Faith Martin - A Fatal Flaw

These, then, were the facts.

Not quite so easy to ascertain were the more nebulous details surrounding the personality and circumstances of the deceased, in the weeks prior to her death.

Abigail Trent, according to all who knew her, was a pretty 19-year-old girl who had lived with her mother and father all her life. First that had been in Cowley, before the family moved to an area near Parklands on the outskirts of Summertown – a much more upmarket suburb of the city – when she was just 9 years old. She had three sisters and two brothers – all of whom were older than herself – and she had clearly been a young lady who had intended to ‘get on’ in life.

Unlike her sisters – who had married local lads before reaching their twenties – and her brothers – who both worked as labourers in a local construction firm – Abigail had always had (as her mother had proudly stated) ambition.

Being the youngest child, she had been the one to benefit most from the family’s relocation to Summertown, especially since (after passing her eleven-plus exams) she had attended a very good local school, where the mix of children tended to belong to the more professional and mobile middle-classes. She had done fairly well at school, and her exam results – though nothing spectacular – had allowed her to go on and do secretarial training. She had subsequently gone on to find her first ever job as an office ‘junior’ in a small but well-respected solicitor’s office.

But as her friends and contemporaries called to the stand to testify made clear, the dead girl did indeed have ambitions far beyond the environment of the office.

Dr Ryder had not added Grace Farley’s name to this list of witnesses, as he hadn’t wanted to complicate matters. As it was, her non-appearance hardly mattered, for Abigail’s friends told pretty much the same story. All agreed that Abigail had been very popular at school, being good at sports and music, and aided, no doubt, by her obvious physical beauty. The coroner and jury were shown some photographs of the dead girl, who turned out to be a tall, leggy brunette with a very good figure and undeniably pretty face. She even had a mole, widely known as a ‘beauty mark’, just above and slightly to the right side of her mouth, giving her even more appeal.

So nobody had been unduly surprised when she’d answered the advertisement for an upcoming beauty pageant to find Miss Oxford Honey.

Her best friend, Vicky Munnings, testified that Abigail had talked her into applying as well, although she had been rather less keen than her friend, but when both of them passed the initial auditions, Abigail (or Abby as everyone who knew her called her) had been delighted.

‘From that moment on, she was determined to win the competition,’ Vicky stated. Her friend, according to Vicky, had seen winning the pageant as a step towards something bigger and better. Everyone knew that the winner of the pageant would be automatically entered for the Miss Oxford contest next year, and the winner of that would then go on to enter Miss England, who, of course, would then be a contestant in Miss World.

‘Abby didn’t have her head so far in the clouds as to think she’d go that far,’ Vicky had defended her dead friend robustly. But she did feel that winning the competition would present her with more options. A life in London as an advertiser’s model perhaps. Or a model for one of the bigger fashion houses. Maybe, Vicky had said through some tears, her friend had even seen herself as living in Paris.

But in order to achieve these ambitions, she needed to win.

‘She became obsessed with beauty products and doing things to improve her figure,’ Vicky testified. ‘Like exercises to improve her bustline and slim down her waist.’ She also took to periodic ‘fasting’ to lose weight, and had spent all her money on face creams and lotions, which, Abby constantly complained, were all so expensive.

‘She was always reading in women’s magazines about this herbal stuff that you could make for yourself, to make your skin glow and all that kind of thing, that didn’t cost the earth,’ Vicky had added.

And it was here that Dr Ryder – and no doubt the jury and gentlemen of the press as well – really sat up and took notice. Because, finally, they were coming to the crux of the matter.

When Dr Ryder asked her if it was possible that her friend might have added something ‘homemade and herbal’ to her glass of orange juice in the mistaken belief that it would somehow help improve her looks or figure, Vicky hadn’t been able to give a proper answer. She’d dithered a bit and had seemed frightened and nervous and unsure. Eventually, somewhat tearful and upset, she admitted that Abby had made some stuff for herself before her death – including some sort of oat-and-milk face pack, following a recipe she’d seen in a newspaper article. That had been followed by an experiment with a homemade shampoo that was supposed to make her hair shine more. And yes, Vicky admitted, her friend had got the ingredients from some sort of plant material that she’d picked herself, but Vicky hadn’t bothered to ask what, because she hadn’t liked the smell of it.

But whether or not she would make stuff to actually eat or drink – she just didn’t know. When pressed, she was adamant that her friend ‘wasn’t stupid’ and that, as children, their parents had always warned them not to ‘eat berries from the hedges’.

But she also admitted that Abby, like herself, didn’t really know anything about what was poisonous and what wasn’t.

The parents’ testimony, as usual, was heartbreaking. Yes, they’d heard the hurtful rumours going around that their daughter was sometimes moody and volatile, and that she’d drunk the poison on purpose. But such an idea was ludicrous. Their daughter had been young and beautiful and looking forward to being in the beauty pageant, and to being on stage at the Old Swan Theatre for the final public performance. Furthermore, she had been making plans for her future. Yes, sometimes she could be a bit moody and up and down, but a lot of girls her age were the same. She had certainly not been under the doctor for depression or anything else.

She had no real worries in her life; she had a good steady job, and a young man she’d been stepping out with, one William Hanson – although they didn’t think it was serious – and no health issues. Why would she do something so dreadful?

The ‘young man’ in question, when called, admitted to ‘stepping out’ with her in the past, but that they’d seen less and less of each other since she’d started rehearsing for the beauty pageant, and that they’d more or less ‘called the whole thing off’. He admitted to having a new girl now, but had backed up Abby’s parents’ claim that she had definitely not been the ‘suicidal type’. He, too, couldn’t believe she had deliberately poisoned herself. Why would she do it?

Clement wondered the same thing – and he could see that the jury did too.

By four o’clock that afternoon, all the available evidence had been examined, and Clement could see that the jury was looking uneasy and uncertain.

With his vast knowledge of both juries and human nature in general, it wasn’t hard for him to read their collective state of mind. They clearly didn’t believe it was a case of suicide. There had been no note left, and in any case, most juries were reluctant to bring in such a verdict, because of the effect it had on the victim’s family.

There had been no evidence of ‘foul play’ either. Both her parents had testified that their daughter had gone to bed as normal and had obviously died in her sleep. There had been no evidence of an intruder or break-in at the house.

That left accidental death or death by misadventure.