Kitabı oku: «A Fatal Flaw: A gripping, twisty murder mystery perfect for all crime fiction fans»

Chapter 1

Grace Farley paused outside the garden gate of her old friend, Trudy Loveday, and took a deep breath. At just turned 22, she was a few years older than Trudy, whom she’d first met at their local primary school. But it had been a few years now since she’d last seen her, and she needed a moment or two to compose herself.

She was not at all sure that what she was about to do was the right thing. What if it all backfired on her? A worried frown creased her pretty, freckled face as she debated whether or not to just turn around and go back home.

Part of her was sorely tempted to do just that. After all, so much could go awry, yet things were getting increasingly desperate, and there was no doubt in her mind that she needed help. Everyone knew that Trudy had joined the police and was doing really well. Grace’s Auntie May had heard from the hairdresser that Trudy had helped solve two murders. Mind you, everybody believed it was really one of the city’s coroners who had been the true force behind the cases. But even so.

Grace, a pleasingly plump girl, with short, curly reddish-brown hair that lent itself nicely to the poodle cut she favoured, glanced around, knowing that she couldn’t stand hovering outside the Lovedays’ garden gate all day long. People would begin to notice and wonder, and that was the very last thing she needed. Drawing attention to herself could be disastrous. Besides, it was getting on for six o’clock, and would soon start getting dark, so she needed to get back to her mum. She’d promised to help give her a bath, and…

Realising that she was still putting the moment off, she determinedly pushed open the gate, marched up to the front door and before she could stop herself, firmly rapped the knocker three times.

She realised then that her hands were trembling visibly, and quickly thrust them into her coat pocket. In her head on the way over here, she’d rehearsed time and time again what she would say, but most of it was swept away when the door opened, and there stood Mr Loveday, Trudy’s father. She knew he drove the buses, though not the one she took into work each day.

She forced a bright smile onto her face, and said, somewhat breathlessly, ‘Hello, Mr Loveday. Is Trudy in?’

Frank Loveday looked down at the worried face of the girl looking up at him, her big grey-green eyes open wide and unblinking, and gave her a friendly smile in return.

‘Grace! Long time, no see. Of course our Trudy’s in. Come on in, Barbara’s just put the kettle on.’

‘Oh, I don’t want to put you to any bother,’ Grace said quickly, stepping into the small hallway, and then following him down the little corridor to the back, where the kitchen was. Her own council house, when she’d lived in this area just a few streets away, had the exact same layout, as did their house once they’d moved to the other side of the city for her dad’s job.

‘Look who’s come to pay a visit,’ Frank Loveday said, ushering a suddenly shy and obviously nervous Grace into the kitchen. Cheerful yellow was the dominating colour, and the tiny space was filled with the appetising aroma of the shepherd’s pie that the family had just consumed for their tea. Grace smiled uncertainly at Barbara Loveday, who was at the sink washing up. Quickly drying her hands on a towel, Trudy’s mother bustled forward to give her a quick hug.

‘Grace Farley! My, but you’ve grown into a pretty girl. Hasn’t she, Frank?’ Barbara demanded of her husband.

‘She certainly has,’ Frank agreed, taking his seat back at the kitchen table, where a copy of the local paper lay spread out at the sports section.

‘How’s your mother doing, Gracie?’ Barbara asked, lowering her voice a few notches. ‘Is she feeling any better?’

Her eyes sharpened in concern when the girl paled slightly, but Grace nodded bravely.

‘Oh, well, you know, the doctors are doing all they can,’ she said, with forced briskness. Then her eyes moved over the older woman’s shoulder and met those of a tall, dark-haired girl with large pansy-dark eyes and a wide smile. ‘Hello, Trudy.’

‘Grace!’ Trudy, who’d been drying the dishes as her mother passed them to her, put down her own towel, and correctly reading the appeal in her old friend’s eyes said, ‘I’ve had my bedroom redecorated since you moved away. Want to come and see it?’

