by Faith Martin
Duncan shrugged. ‘You may scoff, but how do you know that he didn’t?’ he challenged. ‘The whole shed went up in flames very quickly, didn’t it? He might have scattered some of that paraffin around in order to help it. And say he had set up some kind of contraption – a heavy garden implement hanging by a rope, all set to swing at head-height when someone snagged a trip wire or what-have-you … well, all evidence of it would have gone up in flames, wouldn’t it? And if the fire investigators found bits of burnt rope and the remains of a sledgehammer or what have you – well, it was a garden shed. What would have been surprising about that?’
He watched her to see her reaction as he took a sip of tea. Of course, he had no idea if what he’d said was feasible. But then, so long as it got her thinking seriously about Kenneth Wilcox as a suspect, what did it really matter?
For a moment, Trudy thought it over. Of course, it all sounded a bit ‘Boy’s Own’ and Heath Robinson-ish to her. But could it have happened that way? She and Clement had always assumed that if Thomas Hughes had been murdered, then it had been very simple and straightforward. Namely, that someone had simply followed the man inside the shed when he or she was sure that nobody was looking and hit him over the head, then set fire to the shed.
But what if some kind of booby trap had already been set in place? It was just possible, wasn’t it? Everyone who’d attended the last few bonfire parties at the Headington house would have known that it would be Thomas who always ‘did’ the firework display. And a booby trap would give the killer an alibi – and might account for the fact that nobody was admitting to seeing anyone go into the shed, other than the dead man.
Then she remembered that Alice Wilcox had been in the shed shortly before her father. So if there was a trap, surely she’d have set it off? Unless she was the one who’d set it? But would a woman have the know-how to do something like that?
Then she frowned. ‘I don’t know. It all sounds a bit complicated and far-fetched to me,’ she grumbled.
Duncan shrugged casually. ‘Oh, I’m not saying that it did happen that way for sure. Only that’s it’s a possibility, and that Kenneth Wilcox would have been in an ideal position to do it. What’s more, everyone I’ve spoken to says that he couldn’t stand his father-in-law.’
Trudy made a few notes, then glanced up at him quickly. ‘Of course, any one in that family could have done the same. His sons visited the house – and garden – regularly. They must have been inside the shed at some point.’
‘Even the awful Godfrey?’ Duncan grinned. ‘Yes, I know. But none of the others are quite as nasty a bit of work as our Kenneth.’
Trudy nodded slowly. ‘That’s the second time you’ve said something along those lines. Care to elaborate, Mr Gillingham?’
‘Duncan!’
‘Mr Gillingham,’ Trudy said implacably. ‘What do you have against Mr Wilcox exactly?’
But Duncan was too wily to lay it all out for her. She might start to look the gift horse in the mouth. Besides, unless he was much mistaken, Trudy Loveday was the kind of girl who liked to make her own mind up about things.
So instead he smiled widely. ‘Ah, now that you’ll have to wait to read all about in some future edition of the Tribune, WPC Loveday,’ he teased. And, as she was about to open her mouth to protest, cajoled charmingly, ‘Oh come on, you can’t be so hard-hearted as to deny a reporter his scoop, can you?’
‘Withholding evidence in a police investigation is a crime, need I remind you?’ Trudy said, feeling genuinely angry for the first time. As if sensing this, Duncan quickly backed off.
‘All right, all right. It’s just that I’ve learned some very nasty facts about Kenneth that would turn your stomach. Unfortunately, they don’t relate – directly anyway – to his father-in-law’s death. On that subject, I swear that I don’t have any evidence per se,’ he said hastily. ‘And you can hardly say I’m withholding anything from you, can you?’ he added with another smile. ‘Look, here I am with you, telling you everything,’ he said, holding his arms out in a generous gesture.
‘Hardly everything,’ Trudy corrected him, trying not to grin back at him. ‘What exactly do you have against Mr Wilcox?’ she persisted.
‘Nothing that I can take to a court of law. Well, not yet,’ he added wryly. ‘But let’s just say, from what I’ve been finding out about him, he’s definitely a wrong ‘un. And I’m just saying – you won’t be disappointed if you dig into his background a bit more. And Thomas Hughes, say what you like about him, was nobody’s fool, and since the two of them lived in the same house, you can be pretty sure that the old man must have had a fair idea of what kind of a man his son-in-law was. And I doubt he was the kind of man to put up with it for long. Who knows – perhaps he’d threatened to toss him out of the family on his ear and Kenneth took exception.’
‘And that’s it?’ Trudy said in disgust. ‘That’s all you dragged me here to say?’
