Trudy heard a car drive past behind them in the narrow lane but didn’t bother to look around as she walked up the somewhat unevenly paved front path of Mary Everly’s garden.
She could tell by the neatly trimmed rose bushes, box hedging and a now leafless wisteria vine that was growing rampant up the cottage walls, that the owner must be a keen gardener – or employed someone who was. No doubt in spring and summer, she mused, this would be a wonderful spot to behold.
Beyond the cottage, a water meadow that was now looking grey and damp lay flat and forlorn, but between the bare willow trees in the distance she could just see a flat glimmer of silver grey – which was probably the river Cherwell or possibly the Thames. For a lifelong native of Oxford, Trudy could be remarkably vague on its geographical features!
The cottage was a classic example of its type, with a front door set firmly in the middle complete with an upside-down V-shaped porch, and with a window on each side. Above, two bedroom windows mirrored the arrangement below, and at one side, a chimney stack climbed up, and was currently emitting a steady grey plume of smoke from the fire.
‘Pretty place, and a pretty spot,’ Clement said, unerringly echoing her own sentiments. In one sheltered spot beside the coal shed, a stand of Michaelmas daises still bloomed, their shade so pale a tint of lilac that they almost looked grey. Trudy was still admiring them as Clement lifted up a polished brass doorknocker and rapped it briskly.
There was a short moment of silence and then the door opened quickly. The woman who stood in front of them looked to be in her late fifties or early sixties, and was tall, thin and somewhat regal-looking. The eager look of welcome that had been on her face subsided abruptly as she realised that they were strangers to her.
‘Oh, good morning. I’m so sorry, I was expecting someone else. Can I help you?’ she added politely. Her pale blue eyes flickered slightly as they swept over Trudy’s uniform.
‘Hello, Mrs Everly. I’m WPC Loveday, and this is Dr Clement Ryder, city coroner.’ Trudy showed her credentials, which the older woman studied briefly.
‘This is about my brother, I take it?’ she said with a long-suffering sigh. ‘You’d best come in then.’ And so saying, she stood aside to let them pass.
She was dressed in a pair of warm, tailored wool trousers in a deep navy tone, and with it wore a Fair-Isle-style jumper in shades of blue, white and grey, set in a geometric pattern. Her hair was the colour of old gold, and fashioned in the latest style. Discreet make-up made her look younger than her probable years, and apart from a gold watch, her only other jewellery was a pair of neat, pearl earrings.
She gave the air, Trudy thought, of somebody who was used to living well and always putting up a good front.
‘Please, come into the lounge,’ Mary Everly said, leading the way from the small hall, where a grandmother clock ticked ponderously in a shadowy corner, and into a small but pleasant room that overlooked the front garden. Done out in tones of apricot and apple green, it did a lot to brighten up the gloomy, grey November day that was trying to press in from outside.
‘Is Mr Everly not at home?’ Trudy asked curiously. It was possible that the interview might prove upsetting, and sometimes the steadying support of a spouse could be an advantage.
‘My husband has been dead for some years now,’ Mary Everly said, with a slightly wry smile, and Trudy felt herself flush.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise!’
‘No reason why you should. Please, take a seat.’ Mary indicated the two armchairs and a small sofa that were grouped around a low walnut coffee table. ‘He died abroad. He was a diplomat you see, and we were often in the tropics. In the end, he got one of those vague fevers that sometimes see us Europeans off. Now—’ she dismissed her widowhood with a wave of one bony hand ‘—what exactly can I do for you?’
Trudy reached for her notebook and opened it at a fresh page. ‘I take it that you are aware of the articles that have been written about your brother’s, er, fatality, that have been showing up recently in the Oxford Tribune?’ she began cautiously.
Her witness, seated in one of the armchairs, folded her hands neatly in her lap. ‘Yes, Godfrey telephoned me about it, all hot under the collar as usual. Of all my nephews and nieces, he tends to be the most vocal,’ she added sardonically.
