Sensing the extent of her opponent’s sudden vulnerability, Phyllis wasted no time in going for the coup de grâce. ‘He really was a stinker,’ she informed Millie, her voice almost sad. ‘He had no morals at all. You know,’ she added mildly, ‘I really wouldn’t have put it past him to have actually gone ahead and married you, knowing it would be bigamous. I really wouldn’t.’

Again she sighed elaborately. ‘He was just a con man really. Came from dirt too – I hope you didn’t let that middle-class accent of his fool you. But he did scrub up well, didn’t he? You had to give him that,’ she mused.

‘Yet, I do so wonder what all your friends will think when they find out,’ she added softly. ‘Don’t you?’

Chapter 26

The moment Trudy walked into the office bright and early the next morning, she knew she was in trouble. The oldest PC at the station, Walter Swinburne, shot her a sympathetic look and gave a quick shake of his head in warning. In a matter of seconds, the door to DI Jennings’s office was jerked open, and the man himself stood in the doorway, glowering at her.

She heard Rodney Broadbent snicker from somewhere near his desk, and her heart fell to her boots.

‘Loveday, in here!’ the inspector barked.

Trudy swallowed hard and, on legs that felt a little leaden, followed her superior officer into his lair, and shut the door firmly behind her. Whenever the inspector failed to use a person’s rank when bellowing at them, referring to them only by their surname, they knew they were well and truly in the doghouse.

As expected, he went straight to his desk, sat down in his chair and reached for a piece of paper that, it wasn’t hard to guess, contained the results of the toxicology reports.

‘What’s the meaning of this?’ he bellowed. ‘And why am I only finding out about it now?’

‘Sir,’ Trudy said stiffly, standing at attention in front of his desk. ‘Dr Ryder informed me only yesterday,’ she explained earnestly, ‘that he’d asked a friend of his in pathology to expedite a report on Mr Parker’s blood toxicology. When he handed that to me, I came to your office the moment I had it, but you were out. I left it on your desk. I tried again late last night to inform you of it, but again your office was empty.’

Jennings fumed in silence for a moment. He and she both knew that he’d barely been in the office. The ongoing staff shortages meant that he’d had – unusually – to take on much more of the hands-on stuff himself than normal, leaving him little time for doing admin at the station. But just because he had no real comeback to her reasonable explanation, didn’t mean she was anywhere near off the hook.