Duncan grinned. ‘Is that what I did? Dragged you here?’ He glanced around the pleasant and warm café and grimaced. ‘Well, what an utter rotter I am. Let me buy you a cake to make up for it.’
Trudy felt her lips twitch and quickly looked away. But Duncan had noticed it, and now that he’d planted the seed of Kenneth’s villainy successfully in her head, felt that he could afford to relax and play a bit.
‘If you’re really nice to me, I might even stretch so far as to make that a cream cake?’ he said with a mock-leer.
Chapter 25
‘I think we should talk to Kenneth Wilcox again,’ Trudy said casually the next morning. She was in the coroner’s office, waiting for him to finish writing up some notes. For once it wasn’t raining, and as she stared out of the window, she wondered what she could get her mother for Christmas.
Her father was always easy to buy for – a pot of his favourite Brylcreem and some warm socks.
Perhaps she could find some of her mother’s favourite Pears soap …
‘Why Wilcox?’ Clement’s voice interrupted her mental shopping, and she shrugged nonchalantly.
Taking a deep breath, she finally told him about meeting Duncan – making no mention of the tea and cream cake – and was off-hand and casual as she relayed the gist of their talk.
‘He seemed sure that Kenneth was someone of interest, so I thought we might as well do a follow-up interview and see if anything comes of it,’ she concluded. ‘Why, did you have something else in mind?’
Clement, not sure that he liked her casual tone of voice, looked at her over his paperwork, but merely smiled and shrugged when she finally looked at him. ‘Sure, why not?’ he said.
But as they collected their coats and headed outside, he wondered why she hadn’t told him about meeting up with this reporter chap before. And more especially, why she’d hadn’t asked for his company at their cosy teatime chat.
Always before, they’d discussed every aspect of their cases, and had mutually agreed on how to proceed, and he was not sure that he liked being kept out of the loop in this way. He was going to have to make it clear, as tactfully as possible, that it wasn’t a good idea for her to keep things from him.
As they drove towards Kenneth Wilcox’s shop, Clement’s mind went back uneasily to his talk with Sir Basil. Obviously, the man had been biased and prejudiced against his least favourite reporter, but then Clement wasn’t sure that any man would be deemed good enough for Sir Basil’s only child. And as a father himself, he knew how protective he was when it came to his own daughter’s wellbeing and happiness. So, when the newspaper owner had been going on about Duncan Gillingham’s many faults, he’d listened, but had tended to take it all with a pinch of salt.
Now, though, he began to wonder. Sir Basil had been convinced that the man didn’t care tuppence for his fiancée, and was only marrying her in order to gain all the advantages that came with being the boss’s son-in-law. By his account, Gillingham had not only deliberately set out to seduce his daughter, but was both smarmy and manipulative and generally a
n underhanded, sly, untrustworthy dog.
When he’d finally walked away from his lunch with the still fuming newspaper man, Clement had felt both sympathetic and amused in equal measure. He’d felt genuinely sorry that the man was so unhappy, but he also couldn’t help but feel as if Sir Basil’s woes were more imagined than real.
Now though, he was beginning to feel uncomfortably as if his cavalier reaction to Sir Basil’s troubles might be coming back to bite him. It seemed possible that Trudy too might have fallen for Gillingham’s dubious but charming ways, and he wasn’t feeling anything like so sanguine.
Of course, it was possible that he was worrying for nothing. As he negotiated Cowley’s streets, he cast her a quick but comprehensive glance. She was looking innocently out at the streets, but hadn’t yet said a word.
‘So, how did you come to meet up with the reporter?’ he asked. ‘Did he phone the station?’
Trudy, taken by surprise by the question, found herself blurting out ‘Yes, that’s right,’ before she’d even stopped to think. And the moment the lie was out of her mouth, she found herself regretting it.
What made her even angrier with herself was the fact that she couldn’t understand why she’d done it. After all, what was wrong with simply telling Clement the truth? That Duncan had met her at the bus stop …
Suddenly, her thoughts came to a crashing halt, as for the first time, she began to think, really think, about that first meeting. She knew what she’d been doing at the bus stop … but why had he been there? It seemed too much of a coincidence to suppose he’d just run into her. Besides, he’d already known who she was.
At this realisation, she gave a little internal grimace at this evidence of her naivety. Of course he’d known who she was – he was hot on the trail of investigating a story, after all. Probably one of the first things he’d have made a priority was to find out which police officer was looking into Hughes’s case, and then … what … staked out the police station? Lain in wait for her …
She let her breath out slowly, feeling more and more of a fool.
