A Fatal Affair Faith Martin (read dune .TXT) 📖

turn to look vaguely worried. ‘Really?’ And he wondered if his own daughter’s school friendships had been so convoluted.

Trudy smiled, deciding it would only confuse – and alarm – him more if she tried to explain a teenage girl’s mentality to him. ‘We’re not really seeing things any more clearly, are we? With the case, I mean.’

Clement sighed. ‘No. But I think there’s someone who might be able to lift the fog for us a bit, don’t you? Someone who might have known Iris rather well if the gossips have it right?’

Trudy only had to think for a moment. Then she nodded. ‘You mean this arty-type chap who’s either a crook, or a celebrity, or something very disreputable, depending on who’s doing the describing?’

‘That’s the chap,’ Clement said amiably.

Chapter 18

‘So what do we actually know about Mortimer Crowley?’ Clement asked as they sat in his car, watching a female blackbird industriously investigating the bottom of a nearby garden hedge for caterpillars and beetles.

He’d driven back from Oxford and parked near the village green. It seemed appropriate somehow, although all signs that the pretty spot had once been the sign of a particular nasty murder were now gone. Even the flattened grass, where many constabulary boots had once trudged, had now sprung up bright and green again and was rife with daisies, courtesy of the spring rain and sunshine. The permanent maypole, though, was still rooted in place, and he wondered, idly, if tradition would win out and it would be allowed to stay there, or if some future village committee would elect to have it removed.

Trudy sighed. ‘I heard he was a person of interest in the Iris Carmody case quite early on, but nothing much seemed to come of it,’ she admitted with a rueful smile. ‘I overheard the Sarge talking about him to one of the other constables on the team,’ she further confessed.

‘Were you curious enough to do a little digging around about the murder case?’ Clement asked mildly, careful to keep his eyes on the village scenery. The last thing he wanted was to make her feel he was putting her on the spot, or questioning what she did – or didn’t do – at work. Although they worked well together, he was always aware that her job meant a lot to her, and he never intended to trespass on her priorities if he could avoid it.

Trudy smiled, even more ruefully than before, and made no sign that she regarded his question as intrusive. ‘That’s the thing about being given all the paperwork and filing to do,’ she said super-casually. ‘Often you drop papers on the floor and have to pick them up.’

‘And naturally your eyes can’t help but pick up the odd word or two as you replace them in their correct order,’ Clement mused idly.

‘You can hardly avoid it,’ Trudy agreed. ‘As far as I can tell, the Iris Carmody case is suffering from a real lack of physical evidence and or witnesses.’

Clement sighed. ‘And now that David Finch has died – probably by suicide – perhaps the investigating officer is thinking that the case is all but closed anyway?’

Trudy thought about it for a moment, and wondered. Was DI Jennings assuming David had killed his girlfriend then himself, and thus, the case could be wound down? Was allowing herself and Dr Ryder to ‘investigate’ the circumstances surrounding David’s death nothing more than sop to a grieving father and a superior officer? Or did Jennings still have an open mind?

‘Well, if he is, Inspector Jennings isn’t likely to discuss it with me,’ Trudy said wryly.

Clement nodded at this, but refused to be defeatist. ‘So, how bad is our local Lothario?’ he asked briskly. ‘Does he deserve the scorn of the housewives of Middle Fenton? Or was he more sinned against than sinning?’

Trudy sighed. ‘Well, for a start, Mr Crowley is very well off. He owns a lot of real estate around here – some land he leases to farmers, but mostly he buys up local cottages when they come up on the market and then he leases them back out again. A few of the more upmarket ones he does up and rents out as country or second homes to incomers from London and Birmingham. That’s how he comes to have a place in the village – he often uses one of them he did up for himself. His main residence is in London, though, I think. So that alone doesn’t really endear him to the locals.’

‘Hmmm. Does he spend much time here?’

‘A fair bit, yes, from what I can tell.’

This made Clement frown thoughtfully. ‘Which makes me wonder just what the attraction can be?’ he muttered, glancing around the quiet, pretty-but-unspectacular village. ‘You’d have thought, if he was into a bohemian kind of lifestyle that he’d rather stick to clubs in Soho, the world of cinema, nightclubs and avant-garde art parties. But there’s nothing like that around here, and he doesn’t sound like the kind of man to indulge in bucolic pleasures.’

Trudy shrugged. She was not quite sure what ‘bucolic’ meant and she didn’t want to show her ignorance. ‘All I can tell you is that he owns art galleries in Chelsea and Solihull, and one in Brighton. But from what I could gather, they’re all run by managers. He has some stocks and shares, but he has a broker for that.’

‘So he’s hardly a workaholic,’ Clement mused. ‘Again, it makes me wonder just what he does with all his spare time? Especially around here.’

Trudy shrugged. ‘He has no criminal record, I know that. It was one of the first things the Sergeant asked to be checked out. He’s not married either – well, not now, anyway. He was married, to a woman called Alison Browne-Gore, but she died about five years ago. She was rich too – an heiress of some kind to a gin, or wine dynasty or something like that. Her family made a lot of money out