‘Well, as a result of the questions raised, my superior, DI Jennings, has asked me to just check up on a few details. You were there at the bonfire party the night the shed caught fire, I take it?’
‘Yes, I was. I got to the house in Headington around … let me see. It must have been, oh, six-ish, I would say. I helped Alice in the kitchen for a while – preparing the food and things. Then we all went outside to see the bonfire lit. But it was such an atrocious night – wet and windy, as I’m sure you know. And they had trouble getting it lit.’
She paused for breath, and Trudy nodded. ‘Can you remember who recommended they try paraffin?’ she asked quietly.
‘I think it was Kenneth,’ Mary said after a moment of thought. ‘But I didn’t really take much notice,’ she added punctiliously. ‘Anyway, they got it lit and going eventually, and then the children started clamouring for the fireworks to start. So my brother went into the shed to collect them.’
‘Did you see him actually go into the shed, Mrs Everly?’
‘Now that you mention it, no, I don’t think so. I saw him set off and presumed that’s where he was heading. I wasn’t really paying much attention, to be honest. I’m long past the age when fireworks are a cause for excitement. Besides, the shed was in the back of the garden somewhere, where it was darkest. And I was watching the bonfire, trying to make sure it didn’t run out of control. It was a bit silly to have lit it in such a strong wind, even if it was set up in the most sheltered part of the garden. I said as much to … who was it now … Matthew, I think, at the time. But my brother insisted things go ahead as planned. Thomas never did like to have his plans thwarted – even by Mother Nature,’ she added. She sounded both grim and amused, and Trudy looked at her thoughtfully.
‘He sounds like he was something of a character. Was he always so stubborn, even as a child?’
‘Oh yes, always,’ Mary said at once. ‘More often than not our parents despaired of him. He was one of those people who always think they know it all – and will move heaven and earth to prove they’re right, even when they’re wrong. Most especially, I suspect, when they are wrong and secretly know it!’ The older woman shrugged and spread her hands in a ‘what-can-you-do’ gesture. ‘But then, they forgave him when he became so successful.’
‘Yes. He inherited the family business, didn’t he?’ Trudy nudged her.
‘Not quite. Our parents owned a couple of shops, and when he was twenty-one, Thomas badgered them into letting him have one of them to run as he wanted to. He always maintained times were changing and new business practices needed to be followed in order to make “proper” money as he always called it. Dad was cautious at first, being both old-fashioned himself and wary of Thomas’s eager enthusiasm for change, but within a year my brother’s shop was making more than twice the amount that Dad’s was.’ She gave a brief shrug. ‘After Dad retired, Thomas naturally took over the second shop, sold them both, diversified, and within a decade, had built up Hughes Enterprises. The rest, as they say, was history.’
‘Were you surprised by any of this?’ Trudy asked. Having a witness who was obviously so willing to talk – and so honestly – was always a bonus, and she intended to make the best of it before putting the woman on her guard with more personal questions.
‘Not at all,’ Mary said. ‘I was younger than Thomas by some years, but even back then I could see how driven he was. He was clever, willing to take risks and, to give him his due credit, work like a dog, for years and years, in order to make something of himself.’
‘He sounds like an ambitious man.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Money meant a lot to him, would you say?’ Trudy pressed.
‘Oh, good grief, yes. It was his be-all-and-end-all if you ask me. I never thought it was particularly healthy – but of course, his cronies and other men of business thought him the bees’ knees.’
‘What did his wife make of all this?’ Trudy slipped in.
‘Mildred? Oh, she didn’t mind. Why should she? She got a grand home and furs and holidays abroad. Plus her children went to the best schools and what have you.’ Mary shrugged one elegant shoulder.
‘You don’t think she minded her husband working such long hours?’
Mary gave another of her sardonic smiles. ‘I very much doubt it, Constable. I imagine that she was relieved to have the house to herself most of the time. My brother tended to … shall we say, fill the space, wherever he was.’