‘Oh, I’d love to,’ Grace lied with a bright smile. ‘I bet it’s green. That’s your favourite colour, right?’

‘One of them.’ Trudy laughed, and leaving her parents to listen to Tony Hancock on the wireless, she led her old school friend to the hall then up the narrow flight of stairs to her small bedroom at the back of the house.

Little more than a box room really, it had enough room for a single bed, a wardrobe and a small dressing table. As they had done when they were still both in pigtails, Grace and Trudy sat side by side on the bed without thinking, the years dropping away.

Although Trudy was glad to see her, her mind was nevertheless working overtime. The Farleys had left this area of town some four years ago now, and although she’d heard the odd bits and pieces of news about them from various sources, she had no idea what could have brought Grace back to her door.

She knew that her old school friend had a good job working as a secretary or book-keeper or something for some shop or business in the ‘posh’ end of town. She’d also heard, sadly, that Grace’s mother was now rather seriously ill.

As if sensing her curiosity, Grace suddenly gave a wry smile, and began to nervously pleat and re-pleat the folds of the skirt she was wearing. It was a habit she’d had ever since she was little, and Trudy frowned, knowing that she only ever did it when she was upset or nervous.

‘I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here,’ Grace said abruptly. ‘I’m not sure, really, if I should have come at all. But I didn’t know who else I could talk to. I mean, with you being in the police and everything.’

Trudy blinked in surprise. Whatever she’d expected Grace to say, it hadn’t been that. For what on earth could someone like Grace want with the police? A more law-abiding, respectable family than the Farleys was hard to imagine.

‘Blimey, Grace, that sounds ominous,’ Trudy said, trying to force a touch of lightness into her voice. ‘What’s up?’

Uneasily, she wondered if it was possible that one of her family was in trouble with the law, and Grace was expecting her to help pull some strings? But if one of her relatives had been caught in some minor unlawful practice, there was really nothing Trudy could do about it. She was a mere humble probationary WPC – and as such, had no power or clout whatsoever. Even if she was inclined to do anything, which she wasn’t, particularly. In her opinion, people who deliberately broke the law should take the consequences.

‘It’s about my friend, Abigail. Abigail Trent. The girl that died,’ Grace said abruptly, the words shooting out of her mouth so fast and hard, that it was clear she’d been holding her breath without realising it.

For a second, Trudy was flummoxed. Died? It was nothing petty then, Trudy thought with dismay. Nothing to do with an unpaid fine, or a car tax ‘misunderstanding’ or…

And then Trudy suddenly remembered. ‘Oh! The girl who died from drinking poison,’ she said, somewhat belatedly putting two and two together. She’d read all about the case over the past few days in the Oxford papers, of course. A girl aged around 20 or so had drunk orange juice laced with some kind of poison and had sadly died because of it. The inquest was due to open any day now. ‘Wasn’t it something to do with a poisonous plant. Berries or something?’ she said.

‘Yes.’ Grace nodded miserably. ‘Yew.’

‘That’s right. And she was a friend of yours?’ Trudy mused quietly. ‘Oh, Gracie, I’m so sorry. It must have been awful. Did you know her well?’

‘Sort of. I mean, not that well, but…’ Grace sighed and took a deep breath. ‘The thing is, Trudy, everyone’s saying that she committed suicide. At work, in the neighbourhood, people you overhear chatting in the café or on the bus… You know how people gossip.’

Trudy nodded. ‘Yes. These things tend to get around. Everyone seems to know everyone else’s business. They’re saying she was depressed and moody, I expect?’

‘Well, see, that’s just it,’ Grace said flatly. ‘I don’t think she did commit suicide. To begin with, I don’t think Abby knew anything about poisons, let alone which berries were poisonous or how to turn them into something that could kill. I mean’ – the older girl twisted a little around on the bed, the better to look at her friend – ‘I don’t know anything about that stuff either, I’m not a chemist or what-have-you. I didn’t even do science at school, and what’s more neither did Abby! But don’t you have to distil stuff like that, or put it through some sort of process before it becomes really lethal? Surely it can’t be something as simple as just… I don’t know, pouring some hot water over some berries and then drinking it. Can it?’

