A Fatal Obsession Read online

On the wireless the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, was saying something dreary, as he always seemed to be doing, and she was half-tempted to get up and fiddle with the dial to see if she could find something more cheerful to listen to. But nowadays the radio stations seemed to play nothing but all this modern music the youngsters were going for. It was all Be-bop-a-lula this, or Poison Ivy that. And it was getting harder and harder for her to find the music she liked – recordings of the Glenn Miller Band, say, or a nice bit of Vera Lynn.

  She looked up as the kitchen door opened and her only child swept in. ‘Morning, Mum. Seen my boots anywhere – the ones with the toe-caps? I’m uprooting some old apple trees today, and I don’t want… oh, I see them.’

  The sight of her son, Jonathan, always brought a smile to Mavis’s face. At just turned thirty, he was still a handsome lad and looked far younger than his years. He’d inherited his thick, wavy blond hair from her and striking hazel-green eyes from his father. At nearly six feet tall, his work as a landscape gardener kept him fit and lean.

  As she fondly watched him pulling on his work boots, she sipped her tea in contentment. Although life had been hard for Mavis in her early years (and during the war, naturally), she had to admit she’d had some luck in her life, and never ceased to be thankful for it. Outside the window of their modest, tiny, terraced house, the suburb of Cowley was going about its busy business, with the majority of the men in the neighbourhood flocking into the car works. But, thanks to help from Jonathan’s father, Mavis actually owned the little house they lived in, and was the only one in their street not to be renting. She had been able to afford to send Jonathan to the local grammar school, which in turn had led to his being able to do a bit better for himself than his peers, first becoming apprentice to the head gardener at St Edmund Hall, before striking out on his own and setting up his own little business.

  Yes, in many ways, Mavis knew, she had been lucky.

  ‘Marie still in bed?’ her son asked now, pouring out a mug of tea for himself and peering through the window. The last few days had been wet and relatively mild – perfect for grubbing up stubborn tree roots.

  ‘Yes. She’s not happy to be going back to school after the Christmas holidays, though,’ Mavis said with a smile. ‘So I suspect I’ll have a bit of a job getting her up in time. But don’t you worry about it, son – I’ll not be having any of her tantrums. She’ll soon settle down again.’

  Absently, Jonathan walked behind her chair and kissed the top of her head. ‘Thanks for looking after her, Mum. Don’t know what we’d have done without you.’

  Jonathan said this often, more out of habit than anything, although he was vaguely aware that what he said was perfectly true.

  He’d had to marry young, at just twenty, when the girl he’d been going steady with had fallen pregnant, and in truth, he’d never felt really happy about it – something that had always made him feel guilty. But there was no point in denying he’d felt trapped and a little resentful, and when his daughter had been born seven months later, he’d felt vaguely cheated. He’d expected – and wanted – a boy. Which had only increased his sense of guilt further.

  But then, just three years after Marie was born, Jenny had been killed in a train crash, along with four others. She’d been on her way to Banbury to see about a part-time job, in the hopes they’d be able to afford to move out of his mother’s house and find a place of their own.

  Obviously, that had never happened. So, at the age of just twenty-four, Jonathan McGillicuddy had become a very eligible young widower with a little girl to look after, and had quickly found that his unexpected freedom wasn’t as wonderful as he might have imagined. He’d missed Jenny terribly. And far from being an unwanted child, his daughter had come to mean the world to him. Luckily, his mum, long since widowed herself, had been more than happy to step into the breach.

  Now Marie called her ‘mum’ and seemed to have no memories of Jenny at all.

  His mother set about buttering some toast for him and then made sandwiches for his packed lunch. Slightly plump, she still bustled about with energy, but she must, Jonathan mused, be beginning to feel her age a little bit. And once more, he felt a vague sense of guilt wash over him. Was it fair to keep on expecting her to look after his daughter and effectively ‘keep house’ for him? Perhaps it was time he thought about marrying again? But even as he thought it, he shied violently away from the idea.

