then she saw the name.
McGillicuddy.
And her heart leapt into her throat, instantly cutting off her ability to breathe. It wasn’t exactly a common name, after all.
For a moment, the room swam around her as, fearfully, her eyes scanned the small printed paragraphs for more details.
The name of the murdered man was Jonathan. It was Jonathan. The age was right. And he was a gardener… It had to be him.
For a moment, Beatrice thought she was actually going to be sick, right there at the breakfast table, staining the white damask cloth and making a total exhibition of herself, no doubt causing her husband and son much distasteful inconvenience.
But, of course, she didn’t. Such behaviour was unthinkable. She was Beatrice Fleet-Wright, a Collingswood by birth. The daughter of a wealthy local brewery owner, she’d attended Cheltenham Ladies College, and later Somerville College. She had always attended her nearest church and had always done what was expected of her. Which included behaving like a lady at all times.
She had even made a good match – and one much approved of by her parents – in marrying Reginald Fleet-Wright, whose father owned a large haulage firm that very nearly produced an annual income equal to that of her father’s business.
She had produced two children and, if life had been fair, could then have expected to decline genteelly into middle age, with nothing more than the odd wrangle with the church-flower roster to blight her days.
Of course, that hadn’t happened. Instead, she had faced tragedy, betrayal and loss. Not to mention scandal, and becoming the object of either pity or cutting censure. And now, just when it was beginning to look as if she had weathered all that, it seemed life was about to deliver her yet another vicious blow.
Although she had not loved Reginald when she married him, she had grown fond of him over the years. She’d always loved her children, naturally. But even here she had never worn blinkers, or been one of those mothers who insisted on seeing their offspring as veritable angels.
Which had been just as well.
Beatrice had always insisted on seeing life as it really was. And past bitter experience had taught her that, when faced with adversity, it was no use trying to bury your head in the sand. You had to face things head-on, and try to find a way to make the best of it.
So she quickly swallowed back the bile that had risen to her throat, and put down her toast with only a slight shaking of her hand. A quick glance told her that neither of the men at the table had noticed anything amiss.
This didn’t surprise her either. To her husband, over the years, she had become more or less a fixture of the house – a vaguely valued one, like a really good chesterfield sofa, or a rather elegant painting that hung on the wall, quietly accruing value. And to her son…Beatrice sometimes wondered if Rex was actually aware she existed at all.
‘I shall need to see that idiot over at Binsey Lumber again,’ her husband was saying now. ‘What on earth made him think he could just order twenty lorries at five minutes notice and ex…’
Beatrice had no problem in tuning the droning words out, while giving every appearance of hanging on to his every word – and even offering a sympathetic murmur at just the right moment. She’d had years of patient practice with that particular skill, after all.
And if she thought she caught Rex eyeing her closely, she ignored that too. She was used to his silent antagonism. And understood it. Not that there was anything she could do about it.
Ostensibly Rex was a student, but he seemed to spend little time at college, and even less time studying.
But while she hadn’t entirely given up on mending her broken relationship with her son, now wasn’t the time to worry about that. She had a more immediate problem at hand.
Instead, her thoughts went back to the first time she’d seen Jonathan McGillicuddy, almost seven years ago now. A handsome, golden Adonis of a youth, she could remember that long-ago summer as if it were yesterday.
It had been the summer that her life, and that of her family, had turned to ashes.
And now he was dead too. And not only dead, but murdered.
She took a deep, shaky breath.
Surely this could have nothing to do with her, though? It couldn’t affect her, or her family, could it? It had to be a coincidence. People died all the time. And she hadn’t seen or spoken to him since…
Time passed in something of a fog. Her husband kissed her on the cheek, as he always did, before leaving for the office. Rex made some laconic comment about what he was going to do with the rest of his day, and sauntered off.
Beatrice was only vaguely aware of it all. Her tea went cold, her toast was left uneaten.
Jonathan McGillicuddy was dead. And somehow, Beatrice Fleet-Wright just knew this was going to spell disaster all over again. Disaster for herself and her family, just when she’d thought they’d finally managed to emerge from all the anguish and despair of the past, and those awful events.
She’d thought, then, that nothing could be worse than that.
And on the face of it, the death of someone from her past could hardly compare with the loss of a child and the scandal of the coroner’s inquest. And all the long years of loneliness, guilt and fear she had endured since.
When you thought about it logically, what could possibly be worse than that?
And yet, as she forced herself to read the scant details about the death of a landscape gardener she had once, briefly and tragically, known, Beatrice could just feel in her bones that the worst was yet to come.
The coroner’s inquest into the death of Jonathan Paul McGillicuddy was opened six days later, on a cold and grey windswept day in late January. All of those with business at either the court or the mortuary, which both shared a courtyard at the end of Floyds Row in the city of Oxford, were huddled up in their warmest clothes, and were glad to get in out of the elements.
Dr Clement Ryder watched his court filling up from a half-open doorway in the corridor connecting to his private rooms, and waited for the moment he would be called in by the usher.
He felt well today, his body free of aches and any damned tremors, and he was mentally reviewing the morning ahead and what needed to be done – which, at this early stage, would be very little. Experience had quickly taught him just how brief the inquest itself would be, unlike the general public, who’d come out in droves expecting to see some kind of spectacle. This rather ghoulish phenomenon was something the coroner was used to now, and he had little sympathy for the morbidly curious masses who would go away sadly disappointed.
He’d already spoken to the investigating officer on the McGillicuddy case, DI Harry Jennings, a sound enough police officer in his opinion, if rather lacking in imagination. They wanted an adjournment, of course, to give them time to gather more evidence, and naturally he’d ensure they got it.
It wasn’t an unusual request in the early stages of a murder inquiry.
He heard his cue to enter and walked confidently into the court, feeling, as he always did, a certain sense of satisfaction in the sudden silence that fell over the room as he appeared. Taking his seat, he looked around the packed room. He noted, with a wry smile of distaste, the presence of the press. Then he glanced at the front seats, where members of the families concerned were usually to be found, and quickly picked out the victim’s mother.
A small, shrunken lady, she looked pale and bewildered and lost.
He caught her eye, and nodded gently at her. He didn’t smile. He never did smile while in court. He hadn’t gone around grinning like a loon when he’d