A Fatal Mistake: A gripping, twisty murder mystery perfect for all crime fiction fans

‘Yes. This might account for His Lordship having seemingly misjudged just how many punts he would need to convey everyone safely to the picnic site,’ Clement said dryly. ‘Did you know the deceased?’

Clement had his court officer show her a photograph, provided by the boy’s parents, of Derek Chadworth.

‘Oh, no,’ she said firmly. ‘I don’t know this man.’

‘Would you study his likeness, please, Signorina DeMarco? Fine. Now, tell us. Did you see this man among the party on your punt?’

The Italian girl shrugged graphically. ‘I’m not sure. It’s hard to say. It was very crowded. Everyone was squished in… like, how you say… sardines in a tin, yes?’

Dr Ryder nodded. ‘Yes. But a punt isn’t exactly an ocean liner, Miss DeMarco. And the journey from Magdalen Bridge to Port Meadow must have taken you at least twenty minutes.’

‘Oh, yes, but most of the time I was talking to my friends – Lucy Cartwright-Jones and Bunny Fleet. I pay no attention to the men. They were rather… er… loud from the beer and wine.’

‘I see. When the accident happened, and your punt overturned in the water, you must have been frightened?’ He tried another tack craftily.

‘Oh, no, I swim like the fishes,’ the Italian girl said with magnificent insouciance. ‘I was more annoyed to get my lovely clothes wet.’

‘I see. Did you notice any of your fellow students struggling to swim to the shore?’ he said.

‘Oh, no! I would have helped, of course, if I had. But the river was not wide, or deep.’

‘No, I see. Well, thank you, Miss DeMarco.’

As he watched the young woman depart, rather impressed by her ability not to let herself be nailed down to a single straight answer, he mentally shook his head.

Why were they all so evasive when it came to talking about the dead boy? To the point that nobody seemed even willing to say whether or not they’d seen him at the party?

‘I think we’d better hear now from Lord Jeremy Littlejohn,’ Dr Ryder said flatly.

Chapter 3 (#ulink_c88963b2-4a1a-5f08-aba5-229111612360)

Probationary WPC Trudy Loveday stifled a yawn and got up from the uncomfortable chair she’d been sitting on for the past four hours. Her posterior felt rather numb, and she was glad to stretch her legs, but as she did so she glanced automatically at the poor man lying in the hospital bed in front of her. He didn’t stir. And from what she’d overheard of the doctors’ low-voiced consultations with one another earlier that morning, she rather feared he never would.

A car had mounted the pavement and hit Mr Michael Emerson in Little Clarendon Street late last night. The driver had failed to stop, and witnesses hadn’t been able to provide a decent description of the vehicle that had knocked him over, breaking his arm and fracturing his skull.

When she’d reported for duty at the station that morning, her superior officer, DI Harry Jennings, had assigned her to sit by his bedside in the event that he regained consciousness and began to speak.

But she hadn’t been at the Radcliffe Hospital (ironically, barely a stone’s throw from where the poor man had been run down) more than half an hour before she’d begun to suspect the futility of her task. Clearly none of the medical staff believed he would survive, and Trudy felt desperately sorry for the man’s wife, who was right now sleeping in the chair on the other side of his bed.

Careful not to wake her, Trudy put down her notebook and pen on the bedside table and walked stiffly to the window to look outside.

The hospital was a large and beautiful pale-stone building, rather Palladian in style, surrounding a central courtyard on three sides, with Cadwallader College on the right-hand side of it, and a stand of old cedars to the left. As she glanced out at the soot-blackened pub on the opposite side of Woodstock Road, she blinked a little in the bright sunlight.

It was another hot summer’s day and very warm in the ward, and underneath her black-and-white uniform she was uncomfortably aware that she was perspiring a little. At least she didn’t have to wear her policewoman’s hat indoors, but her long, curly, dark-brown hair was twisted into a neat, tight knot on top of her head, and her scalp felt distinctly damp and itchy.

The window was open, though, allowing a scant breeze to come in, and she supposed she should be glad it wasn’t winter, when the air would be thick with smoke from all the chimneys. But even as she watched, an old Foden lorry trundled past, adding its bit of pollution to the grime that seemed to coat the beautiful city of dreaming spires and left everything looking and feeling slightly grubby.

She was just contemplating returning to her uncomfortable chair when she heard the soft slap-slap of the flat shoes all the nurses wore. She turned around, expecting to see a nursing sister taking her patient’s vital signs.

Instead, a young nurse she hadn’t seen before was beckoning her over. ‘There’s a telephone call for you. You can take it at the desk,’ she informed her quietly.

‘Oh, thank you,’ Trudy said.