‘We’ve spoken to your niece, Caroline,’ Trudy pressed on. ‘She was rather, er, emphatic, when it came to her mother. And about her final illness in particular.’
Mary Everly’s thin face tightened perceptibly. ‘Yes. I imagine she was,’ she conceded.
‘She said, in fact, that her father refused to pay for treatment that might well have helped prolong her life.’
‘Yes,’ Mary said shortly.
‘Yes, that’s what Caroline believes, or yes, you think it’s true?’ Trudy asked frankly.
‘Both.’
Trudy blinked at this rather flat, terse statement. She shifted a little on her seat, not quite sure how to take this witness. She was not exactly hostile (well, not yet!) but she wasn’t being all sweetness and light either.
Beside her, she noticed Clement was also watching the widow with keen interest. She cast him a quick glance, tacitly offering him the opportunity of taking over if he felt like it, and he accepted the silent invitation by leaning forward slightly on the sofa.
‘Did you get on with your sister-in-law, Mrs Everly?’ he asked quietly.
‘Mildred? Yes, in so far as it went. You have to remember, I was a diplomat’s wife and spent many years away from England, so I never saw a great deal of my relatives. So I can’t claim to be any expert on my brother’s family life. But whenever we met up, I always got on all right with her.’
‘Were you here when she was in the final stages of her illness?’
‘No – well, not when she actually died,’ Mary admitted. ‘We were over here for a few months between our Singapore posting and the Malay posting, when she’d just been diagnosed and was beginning to go downhill fast, the poor old girl. It was quite sudden and the change in her was shocking. She went like a skeleton almost.’ Mary sighed heavily. ‘Of course, Caroline, as the youngest one, and the only one still left at home, felt it all the most.’
‘And she’d have been the one in the best position to know what attitude her father had taken to his wife’s illness?’ Clement mused, almost to himself, then nodded. Yes, that would explain why, of all the Hughes siblings, she was the one who hated her father with the greatest degree of intensity.
‘I agree,’ Caroline’s aunt said sadly. ‘I’ve no doubt she saw and heard a lot that upset her. And seventeen is such a hard age to learn one of life’s more harsher lessons, isn’t it? Not still a child, exactly, but hardly grown-up either. I felt sorry for her, to be frank. But being abroad so much …’ She shrugged helplessly. ‘There was little of use that I could actually do for her.’
‘Did you believe her when she claimed that her father wouldn’t finance her mother’s medical treatment in America?’ Clement asked, watching her closely.
‘Oh yes,’ Mary said, without hesitation. ‘I’m afraid it would be just the sort of thing that Thomas would do, you see. Refuse to spend money on a lost cause, I mean. I can almost hear him saying it. “Just throwing away good money after bad.”’
She paused, aware of the simultaneous looks of shock that had crossed the faces of both of her visitors. ‘Sorry, but I’ve never believed in shirking the hard facts,’ Mary Everly stated. ‘My brother, you see, always enjoyed rude good health himself, and like so many people who’ve never had to experience and deal with illness, he tended to pooh-pooh the extent and awfulness of it. Which would only have made matters even worse. When Milly became all but bed-bound, he simply refused to acknowledge what was happening and retreated into his own world – and his world was, and always had been, about making money.’
‘I pity his poor wife,’ Clement said heavily, which was a sentiment that Trudy heartily shared.
‘So did I,’ Mary responded. ‘So did we all – not just Caroline. But my brother had a calculator where his heart should be, and his children – all his children – knew this better than most. And it wasn’t just that he had to succeed in business – he needed to succeed more than anybody else.’ Mary sighed. ‘There was a sort of … of … glee about him whenever he pulled off a really big coup. Do you know what I mean?’
‘I think so,’ Clement said. ‘He was the sort of man who enjoyed power.’
‘Yes. Money, acquisitions, power, influence, being seen as the big man … all of these things were meat and drink to him.’
