocky tone. And when she dragged her eyes away from the sight of that small patch of floating hair, she saw that he looked pale and slightly sick.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, her own voice wobbling precariously. Before they’d left, Sergeant O’Grady had given them a brief description of the boy, and what he’d last been seen wearing when he’d set off with his pals to hunt for the eggs.
Forcing back the tears from her eyes, Trudy lifted her whistle to give three sharp, quick blows.
As she did so, Rodney Broadstairs climbed onto the edge of the well and started to lower himself gingerly down. There would be a bit of a drop, even for him, for the well looked to be over six feet deep.
She hoped he wouldn’t fall on top of the boy and wondered if she should stop him and tell him to wait for somebody to come, perhaps with a rope.
But then she realised they simply couldn’t wait. There was just a chance that the boy might still be alive. But with his face fully submerged, and only his hair floating just below the surface, she knew how unlikely that was.
And as she waited for her colleagues to come running, she couldn’t stop the tears from falling at last. Because she knew that the poor boy’s mother and father, waiting at home for news, would soon have their hearts broken forever.
Chapter 3 (#ulink_efec4ded-b236-5b03-8b48-af97fe137723)
‘Calling Probationary WPC Gertrude Loveday.’
Trudy, hearing her hated first name called out loudly for all to hear, shot around and rushed forward to the usher, before he could call her for a second time.
‘Here, coming!’ she said breathlessly, hurrying towards the door being held open for her. She just had time to tug down her tunic top and make sure her cap was straight before entering the room.
It was three days since the death of little Eddie Proctor, and the inquest had been opened first thing that morning.
In a row of benches to one side, the public had filled the seats to overflowing, and in the front row, she recognised many of the immediate Proctor family.
She’d gone with the local police constable that awful day to break the news of Eddie’s death to the boy’s mother and the rest of his family, and had comforted the poor woman as best she’d could. Now she gave a brief sympathetic nod to Doreen Proctor, a small brunette woman whose brown eyes looked enormous in her pale face.
Forcing herself to keep her mind on the job, she turned her attention to the coroner, Dr Clement Ryder.
Her friend and mentor nodded at her politely but with no signs of open recognition, and looked so much his usual calm and authoritative self, that Trudy felt herself relax.
He also didn’t look the least bit ill, she noticed with a distinct sense of relief. It had been some time since she’d last seen him, and she must have been subconsciously dreading doing so, in case she saw any worrying signs of something being wrong with him.
‘WPC Loveday, I understand you were the one to find the boy’s body?’ Clement began professionally.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said.
‘If you will be so kind then as to tell the jury in your own words what happened on the afternoon of Sunday, 2nd of April?’
Trudy turned to face the jury and gave a succinct, accurate report of what had occurred that afternoon. When she was finished, she cleared her throat and glanced questioningly at the coroner, but he had no questions for her. Her account had been full enough that there was nothing that needed clarifying or pursuing.
*
Outside the court, Trudy trudged back a shade despondently to the station. Tomorrow was the day she was to be lauded in front of the press and the city’s top dignitaries as the heroine of the hour, but never had she felt less like celebrating anything.
*
After Trudy’s departure, Clement called the medical witnesses, who testified that the boy had died of a broken neck, and not due to drowning at all. As Clement had expected, this caused a bit of a sensation in the court.
It was soon explained that the well, being over eight feet deep, also narrowed slightly towards the bottom, so if the boy had been leaning over and had lost his balance, the chances were fairly good that he would have pitched down head first. And the water, which had turned out to be only about two feet deep wouldn’t have been enough to have broken his fall much.
Even so, as he listened to the evidence, Clement wasn’t totally convinced by this explanation. The lad would only have needed to twist a little to either one side or the other to land on a shoulder. And wouldn’t it have been an instinctive thing for him to do so? Wordlessly, he made a brief note on his court papers.
And there was another thing he’d noticed in the preliminary reports that had caught his analytical eye. So after the medical man had finished his piece, he cleared his throat, indicating he had further questions.
‘I take it the deceased’s hands were examined?’ he asked quietly.
The police surgeon confirmed that they had been.
‘And did he have any detritus from the sides of the well under his fingernails, indicating that he had tried to scrabble at the sides of the well as he fell? Brick dust, green algae, mould, anything of that kind?’ he’d pressed.
The medical man admitted that they’d found no such evidence, but then gave the opinion that that need not be significant. It was quite possible that the boy had been too surprised, and the fall too brief, for him to have had time to try to catch hold of some sort of support to help break his fall.
Clement dismissed the doctor with a courteous nod, but was frowning slightly as he made more notes.
When it was the turn of the boy’s family to give evidence, emotions ran high, as they were bound to. But especially so when the boy’s mother tearfully insisted that her son was a good lad, and would never have disobeyed the Easter egg hunt organiser’s admonitions to stay within the walled garden where all the eggs had been hidden.
Since nothing of further significance was brought to light after all the other witnesses had been called, it surprised no one when an obviously upset and moved jury returned a verdict of accidental death.
All that was left for Clement to do was to censure the organisers of the hunt for not checking the grounds beforehand and spotting the potential perils of the inadequately covered well. No doubt, he added heavily, the de Laceys, owners of Briar’s Hall, would be quick to have a new cover made for the well. Or they might even consider filling it in altogether, which meant, at least, that a similar tragedy would be averted in the future.
But for the weary, distraught parents, what could any of that matter now?
Chapter 4 (#ulink_f082301b-1ea0-5e9a-b91f-5b28d63a8e72)
Trudy Loveday took a deep, calming breath as she paused outside the main entrance to the swanky Randolph Hotel.
Behind her on Beaumont Street was the magnificent edifice of the Ashmolean Museum, whilst off to her left was the oft-photographed Martyrs’ Memorial. But for all the times she’d passed by this famous building, she’d never imagined she’d ever set foot inside it.
Beside her, she could feel her mother almost vibrating with similar excitement. Like her daughter, Barbara Loveday couldn’t really believe that they were about to be treated to lunch by an actual Earl. Well, not the Earl himself, naturally, but his secretary.
Barbara’s husband Frank, however, was displaying emotion of a far different kind – that of distinct unease. Not for the first time, his hand crept up to his collar (which clearly felt too tight) to check his tie was straight. It was an article of clothing he only ever wore to weddings, funerals and christenings, and he eyed the passing people warily, as if expecting them to be pointing at him or smiling behind their hands.
But the only people taking notice of him were the members of the local press, who’d been invited by the city of Oxford’s top brass to take photographs of the occasion and then interview the heroine of the hour for their various local newspapers.
It had taken some time for this honour to be arranged, as the incident precipitating it had, in fact, happened last summer, but these things, it appeared, took time. Trudy was inclined to wish they hadn’t bothered at all. She, like her father, felt distinctly out of place.
‘I do look all right, don’t I, Mum?’ she asked nervously, though, in fact, she hadn’t had to make an agonising decision over what to wear.
With nearly all her superior officers in attendance, she was, of course, dressed in her police uniform, the black-and-white suit looking incredibly smart, and cleaned to within an inch of its life. Her cap sat neatly on her severely pinned-down mass of dark brown locks, and her face was totally free of make-up.
‘You look lovely, doesn’t she, Brian?’ her mother said, turning to look at the young man standing beside her.
Barbara Loveday had insisted on including Brian Bayliss as their ‘plus-one’ to the event, and Trudy looked across at him now with a rueful smile. They had been friends for years, and the occasional trip to the cinema or meal out had somehow led to them being considered ‘a couple’ by their respective families. Although Trudy wasn’t so sure – and she was beginning to suspect that Brian wasn’t, either!
