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

‘Forget about the mechanics and facts of it for a moment, Trudy,’ Clement advised quietly, leaning back in his chair, and feeling his right leg tremble slightly.

With a scowl, he surreptitiously rubbed it under cover of his desk, quickly checking to make sure she hadn’t noticed this sign of weakness, and sighed. ‘Just run the testimony of the students over in your mind. What strikes you most about it?’

Trudy again went up a notch in his estimation when she didn’t answer straight away, but instead gave the question some thought. ‘Well… it does strike me as rather odd that the deceased had been invited to the party at all. I mean, from what I can tell, most of the partygoers were there at the invitation of this Lord Jeremy Littlejohn,’ she went on, checking the relevant pages. ‘The younger son of a duke, isn’t he?’

Clement snorted. ‘Indeed he is.’

Trudy shot him a quick look. ‘You didn’t like him?’

‘Irrelevant,’ the coroner said briskly. ‘Carry on with what you were saying.’

‘Well…’ Trudy frowned, trying to find a comfortable way of talking about social class with this professional man, while not letting her own, strictly working-class, origins get in the way. ‘It seems to me that his sort… I mean, most of his friends were wealthy and, well, upper class. But Derek Chadworth, according to his tutors and parents, was a scholarship boy. His father was merely a country solicitor. And he didn’t seem to do anything out of the ordinary to put himself on the map, so to speak, did he? He wasn’t a rowing blue, or a rugby star or anything, was he?’

‘So?’ Clement encouraged.

‘Well… he hardly seems a likely candidate to have belonged to their set,’ she concluded nervously, and immediately felt relieved when the coroner nodded approvingly.

‘No, he doesn’t. You’re quite right. And yet, when it came time to give his evidence—’ Clement nodded at the folder resting on her knees ‘—Lord Jeremy clearly stated, in an offhand manner, that he might have issued the invitation to Derek Chadworth. But that he couldn’t be sure whether or not he’d taken him up on it.’

Trudy nodded, rereading His Lordship’s evidence. ‘Yes. He says… Yes, here it is. “I knew Derek from around – I’d had a few ciders with him at the Eagle and Child and that sort of thing. I told him we were having a bash at Port Meadow and, if he wanted to come, he needed to be at the bridge and on a punt by half nine.” Hmm, he goes on to say that, on the day in question, after a couple of glasses of something called… er… Buck’s Fizz… at breakfast, he was feeling a big tight and wasn’t sure whether or not he’d seen him among the crowd piling into the punts.’

‘Buck’s Fizz is a mixture of freshly squeezed orange juice and champagne,’ Dr Ryder informed her dryly. ‘A popular choice for indolent young pups and arrogant lordlings who like to hold breakfast parties in their rooms for their minions.’

Trudy nodded and mentally made a note. Dr Ryder really didn’t like Lord Littlejohn. He must have done something to ruffle the coroner’s feathers. But from what she’d read of his evidence, she couldn’t quite see what it might be. True, he had been annoyingly vague about the dead boy – but so had all the other students.

‘Anything else strike you as odd?’ Clement asked mildly. But his eyes, when he looked at her, were as sharp as flint.

Trudy frowned. There was something nagging at her, something that didn’t exactly feel as if it fitted together. But no matter how hard she tried to track down the cause for her unease, she wasn’t able to. Eventually she shrugged. ‘I’m not sure.’

Clement nodded with a soft sigh. Well, perhaps that was only to be expected. It wasn’t as if the young WPC had attended as many coroner’s sittings as he had!

‘OK – try this. Put yourself in the shoes of one of them,’ Clement said with a slight grimace. ‘Not that you’d want to, mind. But you’ve just finished sitting your exams. You have a job in the City, or a job in Daddy’s firm or some such, just waiting for you to step into, and your whole life is stretching ahead of you in a golden haze of wealth and comfort. Now, just how much would you want to “come down” from Oxford with your name mixed up in some death-by-drowning scandal?’

Trudy shuddered. ‘I wouldn’t! Mummy and Daddy wouldn’t like it for a start. People like that need their reputations to be spotless, don’t they, and… oh!’ Suddenly, as light dawned, Trudy began to quickly reread the transcripts again.