Trudy looked at Grace’s big grey-green eyes and saw how troubled she looked, and shrugged helplessly. ‘I don’t know either. But maybe it is? I’m sorry. But didn’t she drink the stuff with orange juice to help mask the taste? That’s what the papers said, anyway.’

Grace shrugged and sighed heavily. ‘I think so. But I just know that Abby wouldn’t have killed herself,’ she insisted stubbornly.

‘All right.’ Trudy nodded amicably, not willing to argue. Clearly, her old friend believed she was right. But now that she was remembering more details, things didn’t seem to quite bear out what Grace was saying.

Tentatively, she said, ‘But didn’t the people who were closest to her say that she was… well, rather moody? That she could be depressed sometimes? I think even her own mother was reported as saying that she could be a bit… intense?’

Grace again sighed heavily. ‘Oh, that was just her way. She was only 19 after all, and yes, she could be a bit up and down. A row at work would get blown up out of all proportion, or a present from her boyfriend would have her walking on air. It was just her way. But that doesn’t mean that she was suicidal!’ Grace argued. ‘Abby had great plans for her life. She talked about them often. And she enjoyed herself far too much to seriously want to die! For a start, she was looking forward to the beauty contest too much!’

Trudy blinked. She knew that a beauty pageant was being staged, of course, from the notices she’d seen around town, but it hadn’t really registered with her much. ‘Oh, she was in that, was she?’

Grace nodded, and with her hands restlessly folding and unfolding her skirt, began to speak rapidly.

‘I work for Mr Dunbar, who owns Dunbar’s Jams, Honey and Marmalade. You know, the factory up past Summertown?’

‘Oh right,’ Trudy said. ‘You’re his secretary or something?’

Grace gave a rueful smile. ‘Hardly! I’m not that high up! I do the odd bit of book-keeping – petty cash mostly, and fetch the coffee, do the filing and some bits of typing that the other secretaries don’t like doing… all tabs and… never mind that.’ Grace suddenly waved a hand in the air. ‘It’s not important. What is important, is that last year Mr Dunbar came up with a plan to help promote his honey. He wanted to put Dunbar Honey up there with the famous Oxford Marmalade brand.’ She paused to smile whimsically at this bit of obvious folly, and shrugged. ‘So he came up with this idea of holding an annual Miss Oxford Honey beauty pageant.’

Trudy couldn’t help but smile. Her friend, catching her look, laughed suddenly.

‘I know – it’s hardly Miss World!’ Grace said, rolling her eyes a bit. ‘But actually, it’s quite a clever idea. All the papers will cover it, and Mr Dunbar knows someone who owns that old theatre just off Walton Street who’s letting him hold rehearsals there for free. He’s also agreed to host the beauty contest for the public one Saturday night next month. Tickets are already nearly sold out. That’s one of the reasons why they decided not to cancel the event after Abby died. Everybody was so excited about it, it seemed a shame to call it all off. Not only that, he’s got local shop owners putting up big prizes and acting as judges, so it’s hardly costing him a penny.’

‘He’s obviously quite a businessman, your boss,’ Trudy said, somewhat sceptically.

‘Actually, he probably is,’ Grace said flatly. ‘But that’s not really the point. I was asked to help out on the organising side of things, since I wasn’t exactly indispensable in the office,’ Grace laughed. ‘And Mrs Dunbar…’ For a moment the name seemed to catch in her throat, and then she smiled ruefully. ‘Well, let’s just say that Mrs Dunbar was adamant that her husband shouldn’t spend time on the beauty contest or let it get in the way of the business of making honey!’

‘Ah, I get it,’ Trudy said with a wicked smile. ‘She didn’t want her husband spending too much time hanging around with pretty girls.’