‘Come on, Mum, don’t put Brian on the spot like that!’ she admonished gently.
Brian – a tall, handsome rugby-playing lad – coloured softly and mumbled something about her always looking lovely. But he looked even more uncomfortable and out of place here than her father!
His eyes slid over hers and guiltily away again, and in a sudden flash of intuition, she realised that he didn’t actually want to be here at all. For just an instant, she felt a flash of anger wash over her. If he felt so miserable about dressing up and coming to a ‘fancy do’, why hadn’t he simply had the gumption to refuse to come? He could always have said he couldn’t get the time off from his job at the bus depot.
But as quickly as her irritation came, it went again. She knew for herself just how ruthlessly her mother could steamroller people into doing as she bid them, and Brian had always been the easy-going sort. Anything for a quiet life, that was his motto.
Now she leaned closer to him, and whispered, ‘I’m sorry she dragged you into this. I can see you’d rather be somewhere – anywhere – else.’
He shot her a quick look, considered lying about it and then merely shrugged and gave her a sheepish grin. In truth, ever since he’d learned that she was going to get an award for bravery, he’d felt a bit funny about it. It didn’t seem… natural, somehow. In a way he couldn’t have explained, even if someone offered him a pound note, he felt wrong-footed and uneasy about it all. Apart from anything else, he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that it was up to men to be brave. Even though it wasn’t his fault that he wasn’t doing a dangerous job too – like being a fireman or something – he felt as if he was being in some way undermined.
Along with Trudy’s parents, he hadn’t much liked her joining the police force, and his mates regularly ragged him about it. Now, as he glanced around nervously at the reporters snapping her photograph, and realised that everyone would be reading about her in the papers tomorrow, he felt a sort of squirmy, almost embarrassed feeling, wriggling about inside him. It was bound to make the teasing ten times worse.
Trudy, watching him, frowned slightly, but realised that now was not the time to ask him what was troubling him, and made a mental note to tackle him about it later. Right now, she had more pressing things to worry about.
She had not long turned 20 and was looking forward to the autumn, when her probationary period would be over and she would be a fully fledged woman police constable. Well, she would be, so long as she didn’t do anything to seriously blot her copybook, she reminded herself with an inner grimace.
Of course, there were some of her colleagues back at the station who grumbled that, with what amounted to an unofficial award for bravery being meted out to her, she was almost bulletproof in that respect.
But Trudy wasn’t so sure. Her immediate superior, DI Jennings, was of the opinion that the only right and true way to acknowledge a police officer’s gallantry, was to award them the Queen’s Police Medal – which, in his opinion, should never be awarded to women. Also, such medals only tended to be awarded to those with the rank of sergeant and above. And she was sure he was not the only member of the force to think like that.
All of which left her feeling that if she so much as put a foot wrong, they’d be only too happy of any excuse to get rid of her.
Of course, her superiors had to admit that today would provide good publicity for the force – hence their appearance at that morning’s luncheon. There would certainly be enough Chief Superintendents and even higher ranks to make Trudy feel like Daniel walking into the lion’s den.
But she was thankful that at least DI Jennings wouldn’t be present. His glowering presence would almost certainly put her off her soup! Not that she thought, at that moment, that she would be able to swallow a thing.
Her heart was hammering in her chest and her hands felt clammy. She almost wilted with relief when she saw Dr Ryder striding down the pavement towards them, looking debonair and totally unruffled by all the fuss. A quick glance at her watch told her that he was right on time.
At just a touch over six feet in height, and with his shock of silvering white hair, the city coroner cut a fine figure of a man, and dressed in a dark navy suit and his old school tie, he caught many a passing matron’s approving eye.
‘Trudy, you look splendid,’ Clement said. ‘And Mr and Mrs Loveday – good to see you again. You must be so proud of your daughter,’ he added, turning to address her parents.
‘Oh please, call me Barbara,’ her mother said at once. ‘And yes we are, very proud, aren’t we, Frank?’
Her father, who was shaking the coroner by the hand, nodded wordlessly. In truth, he would be glad when the whole thing was over. He’d spent the last week, it seemed, trying to memorise which knife and fork was which, and the difference between a dessert spoon and his soup spoon. (He’d been full of disbelief when his wife had shown him a magazine photograph of a dinner setting at the grand hotel.)
But of course, underneath all that, he felt as if his chest must be thrust out like a pouter pigeon because, of course, he was as proud as punch of his daughter’s achievements, as Clement had surmised.
Not that that had been either his or Barbara’s first reaction when Trudy had learned of the proposed ceremony, for then she’d had to confess exactly why she had been singled out for it. And tackling a killer all on her own – thus saving a Lord of the Realm in the process – was enough to give any parent nightmares.
She was still in the doghouse for not telling them properly all about it at the time, instead, merely passing the incident off as if she’d just made a normal arrest.
Trudy, remembering her manners, introduced Brian to the coroner. True to his usual, tongue-tied form, Brian muttered something indistinct and shook Clement’s hand heartily.
‘Right, I think we’d best go in,’ Clement said briskly.
Trudy, her heart rising to her throat, shot him a dark look. She had her suspicions that Dr Clement Ryder had been one of the driving forces in urging the Earl to instigate this morning’s ceremony, and she wasn’t sure whether to hug him or kick him.
But right now, she hadn’t the energy to do anything except concentrate on not making a fool of herself, for now they were stepping up towards the door, and the liveried doorman was coming to greet them. Behind her, she heard the press photographers snapping away again, and swallowed hard.
Taking a deep breath, she, Brian and her parents followed Clement into the dining room, where the crystal chandeliers alone made her blink in amazement.
Chapter 5 (#ulink_2cd07b4a-0b58-5342-bbd4-6d93b77ac87c)
The following Monday morning, Martin de Lacey of Briar’s Hall travelled into town and made his way to Floyds Row, where the mortuary and coroner’s office was situated.
He wasn’t particularly surprised to be regarded with some favour by the secretary who guarded the coroner’s inner sanctum.
At six feet tall, with dark, slightly receding hair, a luxuriant moustache and big grey eyes, he was used to women from 20 to 60 regarding him with a certain interest. It helped that he was a well-set-up man, who had a curiously scholarly look about him that gave him a totally spurious air of distinction.
He was not, he knew, particularly clever, but he was very comfortably wealthy, and his family had owned land in the north of the county for centuries. And he did wear his country clothes very well indeed.
Widowed, with two children, Martin de Lacey was usually very happy with his lot.
But not recently – no not recently.
‘I wondered if I might have a word with Dr Ryder please?’ He approached the secretary sitting at her desk and gave his usual smile. It was naturally winsome, and under the dark curl of his moustache, his teeth seemed rather more white and sparkling than they actually were. As a man of some social standing, he was used to getting his own way, and he foresaw no particular difficulties in getting his way this time.
‘May I ask your name, please?’ The slightly thin woman, who could have been any age between 40 and 60, asked the question with that friendly disinterest cultivated by secretaries who guarded the doors to their boss’s kingdom.
‘Martin de Lacey. It’s about the Edward Proctor case that he heard on Wednesday.’
It was now Monday, and already the papers had moved on to another sensation.
‘I’ll see if he can spare you a few minutes. Would you take a seat, please?’
