A Fatal Affair by Faith Martin (top e book reader TXT) 📕

down in the sun with a sigh, and pushed back a long lock of hair behind her ear.

‘Are you really the coroner?’ Janet asked listlessly, looking up at him.

‘Yes. I resided over David’s inquest, but not Iris’s,’ Clement answered truthfully.

The girl nodded, but without any apparent curiosity. She looked even more pale than before, but still composed.

Trudy sat beside her and decided this time it was up to her to take the lead. They were the same age and she had a feeling that this witness would respond more readily to herself than to a middle-aged authority figure. ‘I’m really sorry about Iris. I can’t image what it’s like, to lose your best friend,’ she began gently.

Janet nodded, managing to give a small smile so lacking in any feeling at all that it was utterly meaningless. ‘I still can’t believe it. Not really. I keep expecting Iris to call around and ask me to go out with her somewhere.’

‘To a nightclub, you mean?’ Trudy asked, then smiled as Janet shot her a quick, assessing look. ‘It’s all right – I hear they’re very exciting. I’ve never been to one myself though.’ She hoped she’d managed to inject some envy into her tone. ‘My dad would kill me if he found out.’

‘My mum would kill me too, if she knew we’d been to one,’ Janet admitted.

‘But Iris was brave.’ Trudy nodded, making it a statement, and Janet nodded back.

‘Yes she was. That’s what Mum doesn’t really understand. Life was exciting with her. Do you know what I mean?’

‘Yes, I can imagine,’ Trudy said quietly.

‘I really miss her. I just can’t believe somebody did that to her,’ Janet said, for the first time showing some real emotion. ‘Just … strangling her then tying her to the maypole on the village green like that, where everyone would see her. As if he was mocking her. It was so … horrible!’

‘Yes it was awful,’ Trudy agreed grimly. ‘Do you think David Finch was capable of doing something like that? From what we’ve been hearing about him, he seemed a nice enough boy.’ Trudy spoke bluntly, encouraged by having broken through the other girl’s previous calm dullness.

Janet cogitated this for a while, obviously giving it some serious thought and in no hurry to rush to speech. It puzzled Trudy a little, for surely this girl must have already thought long and hard this past week or so about who it was that might have murdered her friend. And David was the village’s favourite chief suspect.

Finally she stirred. ‘I’m not sure. I don’t think so. But I don’t know. How can I?’ She shrugged helplessly. ‘I always liked David well enough, and like you said, he seemed a nice boy,’ she said wearily. ‘But on the other hand, he really had it bad over Iris. Maybe, if he found out about Mort … some bad things that she was doing, he might have … I don’t know …’ She shrugged again. ‘Gone mad for a moment or two and killed her before he got himself back under control? Men do do that, don’t they?’ She looked at Trudy earnestly. ‘You read about it sometimes in the papers, men going berserk.’

‘It’s been known to happen,’ Trudy agreed. As if losing your temper gave a man a right to hurt their loved ones. And yet how many times had she heard wife-beaters say self-pityingly that it was all the woman’s fault for rousing his ire? ‘Did David have a bad temper?’ she asked curiously.

‘Not that I saw,’ Janet was compelled to admit. ‘But when Iris was with David, I didn’t hang around much. I mean, you don’t like to, do you? Feel like you’re playing gooseberry?’

Trudy smiled understandingly. ‘You said before that Iris was into some bad things. What did you mean by that?’

But this was obviously a question too far, for Janet shifted uncomfortably on the bench and her mouth set in a stubborn line. Oddly, it only enhanced her beauty. ‘Oh, I don’t know specifically,’ she said, clearly lying.

Wisely, Trudy remained silent, and let Janet stare down at her hands, giving her time to feel more and more guilty for holding back. At last, the other girl shrugged listlessly again. ‘I know that Iris was up to something, because she was boasting about going to London to become a model. I mean for real, this time,’ she added, biting her lip. ‘Before, when we were still at school, she was always threatening to run away from school and get away from this silly little village and go to London and become famous. But that was, you know, just a dream. We all knew that, because of course, you don’t really intend to do it, do you? How can you? Even if you had the money – and Iris’s family didn’t have much spare money – how would you go about finding somewhere to live, in a big city, all on your own? But lately, she was really excited. I could just tell that something had happened to make her believe that it was suddenly all actually possible. She was all … gleeful and bubbling over.’

Trudy caught Clement’s gaze and frowned thoughtfully. If Janet was right, and the murdered girl had found some way to make her dreams come true, had Iris gone so far as to break things off with David? She’d hardly want to take her boyfriend to the capital with her and have him underfoot whilst she enjoyed her big adventure, would she? And if she had jilted him, maybe she hadn’t been particularly kind about it? She could just see someone like Iris, all caught up in her own world, being callous and unthinking about the feelings of others. And if she’d been particularly brutal about it – maybe even laughed at him – it might have led to him strangling her in a fit of rage.

‘Did she actually say what her plans were?’ Trudy asked cautiously.

‘Oh no. But then, Iris liked to