Grace dragged in a large breath, but was obviously far too discreet to either confirm or deny her friend’s interpretation of how she’d come to be the hands-on manager of the contest. ‘So, anyway, a few weeks ago Mrs Dunbar drafted a piece for the newspapers, asking girls who lived in the city or within a twenty-mile radius, and who wanted to take part, to get in touch and sign up for the auditions. Obviously, they had to be over 18, but under 30 and well, er, they had to be, er…’

‘Pretty and with good figures?’ Trudy put in helpfully, when her friend seemed to struggle for a diplomatic way to phrase things.

Grace suddenly giggled. ‘Well, you’d have thought that went without saying, wouldn’t you? But some of the women and girls who turned up…’ She rolled her eyes with yet another giggle. ‘Well… let’s just say that me and Mrs Dunbar and Mrs Merriweather – she’s the old lady who’s a Friend-of-the-Old-Swan-Theatre, and is helping us run the show – anyway, we had a bit of a job persuading some of them that they weren’t… er… quite suitable for what we had in mind.’

Trudy shook her head. ‘The tact and diplomacy must have been quite something!’

Again, Grace giggled. Then her face suddenly fell, as she remembered why she was there.

‘Yes. Well… anyway, Abigail and her friend Vicky were one of the first ones to apply, and we signed them both up straightaway. Over the next week, we whittled the applicants down to about twenty or so. Actually, the process is still ongoing but, again, that’s not what matters. The point is I got to know Abby, and… well, to put it in a nutshell, she was fairly confident that she had a good chance of winning. She was so looking forward to the competition night. She had stars in her eyes! What’s more, she was so upbeat about her “talent” spot and she just loved trying on the evening gowns and… Trudy, there was just no way that girl killed herself,’ Grace finished forcefully.

Her eyes were now open so wide, and were fixed on Trudy with such a glare, as if she thought she could make Trudy believe her by sheer force of will. ‘And I don’t know what to do about it. If they bring in a verdict of suicide, as everyone seems to think they will… it just won’t be right!’

Her hands were shaking again, and Trudy reached out and held them firmly. ‘Gracie, it’s all right – just calm down a bit. But I don’t quite know what you think I can do about it,’ she told her gently. ‘I’m just a probationary constable. And I didn’t know this girl, or anything about the circumstances surrounding her death.’

‘No, but you know this Dr Ryder man, don’t you? He’s a coroner, isn’t he? Can’t you ask him to help?’ Grace asked quickly.

For a second or two, Trudy stared at her friend aghast. How could she possibly explain to her friend, who knew nothing about the police force and how its hierarchy actually worked, why her request was so impossible. For a start, if her boss, DI Jennings, ever found out that she’d gone behind his back about a case, he’d skin her alive! Especially since the Inspector was hardly a fan of the coroner.

But as if sensing what was coming, Grace got in first. ‘Please, Trudy, can’t you just speak to him? At least ask him to call me as a witness or something? I can testify to her state of mind, at least, can’t I? Won’t the inquest want to know that Abby wasn’t feeling suicidal at all?’

‘But, Grace, how can you be so sure?’ Trudy asked helplessly. ‘None of us know, not really, how someone else is feeling.’

Slowly, Grace’s shoulders slumped. ‘So you won’t help?’ she asked flatly, her gaze so accusatory that Trudy almost winced.

‘It’s not that I won’t. It’s that I can’t,’ Trudy tried to explain. ‘I’m not even one of the officers assigned to the case,’ she pointed out. ‘And believe you me, my superiors… well, let’s just say, they won’t be in any hurry to listen to what I might have to say,’ she added, a shade bitterly. The thought of the look that would cross her DI’s face if she came to him with this tale was enough to make her shudder.

Seeing what she was up against, Grace decided that if she was in for a penny, she might as well be in for a pound, and took a deep, deep breath.