Martin nodded, but didn’t, in fact, sit down. Instead he wandered over to the nearest window and stared out pensively over the cobbled courtyard and brick buildings of Floyds Row. He was uncomfortably aware of the presence of a mortuary nearby, and wished that he were walking across the fields surrounding his house, instead of feeling cooped up so close to all this death and unpleasantness.
He frowned slightly, wondering if he was doing the right thing in coming here. But damn it, he couldn’t just—
‘Dr Ryder can see you now.’ The secretary was back, holding open the door to the inner sanctum.
He nodded at her and strode in.
The first thing he noticed was the welcome fire, roaring away in the fireplace, and a rather fine landscape painting hanging on one wall. The man, who rose from behind a large and rather fine desk to greet him, seemed vaguely familiar.
Although it had been his land agent who’d testified at the inquest as to the condition of the Hall’s grounds – including that damned old well – Martin realised now that he’d seen the coroner around somewhere before. In a social setting.
At the golf club maybe? Or at the lodge? As he shook hands, he gave the Mason’s greeting, and was not surprised to have it reciprocated.
‘Thank you for seeing me,’ he said gruffly. ‘It’s a sad business I’ve come about, but then, I expect in your line of work, you’re used to that,’ he began pleasantly.
Clement inclined his head. ‘I’m afraid so. Please, take a seat.’ He indicated one of the padded chintz chairs that faced his desk, curious as to what could have brought the owner of Briar’s Hall to his office.
If he wanted to have any guilty feelings assuaged about the safety – or not – of the old wells on his premises, he was going to be out of luck. Clement was in no mood to play nanny to the landed gentry.
‘It’s about that poor boy, of course. Eddie.’
‘Yes?’ Clement said, discouragingly.
Martin de Lacey took a long, slow breath. He hadn’t mistaken that lack of empathy in the older man’s tone, and he knew he’d have to tread carefully now.
‘I’m not here to talk about the rights and wrongs of that well not being covered properly.’ He decided to take the bull by the horns. He’d always been pretty good at reading other people, and he sensed in the court official a man who wouldn’t suffer fools gladly. ‘We were at fault, and that’s that.’ He could see he’d slightly surprised Ryder with his blunt acceptance of responsibility, and felt a brief moment of pleasure. Martin was a man who liked to have the upper hand.
Feeling more intrigued, Clement settled back in his chair. Clearly his surprise visitor had something specific to say, and he rather thought it might prove more interesting than he’d at first thought.
‘So I’m not here to make excuses. I just wanted to get that clear.’ Martin de Lacey cleared his throat gruffly. ‘I’m here, in fact, not on my own behalf at all, but because of Vince. Vincent Proctor, that is, the boy’s father.’
‘Oh?’ Clement said, careful to keep his voice noncommittal. He recalled that the dead boy’s father worked as a farm hand on the de Lacey estate. But he wouldn’t have thought that that would put the two men on intimate terms – certainly not on the sort of terms that would allow Mr Proctor to think that he could ask favours of the lord of the manor. In the normal course of things, Vincent Proctor probably took his orders from the de Laceys’ farm estate manager anyway.
Except, of course, his son had just died, and in most people’s eyes, the head of the de Lacey family had to bear some responsibility for that. And that, of course, was enough to change the natural order of things somewhat.
‘Yes.’ The squire of Briar’s-in-the-Wold shifted a little uncomfortably on his seat. ‘You see, he came to see me yesterday and asked me to… well… to do something about his boy’s death.’
He now sounded as uncomfortable as he looked, and Clement raised one eyebrow in surprise. ‘Exactly what does he expect you to do about it? If he wants compensation, I’m afraid I can’t advise you…’
‘No, no, it’s nothing like that,’ Martin said, a shade testily now. ‘In point of fact, he doesn’t hold us responsible for his son’s death at all. And by us, I mean either my family, or the school teachers and WI members who organised the Easter egg hunt.’
Clement blinked, regarding his visitor intently. Martin de Lacey was becoming more and more interesting by the minute. ‘You mean, he accepts the fact that his son disobeyed the rules by straying outside the limits of the kitchen garden? That he was just doing what little boys did all the time – namely get into all sorts of trouble – when he tried to climb down or fell into that well?’
‘Yes. No. I mean…’ Martin took a deep breath. ‘The fact is, neither Vincent Proctor nor his wife believe that their son’s death could have been an accident.’
Clement slowly leaned forward in his chair and thought for a few moments. In the silence, the old clock on the wall ticked ponderously. ‘But if it wasn’t an accident, that only leaves murder – or manslaughter,’ the coroner pointed out.
‘Yes. And I know what you’re thinking,’ Martin de Lacey said heavily. ‘It’s the first thing I thought too, when he first came to me. I mean, if it is murder we’re talking about, who would want to deliberately kill a child?’
Clement blinked thoughtfully as the ugly question hung grimly in the air. There had been no signs of sexual violence on Eddie Proctor’s body – which was often the sad, disgusting cause behind the deliberate killing of most children.
The other most frequent cause of child death, as Clement and every police officer knew too well, was domestic abuse. But again, that tended to follow a certain pattern, and there had been no old injuries on Eddie’s body flagged up at the post mortem to raise the alarm. No broken bones that had been mended over the years. No faded scars, or more recent bruises.
After a few moments, Clement sighed. ‘Of course, it’s not unusual for parents to be unable to accept an accident or death due to misadventure,’ he said at last. ‘It all seems so arbitrary and unfair – they need to believe something more malign is at work. It makes more sense for them if they have somebody to blame.’
Martin de Lacey nodded. He would have to be even more careful now. It wouldn’t do to make a mistake at this point in time. ‘Yes. It was my first thought too,’ he agreed flatly.
Clement watched him carefully. He knew when someone was trying to manipulate him, and he was beginning to sense some other agenda was at work here. But that intrigued as much as it annoyed him.
‘Oh? And what was your second thought?’ he asked gently.
Martin looked at him, then quickly away again. Once more he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘Look, I wish you’d come and talk to Vince yourself. And I might as well come clean straightaway. Er… I’ve rather taken it on myself to have a word with our Chief Constable.’
Clement went rather still. ‘Have you?’ he said mildly.
Martin de Lacey flushed slightly. ‘Yes. Look, I’m sorry and all that, but one of the chaps at the golf club told me that you… er… well, sometimes look into cases, police cases, I mean, after they’d been closed.’
Clement smiled grimly. ‘I’ve been known to meddle once or twice, yes,’ he admitted with a slight smile. He could well imagine the horror stories the Chief Constable could have poured into de Lacey’s ear.
As if reading his mind, the squire of Briar’s-in-the-Wold shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
‘Quite. Yes, so I… well, I took the liberty of asking Sir Penfold if he would mind arranging it with the officer in charge of Eddie’s case to, er, let you look into things a little further.’
‘Is that so?’ Suddenly, Clement’s smile grew wider, because he knew that DI Harry Jennings was officially in charge of the Proctor case. And the thought of his reaction on being informed that once again he would have to put up with Dr Ryder’s interference was too precious not to savour.
‘All right, Mr de Lacey. I’ll talk to the boy’s parents, and if I think the case warrants further investigation, I’ll be happy to oblige you,’ Clement said, suddenly tiring of the game. One or two points raised at the inquest had been bothering him, and he wasn’t at all averse to being given the opportunity to satisfy his curiosity.
Furthermore, it had been some time since he and Trudy had worked on a case together, and he was looking forward to another break from his usual caseload.
Martin de Lacey looked relieved and then, rather curiously, began to look uncertain. Finally he merely shrugged and smiled, stood up and shook the coroner’s hand. ‘Thank you, Dr Ryder.’
