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

of booze. I think he still owns a lot of breweries he inherited from her. They had no children though.’

‘Is he old?’

‘Pretty old – forty-one.’

Clement hid a wince at that, and supposed that, to a girl of twenty, forty-one might seem fairly aged. She probably thought of himself as positively ancient. And as if thinking about his advancing years had triggered it, he felt his left leg begin to tremble slightly.

He ignored it.

‘Where did he go to school?’ he asked curiously.

‘Eton, then Oxford,’ Trudy said at once.

‘You must have dropped a lot of files,’ Clement said, highly entertained.

Trudy flushed a little, but didn’t deny it.

‘Did you find out just how well he knew our dead May Queen?’ Clement asked, turning the key in the ignition to start the motor. ‘If he came to the serious attention of your sergeant, I would imagine there had to be more against him than mere idle village gossip.’

But here Trudy had to admit to her dearth of knowledge. ‘I don’t know. The actual case files are kept locked in the DI’s desk.’

‘And you don’t have a key?’ Clement couldn’t help but tease.

Trudy shot him a reproachful look and said nothing. Taking the hint, Clement let his smile fade. ‘Whereabouts in the village does he live?’ he asked instead.

‘Near the manor house, off Church Lane,’ Trudy said promptly.

Clement looked at his watch and frowned. ‘Might be a job for tomorrow morning,’ he said, and Trudy nodded. With a grunt, Clement put the car in gear and set off to drive his young friend back to Oxford.

Chapter 19

Mortimer Crowley’s house was a handsome Georgian building, typically square and with elegant proportions, built out of the local Cotswold stone which glowed in the morning light. An ancient wisteria had colonised nearly all of the south-facing façade. It had a large, well-tended garden, and a small stable block had been converted into garages.

Trudy couldn’t imagine living in a place like this.

‘Let’s hope he’s home,’ Clement, less impressed, said mildly as they walked up the thickly gravelled driveway. On the front step, he reached for a black, wrought-iron bell-pull and yanked on it. In the distance, behind the solid oak door, they could just hear a faint tinkling sound.

The man who opened the door nearly a minute later looked distinctly hungover, and was barely out of his twenties. Rumpled clothes matched his rumpled brown hair and unshaven chin, and his bloodshot eyes blinked blearily. He regarded them without interest for a moment and absently scratched himself on the chin.

‘Huh? Yeah? Wannah-you-wan’?’ he slurred.

‘We’re hoping to have a word with Mr Mortimer Crowley,’ Clement said clearly and slowly.

For a second the young man continued to look at them blankly, but then slowly nodded. ‘Oh. Morty? Yeah … he mus’ be around somewhere …’ So saying, he stepped back and beckoned them in, revealing a rather lovely hall.

It had the usual black-and-white tiled floor, and housed a fine example of a late-eighteenth-century grandfather clock, that was standing flush to one wall. Although it was ticking ponderously, it was running late. A small but charming wooden staircase swept in an elegant curve off to the left, inviting the visitor upstairs, but the young man gestured vaguely past it and into the darker far corner. ‘In there somewhere, pro’bly,’ he said, and then left them somewhat abruptly.

Trudy and Clement just had time to see that he’d plunged into a downstairs lavatory before the door swung back behind him. A moment or two later came a vague sound of retching.

‘Well, so far our party-loving friend seems to be living up to his reputation,’ Clement said with a slight smile of distaste.

‘You think he often has friends over who get too drunk and have to stay the night?’ Trudy asked, part-scandalised, part-intrigued. ‘Do you think they all come from London?’ She had never been to London in her life and regarded it as almost a foreign country – slightly dangerous and unknowable.

Clement shrugged. ‘I’d imagine so. Well, shall we see if we can find the man himself?’

Trudy nodded, and set off towards the far side of the hall that had been indicated by their not-very helpful friend. As she moved, her head swivelled from side to side, taking it all in. As befitted an art dealer, there were indeed a lot of paintings hung on the various walls, but somewhat to her disappointment, none of them were of nude women – or men, for that matter. For the most part, they were landscapes, or dark portraits of various men and women in period costume, but she had no idea if they were great works of art or cheap reproductions. Her secondary school had been hot on teaching ‘the three R’s’ but it had been rather more reticent when it came to art appreciation.

She glanced at Clement, who was also looking at the paintings, but didn’t want to appear ignorant by asking what he thought of them. She had no doubt that he would know if they were authentic though; a man of refinement like Dr Ryder was bound to know. Instead she chose to think things through for herself, and came to the conclusion that a man who owned art galleries was unlikely to hang anything on his own walls that wasn’t a credit to him.

Unless he was the sort who liked to play jokes, and had the kind of humour that would allow him to find it funny to hang worthless daubs in his private residence?

The door indicated by the drunken young man opened to reveal a large and rather fine library. Two tall windows, probably as much as ten feet high, allowed the sunshine to fall on a colourful Persian rug that lay on well-polished floorboards. Row after row of bookshelves lined all four walls, full of books of all descriptions, their mostly leather bindings glowing richly in the light. The room had the slightly dusty, musty but infinitely pleasant smell of old books. It also contained a large, round and