Faith Martin - A Fatal Flaw

After all, many of the women in her set had to put up with men who strayed, especially wealthy men; men who were used to a certain amount of power and status. It was just their way. So long as it was handled discreetly, everyone could pretend it wasn’t happening. And Robert, she had to admit, was always very careful indeed to be discreet. As he should be!

For a second, her rather unattractive face contorted with pain.

Although Christine had no qualms about letting her husband manage her money and capital, she’d been wise enough to keep it all under her own name. Which meant that Robert had lived for the nearly twenty-five years of their marriage well aware of which side his bread was buttered, and that keeping her sweet was definitely in his own best interests.

But she was, by nature, a deeply suspicious woman (and subconsciously at least, a very insecure one), so it hadn’t taken her long to discover his succession of mistresses. These he kept in a discreet flat in High Wycombe, where Dunbar had a second factory, and which required Robert’s ‘input’ once or twice a week.

This arrangement she’d been forced to accept with grace, as a woman of her intelligence and sophistication had been trained to do.

And she didn’t – well, not really – believe that he would ever be so crass and stupid as to let himself get mixed up with some working-class dolly bird who had delusions of becoming a fashion model or some such thing, on the back of winning a local beauty contest.

Even so, it was a fact of life that Robert liked pretty women. And when men reached middle age… well, they could often get a little bit silly. The thought of letting him run free among so much temptation had definitely been enough to raise her hackles.

Luckily, she had a very good spy-in-the-camp in Grace Farley, whom she’d persuaded her husband to put in charge as the ‘face of Dunbar’s’ during the running of the event. And she could always make sure Grace did as she was told. And, of course, she could rely on good old Patricia Merriweather to help her keep her errant husband on the straight and narrow.

A widow herself, the old lady knew how the world worked all right, and of course the Merriweathers were one of Oxford’s ‘old’ families, whose ancestry went back even further than her own.

Yet, still, Christine felt vaguely uneasy about the whole thing.

Strange things had been happening. That incident with the face cream, for instance. And that poor girl taking a tumble from the stage steps. Not usually a woman given to picking up on ‘atmosphere’ or imagining things, even she was beginning to sense something… brooding, surrounding the whole competition.

And worse still, about a week ago, certain rumours had started to reach her ears about one of the girls boasting about ‘hooking’ a sugar daddy for herself!

So now Christine felt as if her whole world suddenly hung in the balance. Which was intolerable! As if she would let some silly little chit of a girl threaten her wellbeing and the pleasant, well-oiled orderliness of her life!

She glanced across at her husband thoughtfully.

She was fairly sure that he’d paid off the girl who’d come out in a rash to keep quiet about it. He must also be aware of the other instances of petty sabotage as well, since he’d made no secret of how worried he was that bad publicity might mar the first of what he hoped would be an annual event.

But at least things were progressing well in other ways. The Old Swan Theatre had seen better days, but it was still a respectable venue and ticket sales for the public show in three weeks’ time were selling well. All the newspapers were lined up, and even the local radio station would cover it.

Several large local businesses, such as department stores and florists, were backing the enterprise, both by providing the prizes for the girls and by sitting in on the judging panel.

And wasn’t she herself keeping a tight hold on the reins? She’d stepped in and taken control when she needed to and would remain in the driving seat until the whole debacle was over. There was certainly no way the contestants themselves – floozies and airheads all of them – could ever get the better of her!

Yet, lurking in the back of her mind, was the worry that her poor fool of a husband was in danger of forgetting himself and doing something monumentally stupid. So stupid that it would put their nice cosy world in real danger.

At this thought, Christine Dunbar stabbed her embroidery needle through the white fabric so forcefully that she pricked her finger. She stifled a very unladylike epithet and quickly sucked the blood from her throbbing digit before it could stain anything.

Her eyes when she looked across at her husband, still reading his paper in blissful ignorance, were narrowed and calculating.

Dr Clement Ryder opened the inquest into the death of Abigail Trent right on time. As usual when he was presiding in the coroner’s court, things tended to happen with clockwork efficiency, mostly because his staff both respected and feared him in equal measure.

He watched the jury assemble with a thoughtful eye, and then listened attentively as the witnesses were called. He was always diligent, of course, being ever mindful of the seriousness of his job, but he had to admit that the unprecedented appeal for help from Trudy Loveday had certainly sharpened his mind even more than usual.

He would not let what Grace Farley had to say influence him in any way, naturally, but he knew that he would be lying to himself if he didn’t acknowledge that his curiosity about this case was definitely aroused.

As the morning went on, the story of the dead girl, via a series of interested and professional witnesses, slowly and clearly unfolded.

The medical facts, at least, were all clear enough, and the pathologist was very precise in his evidence. The girl had died as a result of ingesting a taxine alkaloid associated with yew berries – namely the seeds contained within the berry. The actual cause of death came as a result of the cardiogenic shock that follows such ingestion. The victim would have suffered first arrhythmia and then heart failure.

On the day in question, her sister Miriam had come back to the family home in order to use her mother’s newer washing tub. She disliked having to use the bowl-and-mangle that was all that was available to her in her own, rather new and as yet under-furnished, marital home. It was getting on for nine o’clock in the morning, so her mother had asked her to go upstairs to Abigail’s bedroom and check that she had, indeed, already left for work. Her mother hadn’t heard her youngest daughter come down, and although, since entering a local beauty contest, she didn’t always eat breakfast in an effort to ‘slim’, she usually called in to the kitchen to have a cup of tea.

Miriam testified that she found her sister lying in bed, and had at first assumed that she was asleep. However, she’d been unable to wake her, and alarmed by her pallor and the coolness of her skin, had called for her mother. Mrs Vera Trent had taken one look at her youngest daughter and told Miriam to go to the telephone box and call for an ambulance.

But Abigail had been pronounced dead when a local doctor, also called by Miriam, had arrived first at the house.

This same doctor had noticed an empty glass on the dead girl’s bedside table that had contained what smelt like orange juice, but still held some unknown residue which had clouded the bottom of the glass. Both Mrs Trent and Miriam had been aware that Abigail had been drinking orange juice a lot lately, as she had been told by someone that the vitamins in it were good for the complexion.

The doctor, not liking the signs he’d detected on the deceased, had insisted on calling in the police. The subsequent results of the autopsy had ensured that an inquest needed to be held.