rel="nofollow" href="#litres_trial_promo">Chapter 15
For my sister Marion, with many thanks for helping me out with the research!
Oxford, England. 1st April 1961.
It was a lovely Saturday morning, and less than three miles away as the crow flies from the city of dreaming spires, someone was contemplating how ironical it was that it should be April Fool’s Day.
The daffodils were just beginning to bud in the small woods surrounding Briar’s Hall. Birds were busy building their nests, and a weak and watery sun was promising that spring really was on its way.
But the person leaning against a still-bare ash tree, moodily observing the fine Georgian building below, cared little for the promise of bluebells to come.
That person was thinking of only one thing: death, and how best to bring it about.
Perhaps, not surprisingly, that person was feeling not at all happy. Not only was death on its own something that you would never consider in detail unless given absolutely no choice, contemplating cold-blooded murder was even more unpleasant.
Not least, of course, because if you were caught at it, you’d be hanged. Which was terrifying.
And yet death – and murder – there would have to be. The person in the woods could see no other way out.
Which instilled in that person’s heart yet another, stronger emotion. Rage.
It was simply not fair!
But then, as the person in the woods had already learned very well indeed, life had no interest in being fair.
A woodpecker struck up its rat-a-tat-tat drumming on an old dead horse chestnut tree deeper in the woods, its resonance vibrating through the air. But the human occupant of the wood barely noticed it.
Tomorrow, the silent watcher in the woods thought, would be a good day for it. With so much happening, there was bound to be confusion, which would almost certainly provide the best opportunity for action.
Yes. Tomorrow someone would have to die.
Easter Sunday morning saw probationary WPC Trudy Loveday going in to work as usual.
DI Jennings, true to form, saw no reason why she should be exempt from working through the holiday. Even though, before the week was out, she was due to attend a sumptuous lunch at the very swanky Randolph Hotel, where she would be the ‘star’ guest and feted as something of a heroine by members of the local press – as well as a certain Earl of the realm.
After being angry with her for initially keeping the seriousness of the event from them, her parents were now, naturally enough, as proud as punch about it all. But whilst they were eagerly looking forward to the event, Trudy herself was not so sanguine.
Although it was true that some months ago she had tackled and arrested a murder suspect all on her own, at the same time preventing the suspect from murdering the son of the Earl, she did not feel particularly heroic. Worse still, when the news had broken that the Earl intended to set up the dinner and have her presented with a formal letter of gratitude in front of the city’s press and various high-up members of the constabulary, she’d been ragged about it constantly by her peers.
And to no one’s surprise (least of all hers!), her immediate superior