‘Then by following his tracks, we might find out who killed her too?’ Trudy put in eagerly.
‘Well yes, there’s that,’ Clement agreed, turning the car keys thoughtfully in his hand, relieved to find he could manipulate them quite well now. ‘But we’re not actually supposed to be investigating Iris’s death, are we? Didn’t your inspector make that very clear?’
Trudy bit her lip. ‘Yes. I mean …’ Her eyes shifted to him slyly. ‘But if we do happen to find out who killed Iris …’
Clement laughed outright. ‘You want to show your sergeant and Jennings what you can do?’ Well, that was understandable, he thought with a smile.
Trudy sighed again, but said nothing. He was right, of course. She was desperate to prove to her superiors that they shouldn’t leave her out of the big cases in future.
‘Well, we won’t accomplish anything sitting in the car,’ Clement said, leaning forward and so blocking her view of what he was doing. He got the key into the ignition on the second try, then leaned back in his seat again.
‘I think we should talk to this girl Janet Baines, don’t you?’ he murmured. ‘If David was trying to find Iris’s killer, he must have talked to her best friend. Even I know that girls tell things to other girls that they’d never confide in a month of Sundays to the chap they’re actually stepping out with.’
‘Good idea,’ Trudy agreed.
But after asking a young lad playing with a whip-and-top in the street the way to the Baines’ house, they found they were out of luck. Janet Baines wasn’t home.
But her mother was.
Chapter 14
The Baines’ house turned out to be a fairly large, detached house a little way down the lane leading from the village green. It had a colourful front garden, and an old man was busy working in it, tying up lupin plants. Clement suspected that Mrs Baines probably employed retired villagers to maintain both her house and gardens, which meant that she couldn’t be short of a bob or two.
Unlike Iris’s working-class background, her best friend came from a family a step or two up from her on the social ladder, and he suspected that had probably rankled.
‘Do we know anything about the family?’ Trudy asked him, as they opened the gate and walked up to the front door, watched curiously by the old man with green fingers.
‘I don’t. None of the Baines family were called as witnesses,’ he pointed out. ‘So they wouldn’t have been included in my files.’
Trudy didn’t like going in without prior information, but since they were severely hampered by the fact that their investigation was being conducted without official sanction, she had no choice. So she knocked on the door and hoped for the best.
The woman who answered the summons a few moments later was tall and thin, with shoulder-length brown hair and large brown eyes. She was not quite beautiful, and dressed in a twin-set the colour of peaches. She looked to be in her early forties. ‘Yes?’ she asked sharply, looking instantly at Clement.
‘Dr Ryder, city coroner. Mrs Baines, is it?’
‘Yes, I’m Angela Baines. I’m afraid I don’t understand …’ She trailed off politely, and Clement smiled his best, most soothing smile.
‘I resided over the David Finch inquest, and I’m just in the village doing some final tidying up of the case. I was hoping that I might speak to your daughter Janet.’
‘Janet? Why? She hardly knew David,’ Angela Finch said sharply, and Trudy gave a mental nod. Ronnie Dewberry was right – this was definitely a protective mother all right. She already looked ready to go into battle on her daughter’s behalf, and Trudy only hoped that Dr Ryder would be able to charm her around a bit, otherwise they’d quickly have the door slammed in their faces. She had already come to the conclusion that Mrs Finch regarded Trudy as beneath her notice. She probably regarded all young women around her daughter’s age as insignificant.
‘Oh, I’m sure that must be the case, Mrs Baines,’ Clement said smoothly. ‘I just wanted to ask her a few questions about Iris Carmody and whether or not David had asked her any questions about what had happened to Iris. It goes to state of mind, you know,’ he added as if confiding in her. In fact, what he’d just said was all but meaningless, but Trudy admired the psychology behind it. People were always flattered to think that they were being allowed access to confidential information of which their friends or neighbours were unaware.
At the mention of the dead May Queen, Angela’s face instantly tightened however. ‘Oh her. I see.’ She sniffed, then cast a quick, anxious glance up and down the street. ‘You’d better come in then, but Janet’s not here right now. Still, no point in giving the neighbours something else to wag their tongues over.’
And so saying, she stepped a shade reluctantly aside to let them pass. ‘Please, go on through to the end.’ She indicated a short, rather ill-lit corridor that led off the hall.
‘Is your husband home, Mrs Baines?’ Clement asked. No doubt he was hoping that if he was, he might be in a more talkative mood than his wife.
‘I’m a widow. Have been for some years now,’ Angela said briskly, following them down the corridor and then indicating a door off to the left. Clement, in the lead, obligingly opened the door, revealing an extremely tidy and clean room, done out in shades of magnolia and beige. There was a fairly new-looking three-piece suite done out in some knobbly material the colour of oatmeal, and a deep-pile carpet in a similar colour.
‘I’m sorry to hear that. If you’d rather have someone else here with you whilst we talk … a sister perhaps?’ Clement asked casually, making Trudy cast him a swift, slightly surprised look. She was