‘Not at all,’ the coroner said briskly, rising to see his visitor out.
He walked back to his desk, feeling distinctly rejuvenated. Just what the hell was going on? It was unusual for an influential family like the wealthy de Laceys not to simply sweep unpleasantness under the carpet and forget all about it. Was it possible the dead boy’s father had some sort of hold over the family that went beyond their feelings of guilt over an abandoned well? The thought was definitely an intriguing one.
Clement gave a mental shrug. Well, whatever it was, he and Trudy Loveday were going to have an interesting time finding out. For, of course, the first thing he’d demand of DI Harry Jennings was that he release her from her usual duties in order to assist him.
Chapter 6 (#ulink_08d45e8a-4307-533d-9e7c-5da88b6d9f45)
Trudy’s heart lifted as she knocked on the door and then entered the now familiar outer room of the coroner’s office, where his secretary smiled up at her and quickly announced her expected arrival.
Needless to say, it had made her day when her sour-faced superior had called her into his office earlier that day and told her that she was being seconded, yet again, to Dr Clement Ryder for a few days. DI Jennings had stressed the ‘yet again’ with bitter emphasis, but in truth, he hadn’t seemed all that unwilling to let her go. In fact, Trudy rather suspected that he was glad to have her out from under his feet.
Trudy, however, wasn’t giving her grudging boss much thought as she walked forward and took her usual seat in front of the coroner’s desk. She was simply relieved not to have to continue her current task, which was helping the clerk in the records office.
Not that DI Jennings had said much about her latest assignment, only grunting something about it involving the death of the little boy she’d found down the well.
‘So,’ she said as soon as she’d sat down, ‘you really think there’s something odd about little Eddie Proctor’s death? Did something strike you at the inquest?’
‘Yes and no,’ Clement surprised her by saying crisply. ‘As far as I could tell, all the witnesses called were being honest and truthful – which is not always the same thing, oddly enough – and I have no real or solid reasons as yet to suspect that the verdict was incorrect.’
‘Oh,’ Trudy said, both stumped and a little dismayed. ‘So why am I here then?’
Clement relented slightly and smiled. ‘You’re here mainly because of Martin de Lacey, head of the family up at Briar’s Hall.’ He absently reached into his coat pocket, withdrew a roll of mints and popped one into his mouth. ‘He came to see me. Apparently, he’s not satisfied with the way things stand.’
Trudy blinked, thought about it for a moment or two, then frowned. ‘He’s feeling guilty about the well not being covered properly and he wants reassurance?’ she hazarded. She could understand why that might be so, but she felt rather put out that that was all there was to it.
‘You look like a child after someone’s just burst their balloon,’ Clement commiserated. ‘But for what it’s worth, I think there might – just might – be something more going on here than at first meets the eye.’
‘Oh?’ This time her tone was more hopeful.
‘Yes. Anyway, he went over my head and got the Chief Constable roped in before I knew anything about it. But since, for a change, this time I’ve actually been asked to do a little digging’ – his lips twisted in a wry smile – ‘I thought you might like to help. But if you’d rather get back to the station…?’
Trudy grinned unrepentantly at him. ‘You know I wouldn’t,’ she said crisply. In truth, she was just glad to see him in such high spirits and looking so undeniably well.
She had not told him about the existence of the letter claiming that he was ill, let alone that she’d read it and destroyed it. Instinct told her that he’d be both angry and indignant about its contents, but more than that, he wouldn’t be at all pleased to learn that she’d put her career at risk in order to do him a favour.
Dr Clement Ryder, she was beginning to know, would not take kindly to being in someone’s debt.
‘So where do we start?’ she asked. Forcing herself to concentrate solely on the matter in hand, she gave a slight frown. ‘The most obvious place is with Mr de Lacey, I take it? Presumably, he must have had something to go on, if he thinks there’s more that needs to be investigated?’
But Clement thought about that gentleman – and his very careful way with words, and, after some thought, slowly shook his head. ‘No. No, I think we’ll leave him for a bit. I have a feeling there might be something odd there…’ He paused, tried to put into words the cause of his nebulous misgivings about that gentlemen, and failed. Instead, he shrugged in dissatisfaction. ‘I just got the impression that he’s keeping something back, or that he’s got some sort of agenda of his own,’ he finally said. ‘And if that’s so, then at the moment we won’t stand a chance of worming out of him just what it is. No, I want to get a deeper understanding of things before we tackle him again.’
Trudy, recognising the coroner’s tone of voice, sat up a little straighter in her chair. Clearly, Dr Ryder meant business. And slowly her heart rate began to accelerate again. Perhaps this wasn’t going to be such a dead-end case after all? From very unpromising beginnings, was it possible that they might be on to something again after all?
‘All right, sir,’ she said. ‘Where do we begin?’
Clement smiled. ‘I keep telling you, you can call me Clement you know, when we’re not in public,’ he said, clearly amused by her formality.
‘Oh no, sir, I couldn’t do that,’ Trudy said firmly. Even if, sometimes in her own head, she did indeed think of this man as ‘Clement’, it would never do to forget herself and refer to him as such in front of her colleagues. Or even her parents! She’d never hear the end of it. ‘I don’t mind calling you Dr Ryder,’ she conceded generously.
‘Thank you,’ he said, perfectly straight-faced. ‘Well, I think the first place we need to start is with the parents. Martin de Lacey would have me believe that he came on their behalf. If that’s true, we need to find out why the boy’s father in particular is so convinced that the boy’s death couldn’t have been an accident.’
Trudy nodded grimly, rising from the chair and girding her loins for another heart-breaking encounter with the Proctor family.
Chapter 7 (#ulink_509c2383-7098-5bac-839d-f77c8c7e714c)
Doreen and Vincent Proctor, along with their remaining three children, lived in one of a row of small terraced cottages leading off from the village green, where the majority of farmworkers for the estate were housed.
As they climbed out of the car and looked around at the rich, arable land, Clement supposed that almost all inhabitants of Briar’s-in-the-Wold worked on the de Lacey estate in some form or other. Save for the odd private doctor or professional, of course.
The village boasted the usual square-towered Norman church, a small primary school and a pub called ‘The Bell’. A small puddle, probably fondly thought of as a pond by most of the villagers, played host to a few desultory mallards, but it was at least ringed with cheerful just-in-bloom daffodils. Pussy willow shed pale lemon pollen over them as an accent of colour.
A cold wind had the pair of them quickly hurrying up a neatly tended front garden and knocking at the Proctors’ front door.
‘Eddie’s brothers and sister might be back at school by now,’ Trudy warned, not sure how long the Easter holidays lasted. ‘If they are, do you want me to try and talk to them at some point?’
‘We’ll see,’ Clement said. ‘Children sometimes know more than we think they do – but they can also exaggerate, or just make stuff up to try and please you. Besides, it might be a bit too early to talk about their brother just yet. They’re probably still in shock.’
Trudy bit her lip, angry with herself for not thinking of that, then stiffened as the door was abruptly opened by the man of the house.
Vincent Proctor was a squat, powerful-looking man, with the hands of a farm labourer, a mop of unruly brown hair, and shaggy brows over large, cow-like eyes.
‘You were the coroner for our Eddie,’ he said at once, having recognised Clement from giving evidence at the inquest. ‘Mr de Lacey said you might call. Come on in out the wind. There’s a good fire in the kitchen.’
He led them down a small, dark entranceway to the back of the house, where a large, wood-fired stove gave off some welcome heat.