‘Exactly!’ Dr Ryder said sharply, seeing she’d spotted the discrepancy now. ‘So why didn’t they all simply deny the dead boy had been part of their party? There is nothing, after all, in the physical evidence to say he had to have met his death while attending that celebration. He could have got into the river by some other means, at some other time. The time of death itself was given as between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m., after all. Granted, that supposition stretches coincidence quite a bit,’ he added with a frown.

Trudy, busily reading over the evidence of the Italian girl again, knitted her brows, only half-listening to him. ‘Well, perhaps they couldn’t deny it. I mean, if he was there… and there were so many witnesses… they couldn’t run the risk of being found out to be lying. Isn’t that committing perjury? Unless they all got together and agreed to say the same thing – and that’s almost impossible, isn’t it? I mean, that many people… a conspiracy on that scale… surely it’s not feasible.’ She broke off her reading to look at him intently.

The coroner sighed and shrugged. ‘I’m not so sure about that, Trudy. People en masse can act very differently from people as individuals. Just look at riots, and mass hysteria and mobs. These students were all of an age, and all friends, and all had their own necks and best interests to look after. So they definitely had good reason to tell the same story. And don’t forget that all of them – mark my words – were under the thumb to some degree or other of our Lord Jeremy Littlejohn. A proper little Machiavelli, if ever I saw one! I thought as much the moment the man opened his mouth to give evidence in my court. Then there’s such a thing as peer pressure, you know. Nobody likes to be thought of as a snitch. And who among them could have afforded to become an outcast by going against the consensus of opinion? Don’t forget, Lord Littlejohn and his family wield a lot of influence in the world these people inhabit,’ Ryder warned her. ‘One word in a banker’s ear, and somebody doesn’t get that job in the City he was looking forward to. Or one whisper from the Countess to some society matron or other, and some young girl can find her marriage prospects withering. Oh, yes. I can quite see how they could all be coerced or bribed or bullied into towing the line.’

Trudy went back to reading the files again. And wondered. Was she allowing Dr Ryder’s comments to colour her view of things? Or did the testimonies now all seem to have a certain ‘sameness’ about them?

‘So you think they were coached in what to say? By Lord Littlejohn?’ she asked uncertainly. ‘They all lied to keep him sweet?’

The coroner caught the scepticism in her voice and shook his head with dissatisfaction. ‘Not necessarily. I’m just saying there’s something that doesn’t ring true about the evidence they gave,’ Clement said grimly. ‘Time and time again, they say the same vague thing. “Derek might have been there, but I didn’t see him.” Or, “I was so drunk, I couldn’t say for sure that he was there. But then I can’t say that he wasn’t either.” Why, if you’re going to distance yourself from such a tragic event, and you all get together and agree to put on a united front, don’t you just go the whole hog and say, “Derek wasn’t there. Nobody saw him.” That way, the police would have to take your word for it. Even if they didn’t believe it, how could they prove otherwise?’

Trudy shook her head. Put like that… ‘But maybe they were telling the truth. Maybe they were just all so drunk they didn’t remember.’

‘Perhaps,’ Dr Ryder said, clearly not believing it for a minute and blowing out his breath in an annoyed whoosh. ‘But just take it from me, young Trudy,’ he said firmly, sitting up straighter in his chair. ‘Somebody—’ and here he nodded at the folder in her hands ‘—was trying to pull a fast one at that hearing. And in my court too! And I’m not having it. Something, as the Bard said, is rotten in the state of Denmark, and I intend to find out what it is. Of course,’ he added, feeling compelled to be honest with her, ‘when we do find out what it is, it might be nothing earth-shattering. It might not even be relevant to Mr Chadworth’s death. It might just turn out to be some silly stunt or secret the students are keeping to themselves for some reason. But until we find out what it is, we can’t know, can we?’

‘Do you think it’s possible they all collaborated to kill him?’ she suddenly asked breathlessly, her eyes glittering, her cheeks flushing in excitement.

And at this outburst of youthful exuberance, Clement grinned widely. ‘Whoa! Nobody said anything about that!’ He reined her back kindly.

‘But is it possible somebody at that party deliberately killed him?’ she persisted.

‘Well, let’s think about it for a minute,’ he said, thoroughly enjoying himself now. ‘There were more than twenty kids splashing about in the water. How likely is it, do you think, that someone could have grabbed hold of him and held him under without anyone noticing? Given that drowning men tend to splash about a fair bit.’

Her face fell. Then lightened again. ‘But if, say, three people did see it, and were for some reason keeping quiet about it…? That might explain why you think their evidence was suspect.’