‘And he wouldn’t have had much patience to spare for a suddenly ill, needy and ailing wife. Or with a frightened and grieving daughter.’ Clement nodded. ‘No wonder Caroline married so young and left home the moment she could.’
Mary again made her what-can-you-do gesture of helplessly spread hands. ‘I have to say, I was rather relieved when I heard she’d married so young and left the family home,’ the older woman said. ‘I think it was almost certainly the best thing that could have happened – for both of them. I can only imagine the horrible atmosphere which must have existed in that house after Mildred died!’
‘Such a man must have fallen out with almost every member of his family at some point or other I imagine,’ Clement mused craftily, and Trudy, busily scribbling down her notes, was careful to hide her smile of approval at this neat little bit of fishing.
‘Oh yes. He was especially scornful of Godfrey, of course.’ Mary sighed, then seeing Clement’s questioningly raised eyebrow, hastened to explain. ‘He was the oldest son, you see. Alice was the first-born, but as a girl, didn’t really count with Thomas, I’m afraid. But he never married, for a start, and so failed to produce the much longed-for offspring. As well as that, Godfrey I’m afraid … well, let’s just say that he’s not the most forceful of men. He’s an academic and a bookworm – the sort of person just suited to life in Oxford. Not at all the get-up-and-go chip off the old block that Thomas had always wanted in a son. So I suppose it was inevitable that he and my brother never saw eye to eye. Matthew was probably his favourite – if you could say he had a favourite.’ Mary paused to give another of her bitter, amused, smiles. ‘Mind you, after Caroline turned on him – which is no doubt how he saw it – I rather think I saw signs that Alice became more of a favoured child, as a result.’
‘But he quarrelled with her too?’ Clement asked.
‘Oh yes. As you said, he fell out with everyone eventually.’
‘And with you too, I imagine?’ the coroner slipped in deftly. But if he expected her to get suddenly defensive or disconcerted, he was disappointed, for yet again Mary Everly merely flashed another of her wry smiles.
‘Oh yes, me too,’ she admitted.
‘In fact, you and your brother had quarrelled fairly recently I gather,’ Clement said, careful to keep his voice as matter-of-fact as her own had been.
‘My, my, you have been poking your noses into the Hughes family business, haven’t you?’ the older woman said, her tone understandably a little more waspish now. ‘Who have you been talking to, I wonder? Not that it matters unduly, I suppose. But yes, we had words recently.’
‘May I ask what about?’
‘You may ask,’ Mary said, ‘but I have no intention of answering you. It was of a strictly personal nature and had nothing whatsoever to do with my brother’s tragic accident, of that I can assure you.’
‘I see.’ Clement made no move to press her and Trudy reluctantly agreed that it would serve no purpose for her to try to either. Mary Everly was clearly a lady who meant what she said, and once she’d said it, wouldn’t be moved.
‘Can you tell me where you were when you first became aware that the shed was on fire?’ Trudy asked, taking control of the interview once again.
‘I was … Yes, I was talking to one of Matthew’s children, I think. The eldest, Benny. I was being pestered to provide him with some sparklers, which of course, I didn’t have. I heard someone shout something like, “look out – the shed’s going up in flames” or something along those lines. I turned to look, and sure enough, I saw the shed was on fire. I just remember feeling very annoyed, more than anything else,’ Mary shrugged. ‘I had remarked earlier on how unwise it was to have a big bonfire alight when there was such a high wind. And to be proved right so quickly … but of course, at that point I had no idea that Thomas was inside.’ Her voice became a little hushed now with remembered horror. ‘It wasn’t until we realised that he didn’t seem to be present amongst us, and we couldn’t find him that we began to wonder … and by then, of course, it was too late. Somebody – not Godfrey, but either Matthew or Kenneth I think – tried to get closer to the shed door, but the heat was too much.’
Her voice subsided with a harsh sigh. ‘In spite of all his faults, I’m rather sorry my brother’s dead,’ Mary Everly said then.
She sounded, Trudy thought, slightly surprised by her own words.