There was no sign of his wife. Evidence of the remains of a breakfast composed of bread and dripping were still out next to the draining board by the sink, however, and Trudy wondered if it had been the father of the children who’d seen them off to school with something inside their tummies.
‘The wife’s upstairs,’ Vincent Proctor said flatly, as if reading her mind, and Trudy, for some reason, felt herself flush. She had not intended to look in any way disapproving.
‘I’m sure she needs to rest,’ she said earnestly.
Vincent nodded, saying nothing as he set about putting the kettle on, but silently indicated the wooden, ladder-back chairs that surrounded the well-scrubbed kitchen table. Taking his wordless invitation to be seated, Clement and Trudy took opposite ends of the table and sat quietly as Vincent put a sugar bowl and a bottle of milk on the table, and then, a short while later, three steaming mugs of tea.
‘So, I understand you asked Mr de Lacey to come and see me?’ Clement began cautiously.
‘Yerse. I dunno how to go about these things myself, y’see,’ Vincent confirmed, staring down at his hands, which were wrapped around the mug of his untouched tea. His Oxonian country burr testified to the fact that he’d probably been born in the village and would be happy enough to die in it too. Probably his father before him had worked for the de Laceys, and no doubt he expected his sons to do the same. ‘But I knew Mr de Lacey would be able to get things done. Him bein’ squire, an’ all.’
Clement nodded. ‘Mr de Lacey wasn’t able to tell me much about what, exactly, you want us to do,’ he began tactfully. ‘He suggested I talk to you in person about what’s on your mind.’
Vincent nodded, but didn’t immediately speak. When he did, he was slow and deliberate, but sounded already weary, as if he didn’t expect them to take him seriously.
‘It’s like this, see. There was just no way our Eddie could’a fallen down that well, like you all reckon he did. O’course, you’d have to know him, like, real well, the same as me and his mother do, to understand that. And I know that important people like you’ – here he shot a look at both Clement and Trudy – ‘ain’t likely to just take my word for it. But…’
He shrugged helplessly. He looked so out of his depth, that Trudy felt her heart constrict. She couldn’t help it, but reached out to place her hand comfortingly on his.
‘Mr Proctor,’ she said gently, ‘I promise you that both Dr Ryder and I will listen to you. And we will do our very best to understand.’
He nodded, but the poor man looked so defeated already, and clearly didn’t believe her, that it made her heart ache. She looked quickly across at Dr Ryder, who gave her an infinitesimal nod to carry on. Almost imperceptibly, he leaned back in his chair, the better to watch and listen as the dead boy’s father began to speak.
‘See, for a start, our Eddie wasn’t really the daredevil sort,’ the boy’s father began. ‘Now if it had been our Bertie… now him I could just see taking a tumble down a well. T’would be just the sort’a daft thing he’d go and do. Right from the moment he was born – he’s our eldest, y’see – he was into trouble. No sense o’ danger, see? But Eddie weren’t like that. He wasn’t a namby-pamby lad, don’t get me wrong,’ he said earnestly, looking at Trudy as if it was important that she should understand that he was in no way criticising his dead son. ‘He were a proper lad, like. But… If, say, a tree had fallen down over the river, and he was gonna cross it, he would take time first to make sure it was a good strong tree. With lots of good footholds where he could stand without losing his balance, and good strong branches that spread all the way across to the other side. He wouldn’t just go at it all ’ell for leather, and then laugh if he was ditched into the water. See what I mean?’
‘Yes.’ Trudy smiled. ‘I see. Whereas his elder brother would have done just that.’
‘Oh, ar. But it’s not just that. Our Eddie wasn’t any too fond of heights, neither. He reckoned he went all dizzy, like, if he got too far off the ground.’
‘Some children do,’ Clement slipped in helpfully. ‘It’s called vertigo. It’s usually a problem with the inner ear, and nothing to be ashamed of.’
At this, as Clement had rather thought he might, Vincent looked rather relieved. It provided him with further proof that his lad wasn’t a namby-pamby.
‘Ar… A medical thing then… well, that’s different. Yerse. Poor little… But, see, that’s just another reason why I know he wouldn’t’a gone down that well then, ain’t it?’ he demanded challengingly. ‘Just looking down that far would have made him feel sick like. And another thing…’
He paused to take a sip of tea. ‘Eddie weren’t all that fond of chocolate. Oh, he’d eat it, but he’d prefer to have humbugs, or bulls eyes, or sherbet dabs. He was more of a sweetie kind of lad.’
He looked anxiously at Trudy, to see if she understood what he was saying.
To oblige him, she nodded quickly. ‘So you’re saying that the inducement to find chocolate eggs wouldn’t have been anywhere near strong enough to make him take chances?’ Trudy said.
The boy’s father frowned a little, clearly not sure what ‘inducement’ meant, but relieved to see that she was looking thoughtful. He glanced back at the coroner. Clearly for him, Dr Ryder meant authority and book-learning, and he was the man he needed to convince.
‘And that ain’t all,’ he carried on stubbornly. ‘Young Eddie was really pally with little Emily. Thick as thieves, those two.’
‘Emily?’ Trudy pressed, suddenly not following the conversation at all.
‘Emily de Lacey. The squire’s little ’un,’ Vincent elaborated. ‘Ten years old, and going on sixteen, that ’un. Smart as a whip, she is.’
Trudy blinked. ‘Really? The squire’s daughter and your son were friends?’ She glanced curiously at the coroner, who gave her a quick shake of his head, guessing at once the reason behind her scepticism. No doubt she thought it odd that a mere farmworker’s son and the little lady of the manor should be such bosom pals, but he knew, from his own childhood experiences, that in small villages, that sort of odd mix wasn’t at all unusual. Children from good, bad and indifferent families tended to live cheek by jowl up to the age of 11 or so, sharing the local primary school and all the village’s meagre social events.
Of course, it was tacitly understood by all concerned that it wouldn’t last into adulthood, and was thus not taken seriously. After the age of 11, they tended to sort themselves out into more familiar roles. No doubt, Emily de Lacey would soon be of age to attend a good girl’s grammar – or maybe even boarding school – and would grow up into a proper young lady. Whilst Eddie, had he lived, would have left the nearest secondary school at 14 or so and gone on to work on the land.
Thereafter, if they’d met, they’d probably have nodded and smiled and not given each other a single thought. But at 10 and 11, yes, they could have been very close indeed.
‘Is she a nice girl, Emily?’ Clement asked mildly.
‘Oh yerse,’ Vincent said at once, smiling for the first time Trudy had known him. ‘She and Eddie ran around the estate like little animals,’ he mused. ‘Playing cowboys and injuns, and whatnot. I think their latest thing was playing at spies and such stuff. They had a theory that one of the schoolmasters was a German agent, or some such. Emily had been reading that Thirty-Nine Steps book to him, and Eddie was all caught up in it…’ He trailed off with a gulp perhaps realising that, now, his son would never play at spies again.
‘Ah. And why do you think this friendship between them matters?’ Trudy asked quickly, to take his mind off his grief. ‘What has that to do with Eddie’s… what happened to him?’ she asked, as delicately as she could.
But instead of answering, the dead boy’s father shrugged and took a sip of his tea. Clearly he was feeling more uncomfortable now. It probably didn’t do to talk about the family up at the Hall, but Vincent was clearly determined to do right by his son.