‘Perhaps. But if you were going to kill someone, would you risk doing it in front of so many potential witnesses? And don’t forget, even if you were willing to take a chance on being able to bribe or threaten your fellow students in some way, that doesn’t negate the possibility that someone outside your control – an independent witness on the riverbank, for instance – would see you and spill the beans.’

Trudy sighed heavily, but, not willing to give up just yet, said tentatively, ‘Well, perhaps he wasn’t drowned at the party. Perhaps someone knew there was going to be a party and took advantage of it.’ With growing enthusiasm she sat up straighter. ‘The killer lures Derek to the river and drowns him there, knowing the punting party will be blamed.’

‘In which case, how did he know there’d be an accident? Unless he had an accomplice on one of the punts?’

Trudy sighed. ‘That does seem to be rather overcomplicated. But it’s not unheard of, is it? Two people conspiring to commit murder. But perhaps the accident was just a coincidence?’ she mused brightly. ‘The killer didn’t know there was going to be a collision, but at a picnic party, on a hot summer’s day by the river, he or she could count on there being a fair amount of swimming and bathing taking place. Perhaps the killer just relied on the fact that a drowned student, found in the river on a day when there’d been so many students mucking about in the water, would naturally be presumed to be one of their number, who had come to grief at the party?’

‘Perhaps. But have you considered the difficulty in that scenario?’ Clement cautioned her. ‘The killer would have to lure Derek to the river. How? On what pretext? He or she would then have had to drown a very fit and able lad, in a large stretch of water. The medical evidence made it clear he hadn’t received a blow to the head or been incapacitated by any obvious drug. Even if he was still a bit tipsy and hungover from a night’s drinking, you can be sure Derek would have put up a fight. And the chances of him being able to wriggle away are quite high, you know. It’s not as easy to drown someone as you might think. For a start, the killer would be certain to get drenched too.’

‘But it’s still possible,’ Trudy persisted stubbornly.

‘Perhaps. But again, the medical evidence puts time of death at around eight in the morning at the earliest. So where on the river could the killer feel safe from prying eyes? At that time, a lot of people are out and about, going to work, walking their dogs, fishing and what have you. If you were a killer, would you risk it? How could you be sure of going unseen and unnoticed?’

Trudy reluctantly acknowledged all these problems, and her woebegone expression made the coroner smile.

‘I’m not saying anything you’ve hypothesised didn’t happen. Just that we don’t know! Which means we need to do a lot more digging. So… are you ready to start?’

At this, probationary WPC Loveday grinned widely. Was she ready?

Of course she was ready!

‘Do we start at the scene of the accident?’ she asked brightly.

‘Whatever for?’ Clement asked, sounding surprised, but with a small smile playing on his lips. ‘I doubt there’d be anything to see after all this time, and the police went over the ground pretty thoroughly anyway. Any clues they might possibly have missed will long since have been trampled over by cattle or washed away in the river. Or do you think we might find a cigarette butt, containing tobacco made only in a small Malay village, and only sold in this country to three Emeritus Fellows and a recluse? Thus leading us straight to our prime suspect?’

Trudy laughed. ‘All right, point made! That sort of thing only happens in Sherlock Holmes novels. So, where do we start?’

Chapter 4 (#ulink_db5ed17f-8737-541b-9c3a-f87bbe559ce2)

Their first port of call was Webster Hall, the college where Lionel Gulliver had been studying theology for the past three years. He was due to ‘go down’ within the next two weeks, and the coroner was grimly aware they needed to act fast, since most of the witnesses to what had happened to Derek Chadworth would likewise also soon disperse.

The college was quiet, and when they enquired at the porter’s lodge after Lionel Gulliver, the guardian of the gate recognised Dr Ryder at once. Trudy knew (mostly from the grumbling comments of her Inspector) that Dr Ryder had many high-ranking friends in the town, and porters of colleges were notorious for knowing – and cultivating – anyone who was anyone. So she wasn’t particularly surprised when the bowler-hatted individual greeted the coroner by name.

‘Ah, Dr Ryder, sir, pleased to see you again. I take it our Dr Fairweather hasn’t managed to beat you at chess yet, sir?’

Clement gave a grunt of laughter. ‘No, he hasn’t, nor will he. But since he serves the best port in Oxford, I’m happy to let him keep on trying. Can you tell us what house and room number Lionel Gulliver is currently occupying?’