  He’d only had two serious relationships with women in his life, and both had ended in utter disaster. First Jenny and then… But no, he wouldn’t think of her. He couldn’t. It had taken years for the nightmares to stop, and sometimes they plagued him still, wrenching him out of sleep, sweating and shaking, with his heart pounding.

  Sometimes, he wondered if he was actually cursed.

  His own ‘natural’ father had died before he’d even got the chance to know him. Everyone, it seemed, left him. And what if something happened to his mum? Or to Marie?

  He shuddered and, telling himself not to be so maudlin – or stupid – quickly ate his toast and threw on his mackintosh. Everything would be fine. It had been for some time now. He mustn’t think about that other time in his life, when it had seemed he must be going crazy. When the danger had been so sharp and acrid he could almost taste it. No, that part of his life was over, and it was never coming back. It couldn’t. It was all dead and done and finished with.

  Once again he absently kissed his mother on top of her head as she sat sipping her tea. ‘Bye, Mum. See you about four,’ he added cheerfully. ‘It’s no use trying to work in a garden after dark.’ That was one of the few advantages of winter for a gardener – a shorter working day.

  He was whistling slightly as he stepped out onto the wet path and closed the door behind him. And as he walked to the end of the street and the group of lock-up garages where he kept his old van, full of his gardening tools, he didn’t notice the silent, watchful figure making careful note of his movements.

  And it probably wouldn’t have made much difference if he had.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Trudy felt her jaw fall open as she looked at the house on the outskirts of Hampton Poyle, a pretty little village set deep in farming country. Large, built of Cotswold stone and uncompromisingly square in the Georgian manner, it stood in manicured grounds, looking effortlessly elegant and substantial.

  ‘How the other half lives, eh?’ Rodney Broadstairs said from the front passenger seat of the Panda car. Behind the wheel, Sergeant O’Grady smiled grimly.

  ‘Better watch your Ps and Qs here, sonny,’ he advised him flatly. ‘Right, I dare say the son of the house is out on his bleeding horse, but he’s promised his father he’ll be back by ten. Rod, you stick with him like glue – especially come twelve o’clock. Trudy, I want you to make your way to the kitchen and talk to the staff. Pick up on any gossip you can about the family. We’re not just interested in who wrote the letters – there has to be a reason Sir Marcus and this family were targeted, and we need to find out what that is. Got it?’

  ‘Yes, Sarge,’ Trudy said happily.

  Finally, she was being allowed to get hands-on in a real case!

  Jonathan McGillicuddy drove through the large village of Kidlington and parked his van under the bare branches of a large beech tree. The grounds he was currently working in belonged to a Victorian pile overlooking the Oxford canal, but the new owners were currently in Barbados, wintering in their villa there. Having only recently purchased the house, they had left him detailed plans for the changes they wanted made in the large garden, which included grubbing up the old orchard and creating a large pond there instead.

  He began unloading the van, carrying a large pickaxe and several different types of saws through an overgrown herb garden towards the rear of the property and then into the orchard at the far perimeter. As he walked, he hummed the latest Ricky Valance song softly under his breath.

  Having nobody living up at the house was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, he di
dn’t have his clients looking over his shoulder every moment of the day to make sure he wasn’t slacking, or to keep changing their minds about what they wanted done. But it also meant he couldn’t just pop in to use their downstairs loo, or scrounge in the kitchen on a cold day for a warming cup of tea or bowl of soup.

  He glanced at his watch as he unloaded the last of his gear by the first of several gnarled and mostly disease-ridden apple trees, so old even their topmost branches bent down far enough to almost touch the ground.

  It was just gone nine.

  The young lad he sometimes hired as casual labour to help him out with the heavy work, Robby Dix, had another job on today, but Jonathan didn’t really mind. He quite liked working alone.

  As Jonathan set to work sawing off a tree limb, the figure that had noted his movements back in Cowley moved stealthily around the outskirts of the walled kitchen garden. And from the dark depths of the arched opening in one side of it, carefully peered out into the old orchard.

  It was a damp day, the grass was long and wet, and the beginnings of a vague fog were forming. Although the house had neighbours on either side, the gardens were large and empty, and even the street outside was silent. No one was out and about on such a damp and dreary day – not even a dog walker.

