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

be mysterious,’ Janet said, half admiringly and half bitterly. ‘You know, cultivate an air of … oh, I don’t know … glamour, I suppose. She would tease and taunt you with some outrageous claim, until you thought she was talking so much pie-in-the-sky, but then the moment you called her on it, she’d pull it off. Like saying she was going to wear a pearl necklace at the next village hall dance, but not showing up in it. And then, when you teased her about it, she’d turn up in the village shop wearing it when she bought a loaf of bread. She liked to keep people guessing about her. I think it made her feel important.’

Trudy smiled. ‘She sounds as if she could be a bit of a handful.’

‘She was,’ Janet said flatly.

‘She sounds like she might be hard work though – to have as a best friend,’ Trudy tried again.

But again it became clear that no criticism of the dead May Queen would be tolerated as Janet’s pretty lips firmed ominously again. ‘I liked her, no matter what people said,’ she insisted firmly.

Trudy knew she’d never get anywhere whilst the dead girl’s memory remained sacrosanct, so she tried to find a lever that she might use to prise open Janet’s lips again. ‘Someone told us that she had the habit of stealing other girls’ boyfriends,’ she mused. ‘Was David going out with someone else before Iris? Maybe someone who was jealous of Iris for stealing him away?’

Janet thought about this intriguing possibility for a moment, but then sighed. ‘I suppose it’s possible that he met someone at that college he was going to, and jilted her when he and Iris got together,’ Janet said indifferently. ‘But he’d not been going with any girl from the village.’

Janet nodded, again catching Clement’s knowing eye. Unless Janet was a very good actress, she hadn’t been going out with David Finch herself then. Unless she had been secretly interested in him, but knowing of Iris’s poaching ways, had been careful to hide her true feelings?

Then, remembering the warm way Ronnie Dewberry had talked about her, she tried another angle. ‘Did you and Iris ever double-date? With his best friend, maybe?’

‘Ronnie?’ Janet said very casually. ‘No, I’ve never stepped out with Ronnie,’ she said, her eyes never wavering from a dead stare straight ahead.

Trudy gave a mental nod. Unless she was much mistaken, Janet might not have ever dated the handsome young farmer, but she had probably wanted to. Unless, again, she was being manipulated by a very clever young woman who was as intelligent as she was lovely.

Just supposing Janet had been in love with David? Passionately and deeply in love. Iris, who probably had superlatively accurate radar when it came to her best friend’s emotional state, would almost certainly have picked up on it. And if Janet’s mother was to be believed, Iris would then have made it her mission in life to steal David away – and then probably have grown bored with him once she had.

And how would Janet feel about all that? Perhaps her so-called best friend’s latest betrayal had been a step too far? It wasn’t impossible for a woman to strangle another woman, was it? Janet was taller than Iris, and although willowy, was probably strong enough. And then what? With Iris dead, and displayed so contemptuously on the village green, had her thoughts turned to punishing David? Regardless of whether or not he’d even known of any feelings Janet might have had for him, someone emotionally fraught and unbalanced enough to kill once, surely wouldn’t hesitate to kill again.

But killing a fit young man was a vastly different proposition from killing a smaller woman. Hence the need to drug him with the tainted alcohol first. And then, once he was too woozy to put up a real struggle … But would Janet have the strength, once she’d placed the rope around his neck, to haul his body into the air and tie off the rope? Trudy just couldn’t see it somehow.

She gave a small sigh, but all that speculation meant that she had hesitated too long to ask the next question, and Janet was quick to take advantage of it.

‘Look, I’d better get back to the shop. Miss Boisier doesn’t like being on her own in case we get a lot of customers in all at once.’ And so saying, she slipped lithely to her feet and turned to head back towards the narrow alleyway.

‘Thank you for your time, Miss Baines,’ Clement said gallantly. It earned him nothing more than a brief, distracted smile, and then she was gone.

She even walked elegantly, Trudy thought dispassionately, watching Janet’s willowy form in the sky-blue dress disappear into the shadows.

‘So, what did you make of her?’ Trudy asked her mentor curiously. ‘She really is quite beautiful, isn’t she?’

‘Yes,’ Clement admitted, sounding mildly amused. ‘She and Iris must have made quite a dazzling pair. No wonder half the male population of the village seemed smitten with them.’

‘Do you think Janet might be in danger as well?’ Trudy asked, suddenly alarmed. It had never occurred to her that Iris’s death wasn’t a one-off thing, but Clement’s sudden grouping of them together made her feel afraid now for Janet. What if there was a maniac in the village intent on going around killing beautiful girls? Iris might only be the first!

To her dismay, Clement took his time in answering, and when he did, she didn’t find his response particularly comforting.

‘How can we know? Until we know who killed Iris, and why, nothing’s certain, is it? Do you get the feeling that the relationship between those two girls was rather an odd one?’

‘What – oh you mean because you can’t really tell whether they were friends or rivals? Best buddies, or secret enemies?’ Trudy said. ‘Not really. Girls can be like that sometimes,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘You can really like someone, and really hate them at the same time.’

Now it was Clement’s