Mortimer sighed ostentatiously and rapidly shot off a few names. Trudy wished she had her notebook with her and could jot them down, but she was sure she could remember them.
‘But I don’t know if any of them ever did get her to model for them, you understand,’ Mortimer warned.
‘So who do you suppose did supply her with her baubles?’ Clement asked out of nowhere. ‘You said you weren’t in the market for a mistress, but we know that Iris had been given a rather fine pearl and gold necklace, amongst other things.’
‘Oh, right. How on earth should I know?’ he asked indifferently, beginning to sound bored.
Clement nodded. ‘Of course, the death of Iris wasn’t the only tragedy the village has had to cope with, is it?’
‘What?’ For a moment, the art-lover looked genuinely bewildered, but then his face cleared. ‘Oh, you mean the boyfriend – the one who hanged himself? No, that was rough. Poor little sod. Fancy dying when you’re not even twenty-one yet. Or had he got that far?’ he asked nonchalantly.
‘Did you know David Finch?’ Clement asked shortly.
‘What, a policeman’s son?’ Mortimer said, mock-scandalised. ‘No, not well,’ he added more gruffly, when neither of them responded to his wide grin. ‘I mean we’d spoken once or twice, but since he’d mostly got the wrong end of the stick about me and Iris, we didn’t exactly get the chance to become best buddies.’
‘Oh?’ Clement almost felt Trudy begin to quiver alertly, and only hoped his own interest wasn’t so obvious. Like his young friend, Clement didn’t like this man much, and wasn’t in any rush to make life easier for him. ‘How did he get the wrong end of the stick exactly?’
But if he’d hoped to penetrate their host’s determined bonhomie, or even disconcert him a little, he was to be disappointed, for Mortimer merely shrugged.
‘Oh, he’d been listening to the gossip I suppose,’ he yawned widely and settled himself more comfortably on the sofa. ‘Seemed to have some sort of a bee in his bonnet that I’d been giving her fancy ideas, promising her a new life in London, or some such rubbish. Turning her head, and generally interfering with his precious courtship of her.’ Mortimer laughed. ‘Naturally, I soon put him right. Told him flat out she’d been too young and silly for me.’
‘And did he believe you?’ Clement asked sceptically.
Mortimer’s pale eyes (pale blue, Trudy noted, now that she could see them properly) narrowed slightly. He obviously didn’t appreciate the older man’s patent disbelief, but then he was once again flashing his big white teeth.
‘Not at first, you’re right,’ he admitted affably enough. ‘But eventually I was able to convince him that girls like Iris are far more trouble to me than they’re worth, and he got the idea. In the end he went off quite happily, I think. Mind you, not before jotting down something in that ridiculous little journal of his though.’
Chapter 20
Seemingly totally unaware of the bombshell that he’d just dropped, Mortimer yawned again. ‘I think I was meant to consider myself “warned”. That my words were being noted!’ He gave the last word a dramatic twist. ‘Naturally, I couldn’t care less how I came across in his grubby little diary or whatever it was.’
He stretched luxuriously. ‘Why is it that people seem to think you care a tinker’s cuss about their lives?’
‘What journal?’ Clement said.
‘Hmmm? Sorry, what was that? I didn’t get much sleep last night.’
Clement held onto his temper and repeated cordially, ‘You said he wrote something down in his journal or diary or something?’
‘Yes, he did. He didn’t think I’d seen him, but after he walked away I watched him for a bit, just curious I suppose, and he stopped and pulled what looked like a small notebook or pocket diary – you know the kind, one of those black or brown leather things? – out of his pocket and jotted something down.’
‘Did it make you feel uneasy? It sounds as if he thought you were a person of interest, or had said something important. Did that worry you?’ Trudy couldn’t help but ask, earning herself a patronising smile in return.
‘Hardly! What do I care what people think of me?’ came the somewhat predictable response.
It was also, Trudy supposed, a rhetorical question.
‘And is that the only time you saw David Finch?’ Clement asked.
‘As far as I know,’ the other man responded, making no effort to hide his boredom now.
‘You never saw him on the day he died for instance?’ Clement probed.
‘Don’t think so,’ Mortimer said.
‘Not out of the window, perhaps. Going by? Maybe on his way out of the village, towards the farm track that leads to the place he died?’
‘I doubt I was paying that much attention. The comings and goings of the village don’t really interest me that much.’
‘Yet you own some real estate here. You have this place.’ Clement swept a hand around the room, indicating the house and environs beyond.
‘Oh well, sometimes I like a bit of peace and quiet,’ Mortimer smiled widely.
Clement hid another rush of temper with a smile. More likely, he thought sourly, this man liked to indulge himself in a quiet village where he didn’t have the eyes and the ears of the city watching him. It made Clement wonder just what sort of parties he liked to throw out here, in Middle Fenton. And whether or not a pretty girl like Iris Carmody had been drawn to them and welcomed with open arms, despite his denials that she’d ever been invited?
‘What sort of things do you think he might have wanted to note down?’ Clement, determined to keep his mind focused on the job in hand, went back on the attack. ‘David Finch, I mean? I doubt that he was interested in simply jotting down your denials about having designs on his girlfriend. That, after