  Which was a definite bonus.

  The figure withdrew and retreated to the even darker shadow cast by an old yew tree, which had been planted in one particularly obscure corner of the grounds. The patient voyeur now had less than three hours to wait. Not that he needed to actually wait until noon. It hardly mattered, after all, did it? He smiled grimly. But if a thing was worth doing, it was worth doing well.

  Trudy ate her final morsel of Dundee cake and smiled at the cook. ‘Lovely, Mrs Rogers, but I couldn’t eat another bite.’ She smiled, patting her flat stomach. She’d spent the last two hours, as Sergeant O’Grady had wanted, chatting to the staff and making friends with the housemaids, Milly and Phyllis (‘call me Phil’). Both girls were only a year or so older than her, and far more interested in grilling her about what it was like to be a police officer than in gossiping about the family. Nevertheless, Trudy had persisted, and now thought she probably knew as much about Sir Marcus Deering and how his household was run as the man himself.

  She knew, for instance, that Lady Deering had a bit of a gambling habit she was very careful to keep from her husband. She knew that the son, Anthony, was the apple of both his parents’ eyes, and could do no wrong in their opinion; but both Milly and Phil said they had to keep an eye on him, otherwise he’d take advantage, if they let him. A good-looking man, apparently, but he tended to think his wealth and charm entitled him to take liberties.

  Trudy had smiled and said she’d found most men to be the same.

  This had led on to talk about Sir Marcus himself, who tended to be more pompous than promiscuous. ‘He’s so full of himself sometimes,’ Milly had complained. ‘I reckon it’s because he’s not a proper “Sir” at all. He only got his title for being one of them industrial barons, or whatever. He feels it, see. Not being a proper toff, I mean. It makes him on edge whenever they entertain. Always thinking the proper gentry are looking down on him, when half of them couldn’t care tuppence.’

  ‘But if they are miffed or like to look down on him, it’s only because they’re jealous he’s got pots more money than they have,’ Phil had agreed, displaying surprising insight into how the minds of the upper classes truly worked.

  All of which had proved very interesting, of course, Trudy acknowledged as she checked through her notes, but she couldn’t imagine what use all of this would be to the Sergeant.

  Still, that wasn’t for a humble WPC to say.

  ‘That’s the precious son and heir coming now,’ Phyllis said, turning to crane her neck to peer out of the kitchen window, and earning a dark look from the much more circumspect Mrs Rogers. ‘Well, I can hear his horse,’ Phyllis insisted with a giggle.

  Trudy, not wanting to miss the chance of being allowed to assess Sir Marcus’s son with her own eyes, got quickly to her feet. ‘Well, I think that’ll be all for now,’ she added politely. ‘Thank you for your time.’

  ‘I do hope you find that nasty poison pen soon,’ the cook said anxiously.

  Although the servants had already suspected that something was upsetting their employer – they’d all noticed he’d been particularly edgy of late – all of them had seemed genuinely shocked by the news that he’d been receiving death threats, directed at his son. Unfortunately, none of them had any idea of who could be behind it all. Likewise, they’d all professed ignorance about any possible dark misdeeds in Sir Marcus’s past that might account for someone wanting revenge now.

  It had all been rather discouraging, but Trudy’s pace quickened with excitement as she stepped out of the kitchen and made her way outside.

  It was half past eleven and, in the stable block situated at the back of the house, she watched as Rodney Broadstairs approached the young man dismounting from a lovely black hunter.

  Trudy, a city girl through and through, knew nothing about horseflesh, but she instinctively recognised quality when she saw it. And it occurred to her, as Anthony Deering swept off his riding helmet and handed the reins to the stable girl who had stepped up to take them, that it wasn’t only the horseflesh on display that was worth looking at.

  As she got nearer, she saw that the son of the house was about the same height as she was, with thick brown hair and large, hazel-green eyes. Dressed in jodhpurs and a dark-green hacking jacket, he looked the epitome of an upper-class gent at play.

  His eyes swept over her warmly, reminding her of Phyllis’s warning. ‘Let him near your bottom, and he’d as likely as not try to pinch it.’