‘I think them two told each other everythin’,’ he finally said. ‘And… I dunno. I think…’ He sighed heavily. ‘I think you should go and talk to Emmy, that’s all. Besides, she was at the Easter egg hunt, and if anyone knows why he went off on his own like that – when he’d been told to stay in the walled garden – she would.’
‘Eddie wasn’t the sort of boy not to do as he was told?’ Clement asked.
‘No, he weren’t, then,’ the boy’s father said flatly.
But Trudy knew from bitter experience that it was best to take that with a pinch of salt. No boy was an angel, after all. And if Eddie had been lured to that well by someone intent on doing him harm – well, it probably wouldn’t have been that hard to do. A secret note, promising who knew what, would probably be enough, for a start. To a lad who liked adventure novels, it would be irresistible. Or the promise of a bag of his favourite sweets, if chocolate wasn’t his preference.
They talked for a while longer, but nothing more of substance was forthcoming, and they left the house, promising to do all they could to find out what had really happened that Sunday morning.
Trudy waited until the coroner had got behind the wheel, before speaking.
‘So what do you make of that? Not much to go on, is it?’ she said sadly.
Clement shrugged. ‘Maybe yes, maybe no. Some parents do have a very strong idea of what their kids are like, and what they’re likely to get up to. I thought Mr Proctor was probably one. Didn’t you?’ he suddenly put her on the spot by asking sharply.
Trudy, caught out, responded instinctively. ‘Oh yes. I mean, I think he’s genuine in thinking… in believing that Eddie wouldn’t have explored that well.’
‘So where does that leave us?’
Trudy smiled briefly. ‘It leaves us driving up to the Hall to talk to Emily de Lacey. Yes?’
Clement gave her a grin. ‘You’re learning, WPC Loveday. You’re learning!’
Chapter 8 (#ulink_e66583f7-2ae7-59af-bfa3-161427489f22)
But, as it turned out, Trudy was wrong in her prediction. For at Briar’s Hall, they encountered a very formidable obstacle indeed to their plan of action, in the form of one Mrs Cordelia Roper, the de Laceys’ housekeeper of many years’ standing.
It was this rigid-of-mind and rigid-of-body person who answered the door, surprising Clement slightly since he would have expected a butler. Instead, they found themselves being kept firmly on the outer portico’s steps by a woman in her mid-fifties, with a fierce glint in her brown eyes. Her hair, which must once have been a fiery red, had turned mostly to silver, and was held high on her head in a tight bun. She introduced herself, reluctantly, as Mrs Roper, the housekeeper. She wore a plain black dress, which matched the look she gave them, when Clement introduced himself and asked if he might speak to young Miss Emily de Lacey.
‘May I ask why you are inquiring after her, sir? Madam?’ she added, as a distinct afterthought, and eyed Trudy and her uniform with such a look that it made Trudy want to squirm on the spot. Clearly, her face said, the place for people in uniform was at the side entrance.
Trudy raised her chin and met the dragon’s gimlet stare with her best blank expression. It managed to convey a mixture of mutiny and insubordination whilst leaving no room for actual complaint. It was a look she’d learned to cultivate very quickly when dealing with less-than-polite members of the public.
‘We’re calling at the behest of Mr Martin de Lacey,’ Clement responded at once, deciding that, when dealing with one of the housekeeper’s ilk, it was best to try to avoid outright battle if at all possible. And the one thing that he thought might earn them entrance was to invoke the squire’s name.
‘I’m afraid Mr de Lacey hasn’t given me instructions on this matter, or informed me of your visit… er…?’
‘I’m Dr Clement Ryder, city coroner. And this is WPC Loveday.’
Mrs Roper’s eyes widened slightly at Trudy’s name, and Trudy fought back a flush, wishing – for about the millionth time in her life – that her parents had possessed a far less memorable surname. As it was, it gave every male colleague she ever met the perfect opportunity for unwanted teasing or fresh remarks.
‘I see. Well, I’m afraid, Dr Ryder, that Miss Emily is indisposed at the moment,’ she said firmly, thus dashing their hopes of an interview with the little girl that day. ‘But I will certainly consult with Mr de Lacey when I see him,’ she added reluctantly. ‘Good day.’ She managed to say the last two words with a semblance of conviviality that, nevertheless, totally bypassed her eyes, and the door was shut firmly in their faces.
Trudy wasn’t aware that she was holding her breath until she felt it leave her in a painful whoosh.
‘Well, she wasn’t very friendly, was she?’ Trudy said crossly, not sure whether to laugh or feel insulted.
‘No, she wasn’t,’ Clement agreed, his voice both mild and thoughtful. ‘Of course, she’s probably just feeling protective of the child. She’s only 10 years old and bound to be grieving still for the loss of her friend. The last thing she probably feels like doing is talking to strangers.’
‘Oh. Yes, I hadn’t really thought of it that way,’ Trudy agreed, a bit shame-faced now at her previous anger.
Clement, though, continued to stare at the door thoughtfully for several long seconds. He didn’t know that on the other side of the wooden barrier, Cordelia Roper was standing stock-still, listening for the sounds of their retreat. But he wouldn’t have been very surprised. In his opinion, the woman’s show of recalcitrance had far more to do with fear than innate bloody-mindedness. And he wondered exactly what it was that was worrying her.
*
Behind the door, Cordelia Roper’s sharp features remained pinched and white, but eventually she moved away from the front entrance, crossed over the black-and-white tiled floor and made her way back into the sunroom, where she’d been seeing to the flowers. Her hands, however, shook a little, as she carried on arranging the mixed daffodils, forsythia and tulips that she’d brought in from the gardens into three cut-glass vases.
Contrary to what she’d told her unwanted visitors, Mr de Lacey had in fact mentioned that someone from the coroner’s office might be calling to ask questions, and that she was to give them every courtesy. But she had not approved of this then, and she didn’t approve now, and she was determined to do the best she could to make sure that no harm was allowed to come to the de Lacey family name.
It was all very well for Mr de Lacey to be so cavalier when throwing the door open to all sorts, in this new modern way, but in her experience it just didn’t do. And it most certainly wouldn’t have been allowed had his mother still been alive.
Cordelia Roper snapped some twigs off a bunch of forsythia branches and jabbed them viciously into the vases. Mrs Vivienne de Lacey had been a proper lady, and she knew how things ought to be done. She also knew how dangerous it could be to let strangers poke their noses into places that didn’t concern them.
The housekeeper glanced through the window and paused, one orange-trumpeted jonquil in hand, as she watched the odd pair wander down the drive in the direction of the kitchen gardens. The older man was saying something to that young girl in a police uniform, and for a moment, Cordelia Roper felt her heart flutter.
It had been said in her family that her Scottish grandmother had ‘the sight’ and in that moment, she felt for the first time as if some of that dubious gift might actually run in her veins also. For as she watched the duo, she felt a distinct shiver of foreboding ripple up her spine. It was as if someone had just said aloud that the old man and pretty young woman were harbingers of disaster to come – disaster for the family, and, therefore, disaster for herself and her own comfortable world.
For a second, she couldn’t catch her breath, and she groped for a chair and sat down quickly.
She told herself she was being morbid and silly, and made a concerted effort to pull herself together. As she did so, she couldn’t help but glance up, as if she could see right through the ceiling and plaster, past the floor above that, and all the way up to the top of the house, where the nursery was located.
Soon, Emily would be allocated a bedroom of her own on the adult floor. But for now, the child slept in her single bed next to her younger brother’s rooms and the old schoolroom. And Cordelia couldn’t help but wonder: what was the child thinking right now?