‘It’s not only this thing with Abby,’ Grace said, sounding almost defiant all of a sudden. ‘It’s other things as well. At the theatre…’ She paused, closed her eyes for a second, and then took the plunge. ‘Things have been happening.’

‘What do you mean?’ Trudy asked sharply.

Grace shrugged, her eyes suddenly darting around the room so that they wouldn’t have to meet Trudy’s. ‘Oh, just things,’ she said, rather unhelpfully. ‘Stupid things. Nasty little tricks… For instance, someone tied a string over the bottom step in the stairs that leads up to the stage, so that one of the girls took a tumble. Oh, she wasn’t hurt – but she did have to rest her ankle for a few days, so she lost rehearsal time for her dance routine. And then something must have been added to one of the girls’ jars of face cream which brought her skin out in a rash… It faded after a few days, but she pulled out of the competition anyway. Just silly little pranks like that.’

Trudy frowned. ‘But isn’t that likely to be a simple case of rivalry between the contestants? It sounds like the sort of mean tricks that some girl who wants to scare others into withdrawing from the contest might use.’

‘Yes. That’s what everyone seems to think,’ Grace admitted reluctantly. ‘But, Trudy, I’m not so sure. I have a bad feeling about it all. I think… Oh, I just wish you’d talk to your coroner friend about Abby! Perhaps you could come down to the theatre sometime, during rehearsals or something, and just take a look around? See if anything strikes you as… odd. But you mustn’t tell anyone that you know me, or that I’ve been talking to you, because then I could lose my job,’ Grace added hastily, suddenly clutching her arm and holding it in a tight grip. ‘Mr Dunbar wouldn’t like it if he thought that I’d been speaking out of turn. He’s dead scared as it is that the papers will get to know about our little problems and give us bad publicity. So you mustn’t come in uniform or anything… I know!’ She suddenly beamed brightly. ‘You could pretend to be thinking of applying to be a contestant or something. It would give you the perfect excuse for being there and having a look around. Oh, Trudy, please?’

Trudy, unable to resist the appeal in her friend’s eyes, suddenly gave in. What could it really hurt, just to put her mind at rest? DI Jennings need never know about it. Besides, she was intrigued.

‘OK. I’ll go and see Dr Ryder and tell him what you’ve said. If nothing else, he can at least give us some advice. But I’m not promising anything mind!’

‘Oh, Trudy! Thanks ever so much!’ Grace leaned across and gave her a hug. ‘Now, I’ve really got to get back to Mum,’ she said. ‘I don’t like leaving her in the house for long with just Dad to look after her,’ she admitted, and Trudy gave her a quick, fierce hug back.

‘Of course!’ she said, her voice suddenly thick with emotion. ‘And I do hope your mother gets better soon,’ she said. She simply couldn’t imagine what she’d do, or how she’d feel or cope, if her own mother suddenly got so ill. The thought made Trudy feel quite sick.

She jumped up and ushered her friend downstairs. And with a quick ‘goodbye’ called out to the older Lovedays who were still in the kitchen, Grace was gone.

But as Grace Farley walked to the end of the street and caught the bus across town, she sat in her seat, swaying slightly and looking out at the darkening city with a growing sense of panic.

Had she done the right thing? What if it all backfired? What if Trudy didn’t come through for her? Or worse yet, what if she did, but didn’t get the results that she, Grace, so desperately needed her to get? And what if her old friend was really good at her job, and learned far more than was good for her?

Grace shifted on the seat, fighting back a growing sense of unease. What if she’d miscalculated, and it all went wrong?

For a long moment, Grace Farley felt chilled to the bone.

She could actually end up in prison.

Or worse yet! What would her tormentor do to her if it came out that she, Grace, had brought the police sniffing around the theatre?

And yet… And yet, the risk had to be worth it.

She simply had to get something on her persecutor, before… well, before things got totally out of control.

Trudy Loveday was the only one she knew who might be able to find such ammunition. But she’d have to watch her old friend closely.