  Trudy smiled now as she contemplated how nice it would be to arrest this handsome young toff for assaulting a police officer if he was ever rash enough to try and pinch her derrière!

  ‘Well, things are looking up, I must say,’ Anthony Deering said, smiling into her eyes. ‘And are you going to protect me from Dad’s nasty letter writer too?’

  ‘No, sir.’ It was Rodney who spoke up first, his eyes shooting daggers at Trudy. ‘WPC Loveday is just about to go inside and talk to your mother, sir.’

  Trudy, taking the hint, nodded briskly and continued round to the back of the house, where she knew Sergeant O’Grady was with the Deerings in the large sunroom.

  It was ten minutes before noon.

  The sunroom was accessed by a pair of French doors with an aspect on the south-facing side of the house, and as she tapped on a glass pane and was bid to enter, she couldn’t help but wonder what Anthony Deering must be thinking now.

  And again, she glanced at her watch.

  Just eight minutes to go.

  Even though the young man’s swagger and joking manner had suggested he really didn’t take the threat seriously – as, indeed, most of them didn’t – he must still, nevertheless, feel just a little trepidation, surely? Knowing that someone, somewhere, had vowed to kill you when the hands of the clock both stood straight up would be enough to make anyone feel a cold chill up their spine.

  In some respects, the situation reminded her a little bit of the film High Noon. With herself, the Sergeant and Rodney keeping an anxious eye on the clock while waiting for something explosive to happen. Except that Anthony Deering was no Gary Cooper! And he certainly wasn’t expected to face any gunmen alone.

  Even so, she still maintained he wouldn’t have been human if he didn’t feel a little bit scared. And she knew for a fact that his parents definitely had the wind up for, inside the sunroom, Lady Deering, a tall, sparse woman with a rather long face, paced restlessly up and down, while her husband pretended to read the newspaper. Sergeant O’Grady glanced at her as she came in, smiled briefly, and continued to survey the expanse of fields outside the house.

  Trudy glanced at her watch once again – she couldn’t help it. Barely five minutes to go now.

  Was it really possib
le that someone was outside, watching them, waiting to make their move? That, despite the police presence, they had figured out some fantastic way to end Anthony Deering’s life right under their noses? Perhaps by setting up a booby trap of some kind? Or might they have simply decided that brute force was by far the easiest way, and would simply come in, guns blazing?

  The thought of the possible carnage that would result if such an unlikely scenario came to pass made her feel sick, and she only hoped the women in the kitchen would have the good sense to stay hidden if anything bad did happen.

  But, of course, nobody really believed it would. DI Jennings, the Sarge and even that plank, PC Broadstairs, were all sure it was nothing but a mare’s nest. Which was reassuring, Trudy supposed. Even so, she knew her nerves weren’t the only ones being stretched.

  Outside the door, she heard Rodney Broadstairs’ voice, and that of Anthony Deering answering him. In the next moment, both men stepped into the room.

  Sir Marcus looked up from his paper and nodded. ‘Sit next to me, Anthony, will you? I’ve saved you the crossword puzzle.’ And he pulled out a section of the paper and handed it, along with a pen, to his son, who accepted both offerings, indulging him.

  ‘Fine,’ he said briskly, casting his father a wide smile. ‘But at five past twelve I’m off to the kitchen for lunch, and then I’m going to Oxford, to catch a matinee at the cinema.’

  Sir Marcus frowned. ‘I wish you wouldn’t, son.’

  ‘Yes, why can’t you stay here? At least for the rest of the day,’ his mother insisted nervously.

  Anthony sighed theatrically. He’d changed out of his riding clothes and now wore a tweed jacket with dark-grey flannel trousers. ‘Oh, come on! This lunatic threatened to bump me off at twelve noon. Once we’ve got past that, I’ll be fine. After all, why go to the trouble of specifying a time so precisely and then not stick to it? It doesn’t make sense. Either something will happen at twelve o’clock, or it never will.’

  ‘That’s hardly guaranteed,’ Sir Marcus muttered, unconvinced by such spurious logic.