She smiled an apology at Mrs Emerson, who had awoken at the sound of voices, but the poor woman barely noticed as she once again fixed her gaze intently on her husband. She’d learned from a hurried conversation with the matron that the couple had been married for nearly twenty-five years and had three grown-up children, and Trudy simply couldn’t imagine how she must be feeling.

Feeling depressed, she followed the briskly trotting nurse to the desk in the centre of the ward, where a tight-faced sister handed her the receiver before bustling away. Clearly, she was of the opinion that she had better things to do with her time than act as secretary to a lowly policewoman, and Trudy didn’t really blame her.

‘Hello, WPC Loveday,’ she said smartly.

‘Constable. Get back to the station sharpish, please. I have another assignment for you.’ She recognised DI Jennings’s voice at once, and automatically stiffened to attention.

‘Yes, sir,’ she said. But already she could hear the dialling tone in her ear.

She trotted back to Mr Emerson’s bedside and stowed her accoutrements neatly away in her police-issue satchel, only stopping at the nurses’ desk on her way past to ask someone to send word to the local police station should their patient say anything.

Then she jogged outside, where she collected her bicycle, mounted it and began to pedal fast towards St Aldate’s. Luckily it wasn’t far and wouldn’t take her long. She knew how DI Jennings felt about being kept waiting.

As she pedalled, careful to dodge the many other cyclists thronging St Giles, she wondered why she’d been called off her duty at the hospital so soon.

At nearly twenty years of age, she was an intelligent young woman, and had quickly realised DI Jennings wasn’t at all happy at having one of only a few women PCs assigned to his station. Trudy had quickly become resigned to being given the dregs of police work, keeping her clear of his eyeline and out from under his feet. Thus, she had gloomily been expecting to stay at the hospital for days, hugging her notebook and pen in case of the odd mumbled word, and fighting off boredom and pity in equal measure.

So what on earth could the sudden summons back to the station be all about? She hoped, glumly, that she hadn’t done something wrong that she was about to be hauled over the coals for. Any minor misdemeanour of hers was always noted and sarcastically commented on, whereas if PC Rodney Broadstairs, the station house’s blue-eyed boy, made the same errors, nobody said a word.

When she got to the station, there was nobody about to give her any clue as to what was in the wind, although Walter Swinburne, the oldest PC at the station, gave her an encouraging smile as she passed his desk.

But the moment she tapped on her DI’s door, waiting for his summons before entering the office, her gloom lifted like magic. For there, sitting in the chair in front of DI Jennings’s desk and scowling ferociously at him, was Dr Clement Ryder.

And probationary WPC Trudy Loveday was probably the only copper in the city who was ever glad to see him!

DI Jennings watched her come in, noting her flushed cheeks and damp hair – no doubt the girl was feeling the heat and the bike ride had winded her. He bit back a sigh of impatience and the retort that rose to his lips that a man would have been able to take such physical exertion in his stride. And if the picture of some rather overweight male constables flashed through his mind to give lie to this thought, he firmly suppressed them.

Instead, he sighed heavily and indicated the chair next to his unwanted visitor. ‘Take a seat, Constable Loveday,’ he said flatly.

‘Thank you, sir,’ Trudy said smartly, and sat upright on the edge of the chair indicated.

‘Hello, Constable Loveday,’ Clement Ryder said, turning to her and thinking how charming she looked today. A little dishevelled, perhaps, but her dark-brown eyes were dancing with curiosity and interest. Just as he remembered them.

‘Dr Ryder,’ she said calmly, displaying none of her happiness to see him. This took some effort on her part because she’d already guessed that he’d come into her life to rescue her from the humdrum routine of her usual working days. Just like the last time she’d seen him, when he’d asked for her help on another case. A case, she was very happy to remember, that they’d solved between them.

Harry Jennings sat up a bit straighter in his chair. ‘Dr Ryder was just telling me all about the Chadworth case, Constable. Are you familiar with it?’

‘No, sir,’ Trudy admitted, and promptly wondered if she would be in the doghouse for not knowing. Was it something she should have been studying?

Harry Jennings shrugged his shoulders. ‘No reason why you should be, I suppose,’ he admitted, a shade reluctantly. ‘You weren’t called out to take a part in it, as I recall. Perhaps Dr Ryder can give you a brief summary,’ he added, thin lips twitching slightly. He’d already had his ear bent for the past quarter of an hour on the subject and didn’t feel inclined to repeat it.

‘Derek Chadworth, a law student, found dead in the river last week,’ Clement obliged him succinctly.

‘Oh, yes. I know the case,’ Trudy said at once, and with some relief. She hated looking ignorant in front of the coroner. As her DI had said, it wasn’t her case, but she had overheard some of her colleagues talking about it in the outer office. ‘He was one of the drunken students on the punts that overturned, wasn’t he? Death by accidental drowning?’