Emily was such a clever little thing, whose quiet manners and innocent smiles could often make you forget just how much it was that she actually heard and understood. Mature for her age though she may be, she was still only a little girl, and she had been so very fond of that farmer’s lad. And soon her grief would turn to anger. Cordelia Roper’s lips thinned. And who knew then what she might let slip if she was ever allowed to talk to outsiders unsupervised? For Cordelia had little doubt that Miss Emily’s sharp ears and sharp eyes missed very little. And too much knowledge was not good for anyone, let alone an unpredictable – and unprotected – child.
Although the death of little Eddie Proctor had shocked and distressed her to the core, Cordelia was far more worried about Emily. And she was determined to watch over her, no matter what the squire said.
Chapter 9 (#ulink_62f45c7d-488e-5fbc-986c-28a8ffcf1393)
Unaware of the housekeeper’s angst, Trudy and Clement made their way through a sudden spell of welcome sunshine towards a tall, mellowing red-brick wall that Clement guessed might provide the shelter for the kitchen gardens.
Passing through a small archway, upon which climbed a splendid clematis that was just beginning to leaf, he caught sight, off to the left, of the square walls and grey-slated roof of a smaller house. It looked very much like a miniature replica of the Hall itself, and catching sight of it too, Trudy frowned at it thoughtfully.
Seeing her notice it, Clement smiled. ‘The dower house, no doubt,’ he said.
Trudy frowned. ‘What’s a dower house?’
‘In the old days, the lord of the manor’s wife ruled the household,’ Clement explained. ‘But when their eldest son married, the new lady of the manor and the mother-in-law didn’t always hit it off. So it became a tradition, when the old lord of the manor died, that his widow – or dowager – would move out into an establishment of her own. Usually, like the case here’ – he nodded towards the house – ‘into a smaller version of the big house itself. She’d take her own staff and maids and what have you with her, and still have a home of her own where she could continue to rule the roost, leaving her daughter-in-law – the new lady of the manor – in possession of the main residence.’
‘Oh,’ Trudy said. Then couldn’t help but smile. ‘I’ll bet that wasn’t always done with much grace,’ she muttered, making her friend laugh.
‘I don’t suppose it was,’ Clement agreed.
They stepped through into the high-walled kitchen garden and looked around with pleasure. It reminded Trudy a bit of her dad’s allotment, only on a much larger and more ornamental scale.
A tall, rather shambling man, with longish brown hair and a weather-beaten face was slowly and carefully training some pear tree saplings to grow along a south-facing wall. He glanced at them with vague curiosity as they stepped through the arch, but it was an older man, almost certainly the head gardener, who approached them first.
He’d been checking under some old galvanised tin tubs to see how the forced rhubarb was getting on, and now he rubbed his hands against the thighs of his not particularly clean trousers as he welcomed them. He had a shock of thick white hair and thick white bushy eyebrows over pale-blue eyes, and was already acquiring a tan, even so early in the season. It had the effect of making the crow’s feet wrinkles at the corners of his eyes appear whiter than they should.
‘Hello, sir, er… madam,’ he said, clearly not sure how to address either one of them. ‘Was you wantin’ someone from the house?’ Clearly strangers in the gardens were not a common occurrence.
‘Not really,’ Clement said, introducing himself and his companion. ‘We’re here because Mr Martin de Lacey has asked us to look into the circumstances surrounding Eddie Proctor’s accident.’
Instantly, the old man’s face fell. ‘Ar, that was a bad business, that was. Mr de Lacey is getting workmen in to fill up the old well.’
Clement nodded. ‘Perhaps that’s a good thing. With the boy’s father continuing to work here and all. Do you know Mr Proctor well, Mr… er…?’
‘Oh, Cricklade sir, Leonard Cricklade. I’m the head gardener here. But that old well came under the jurisdiction, strictly speaking, of the estate manager…’
Clement held his hands up quickly. ‘Oh, we’re not here to apportion blame, or cast any stones, Mr Cricklade. I was the coroner at the boy’s inquest, and I’m satisfied that the organisers of the event made it clear that the children were to stay within these walls.’ As he spoke, he glanced around at the large, walled-in garden with pleasure. ‘I’ve now talked to several of the children who were here that morning, and none of them were aware that Eddie had wandered off.’
‘No doubt he’d still be alive now if he’d stayed put,’ the old man agreed heavily, and joined Clement in glancing around at his domain.
Among the compost heaps, bean poles, various sheds and rows of well-tended vegetables and odd flowerbeds the coroner could well see that any amount of small eggs could have been hidden in this haven.
‘Did you notice the boy leave the garden that morning? And if you did, was he with anyone?’ Trudy asked hopefully, but the old man quickly shook his head.
‘No, weren’t working that day, see, seeing as it was Easter Sunday and all. Me and the missus were in chapel. Methodists, see. We had gone into Oxford.’
‘Of course,’ Trudy murmured. ‘So it was only the organisers of the hunt who were here. None of the family came to watch, for instance?’ she probed delicately.
‘Don’t think so. Well, Miss Emily and Master George would have been here, like, searching for the eggs along with the rest of the village kiddies. But none of the adults from up at the Hall, I shouldn’t think. Mr de Lacey, he don’t mind doing his bit for the village – letting the fete committee have run of the lower paddock and such. But he’s not much of a one for interferin’ like. He says he’d only get under people’s feet.’
Clement hid a smile. He could well understand why Martin de Lacey would prefer to avoid bucolic village festivities in favour of a drink at his club.
‘What about those in the dower house?’ Trudy asked. ‘Are there any de Laceys currently living there now? Might they have seen anything do you suppose?’
‘Mr Oliver de Lacey and his mother live there. Have done many years since. No, they wouldn’t have been present. Mr Oliver is a bachelor still, and so a’course don’t have no kiddies of his own. His mother is a widow – she was married to Mr Clive, the younger brother of Mr Martin de Lacey’s father. I think she was probably in town anyway. She prefers to spend holidays and such in London with friends and her own family.’
‘Oh I see,’ Trudy said. Well, so much for any potential witnesses within the de Lacey family.
‘We will be talking to the members of the WI and the other organisers involved in the Easter egg hunt soon,’ Clement said smoothly. ‘But can you think of anyone else who might have been here at the time? Maybe one of your gardener’s boys for instance,’ Clement said, nodding towards the man expertly training the pear trees. Although he was nearing his forties, no doubt the head gardener thought of him as one of his ‘boys’.
‘Who? Lallie? Oh no, sir. None of the lads were working. They had time off because of the holiday see, like me. Mr de Lacey is good like that. Besides, Lallie doesn’t like fuss and rumpus. He’s a bit simple-like, sir,’ he confessed, lowering his voice a little, lest the man hear them. ‘Had a bad war, see. Doesn’t like loud noises and lots of people. Mind you, he’s fond of young’uns sir, and wouldn’t hurt a fly, he wouldn’t,’ he added anxiously, lest the coroner get the wrong idea.
‘I’m sure he wouldn’t,’ Clement reassured him mildly. ‘I suppose he knew the boy though?’
‘O yerse, sir, we all did, sir, and right fond of him we were too,’ the head gardener said sadly. ‘Being such a particular friend of Miss Emily and all, he was always about, the two of ’em running wild. Mind you, they didn’t do no damage. We often saw them about the place, playing hide-and-seek and cops and robbers and whatnot. And helping themselves to the fruit and all, when they come into season,’ he added, with a wry smile. ‘Young Eddie was rather fond of the golden raspberries, as I recall. I used to pretend to try and catch ’em out, but always made enough noise so they heard me coming and took off, gigglin’ like.’ Suddenly his face fell as he realised that he wouldn’t have to do that ever again.
‘Well, thank you for your time, Mr Cricklade,’ Clement said quickly, before the old man could dwell on it. Then, as a seeming afterthought, he added, ‘The family’s housekeeper…?’
‘Mrs Roper, sir?’
‘Yes. She seems rather, er, protective of the family?’ He offered the opening gambit gingerly. In his opinion, servants either liked to gossip about each other, or shut up like clams. But he was betting that the housekeeper’s prickly personality and obvious sense of entitlement hadn’t won her any favour with the rest of the staff.
The old man grinned wryly. ‘Oh yes, sir, she be that. Of course, her and the old Lady, Mrs Vivienne – Mr de Lacey’s mother – were like this,’ he said, holding up his hands and entwining two fingers together. ‘So you can understand it, I ’spect.’
‘Oh I see. It sounds as if she’s been here some years?’
‘Oh yes, sir. Not that she’s a villager, mind. Born and raised in Brighton she was,’ the old man said, shaking his head and making the seaside town sound as if it were on a level standing with Sodom or Gomorrah. ‘But she met a lad from the village here when he was billeted near Hove during the war, and he married her and brought her back here to live. The old lady took a shine to her and so she went into service like. At first, it was supposed to be just while her Wilf was off fighting. But he didn’t come back from the war, o’course, like a lot of our brave lads didn’t, and so she sort of took to devoting herself to her mistress, like, as the ladies sometimes do. Yerse, real devoted to Mrs Vivienne, she was.’
Clement nodded. Yes, that explained quite a lot.
‘Well, we shall probably see you around from time to time, Mr Cricklade. If, in the meantime, you can think of anything you think we should know, just say so,’ Clement adjured him heartily.
The old man, however, looked slightly puzzled at this. ‘Like what, sir?’ he asked cautiously.
‘Well. Did Eddie ever look worried or scared that you can recall? Did he ever confide in you about anything that troubled him? Did anything you saw him doing strike you as odd? Did you ever see him talking to strangers?’
‘Oh right you are, sir. But I can tell you now, there was nothing like that. He was just a happy, normal little kiddie. And as for strangers…’ The old man shrugged graphically. ‘Round here, everyone knows everyone, if you see what I mean, sir. And like as not, everyone knows everyone’s business before you even know it yourself.’
Clement, who’d also grown up in a small village, did.
‘Mind you,’ the old man said, then hesitated when both Trudy and Clement looked at him keenly.
‘Yes?’ Clement urged.
‘Well, it might mean nothing, sir,’ the old man began, clearly reluctant to start what he’d finished. He began to shuffle his feet and looked uncomfortable, glancing up at the big house, then away again.
‘It’s all right, the squire has given us carte blanche to ask anything we want,’ Clement said.
The old man nodded. He might not have understood the fancy French-sounding words, but he got the gist of it all right. He sighed heavily.
‘Ar, well… See, sir, it’s on account of something sort of odd the boy said to me once.’
‘When was this exactly?’ Clement asked sharply.
‘Oh, a week or so before Easter, I reckon it must have been. I caught him tearing across the kitchen garden, almost trampling some strawberry plants. Told him to keep off. There was no harm in him, sir, but he could run a bit wild and be careless like, like all kiddies when they’re playing “chase” and such.’
‘I’m sure he was a good lad,’ Clement said, trying to keep a check on his impatience. ‘But what was it he said that made you worry?’
‘Well, not to say I worried, as such,’ the gardener said cautiously. ‘I just didn’t understand what he meant, sir. He asked me if all grown-ups were rich.’
Clement blinked. ‘Well, that sounds pretty normal to me. I suppose to most children, grown-ups always seem to have more money than they do!’
‘Yes, sir, that’s more or less what I told him, an’ all.’ The old man grinned. ‘But then he looked up at me, all serious like, and said something like, “Yes, but are they usually mad when you find out?” Well, sir, that sort of stumped me a bit,’ the old gardener admitted.
‘So what did you say?’ Clement asked, intrigued.
‘I asked him if someone was mad at him, and he shrugged, and said he thought they might be.’
‘Did he say who?’
‘No, sir, he didn’t. At that point, young Miss Emily, who he was playing chase with, ran up and “tagged” him and the pair went haring off. ’Course, at the time, I just forgot about it.’ The old man scratched his nose and looked uneasily at the coroner. ‘But now… well, it just makes me wonder a bit, what he could have meant, like.’
Clement nodded. He could well see how it might. A young boy hints that he’s got on the wrong side of somebody, and a week later, he’s found dead at the bottom of a well. He would wonder a bit too.
‘Well, I’m sure you have nothing to reproach yourself for, Mr Cricklade,’ he said heartily. ‘Children often say things that don’t amount to much.’
‘Thank ’ee, sir,’ the old man said, feeling at least better for having got things off his chest.
They took their leave of the old man, who set off to check his new potatoes for black fly, and Trudy looked at the coroner sharply.
‘Do you really think the poor lad had made an enemy of somebody?’ she asked.
‘It certainly sounds possible,’ Clement agreed. ‘But whether or not anybody will actually admit to having had cross words with him is another matter.’
‘It’s beginning to feel more and more as if the accident might not have been such an accident after all, doesn’t it?’ she mused tentatively.
Clement nodded. ‘It does, rather, doesn’t it?’ he agreed gravely.
‘Something tells me this investigation is going to be difficult though,’ she said dryly.
Clement paused to light his pipe, took a few puffs, and then shrugged. ‘Well, so what if it is? It’s nice to be out and about in the springtime, isn’t it, instead of cooped up in our respective offices.’
A blackbird, busy finding nesting material, chose that moment to burst into song, and with a smile, Trudy had to agree with him. Anything that got her out from under the watchful, disapproving eye of DI Jennings was all right in her book.
‘So, where next?’ she asked more cheerfully.
Clement nodded towards the roof of the dower house. ‘Well, why not call in at the dower house and see if anybody there was more observant than our Mr Cricklade?’
Chapter 10 (#ulink_2b6f955a-d6cd-582f-b4da-9c862c29c0da)
At the dower house they were again out of luck. Neither of the residents, it seemed, were at home.
This time, at Trudy’s suggestion, they had gone around to the back and to the kitchen entrance, which meant that a maid admitted them to the house. She appeared to be a village girl born and bred, still feeling happy to have her first job with ‘the family’.
Perhaps her relative inexperience led her to rashly inviting them into the kitchen, where the cook – a middle-aged, comfortably padded woman – looked on them with less enthusiasm.
But the coroner soon had her eating out of his hand, and within a few minutes, both he and Trudy were seated at the cook’s well-scrubbed kitchen table, eating wonderful, still slightly warm scones with home-made plum jam, and sipping from large mugs of tea.
Mrs Jones, the cook, had nothing but sympathy for the Proctors.
‘That poor little lad,’ she said, seeming pleased that her jam was going down well with her handsome, silver-haired visitor. ‘To think of him falling down that well. It don’t bear thinking about.’ She shuddered theatrically, and gave a mournful sigh. ‘Poor Miss Emily was distraught, I heard Mr Oliver say the other day. And I don’t wonder at it.’
‘I don’t suppose you saw anything odd that morning, Mrs Jones, did you?’ Trudy asked, surreptitiously licking her sticky fingers and hoping that nobody else had noticed. Was it only her who couldn’t seem to eat jam and scones without making a mess of it?
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