Of course he’d waited for her to appear and then followed her, and when she’d stopped at the bus stop, he’d made his move. And she, gullible twit that she was, hadn’t questioned any of it, even agreeing to meet him at a café later to talk some more.
‘I’m surprised that he got past the switchboard, or the officer on duty,’ Clement said mildly, jarring her already jolted equilibrium even further. ‘Surely DI Jennings doesn’t approve of his officers fraternising with the press. Well, at least without his approval?’
Trudy felt herself go cold as she realised that Dr Ryder, as quick and intelligent as he was, already suspected that she had been lying to him. The thought made her feel slightly sick.
And now how was she supposed to get herself out of this mess? Because he was right – normally, reporters on the scrounge for news were given short shrift by the police station’s personnel.
So did she compound the lie by saying that he’d just got lucky, and been put through to her? Or did she come clean?
As the silence lengthened, she felt more and more awkward. How could she confess to Dr Clement Ryder of all people, that she had wanted to meet a witness on her own because … well, admit it, she told herself grimly, because she rather fancied him!
It was pathetic. And it would make her sound so … silly. And Dr Ryder was always so competent and able and superior.
She shifted in her seat and wriggled internally, but in the end she knew she’d just have to bite the bullet. ‘He didn’t ring the station, you’re right. He came up to me whilst I was waiting at a bus stop and told me he had some information on the Hughes case. So I agreed to meet him to discuss it.’
Her voice came out clipped and cool, but she knew her face was flaming with shame and anger. Just wait until she saw Mr Duncan Gillingham again. She was going to give him what for! Making a fool of her, tricking her …
‘Sounds as if he wants to be able to quote you as his police source,’ Clement said mildly. But although he was careful to keep his voice light, inside he felt a hard knot of anger forming in his stomach. ‘You need to be careful about that,’ he added the warning even more emotionlessly.
She was obviously hiding something, and her high colour was a tell-tale sign of strong emotion. He thought she was mostly embarrassed and angry, and hoped that was all. But clearly Sir Basil had been right to suspect his soon-to-be son-in-law’s character, if he could persuade Trudy Loveday to forget her police training.
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Trudy said grimly. ‘I made it clear that I wasn’t going to be giving him any information about an on-going investigation. And I didn’t,’ she added truthfully and with intense satisfaction. It felt wonderful to be able to say something in mitigation.
‘Good for you,’ Clement said genially. But his lips were grim as he began to look around for a parking space. From now on, he was going to be keeping a weather eye out for Mr Duncan Gillingham.
Because if that young man thought he could take advantage of his young friend, he was soon going to learn differently – and in no uncertain terms.
Chapter 26
If it was true that your ears burned whenever someone was talking about you, then that morning, Duncan Gillingham’s ears should have been on fire. Instead, he awoke late, had a late breakfast, and then drove his Moggy Minor leisurely to his parent’s house at the back end of Holywell, all without feeling any discomfort whatsoever.
Being a reporter meant that he didn’t always have to show up at the office on the dot of nine, or put in a regular working day and leave on the dot of five. Right now, if his editor should ask, he was following up a lead to his story. And in a way, he thought grimly, as he pulled up outside his parent’s little pre-fab, that was what he was doing. More or less.
He sighed as he got out of his rather rusty and down-at-heel car and looked down the narrow little road of look-a-like prefabs where he’d grown up. Erected in the building boom just after the war, when the soldiers returning from the battlefields needed somewhere to live – and fast – he could just about remember his mum and dad being so excited to get their new house. Everyone had been so pleased with their little terraces and rows of semi-detached constructions, and the neighbourhood had always basked in working-class pride.
Even now, brass door furniture sparkled with well-polished buffing, front steps were scrupulously scrubbed, and the front gardens were all neatly clipped and scrupulously maintained. No paint was allowed to peel here on window frames, or weeds to grow up through the pavements.
But it still depressed him every time he came ‘home’. And in the glowering November cold, the sight of the cramped, unlovely street made him shiver all the more.
As a young man, he couldn’t wait to move out and get away from here. When he’d landed his first job he’d scrimped and saved every penny, finally saving enough to buy the narrowboat where he now lived. His parents were so proud of it because it was his outright, making him the first of the family not to live in rented accommodation.
Now his life felt a million miles from here. True, Jericho, the part of the Oxford canal where he was moored, was hardly a salubrious area itself, but then it was only the first stepping stone in his life plan.
He saw the lace curtain twitch in the front room of his parents’ house, and knew that his arrival had been noted. It was not surprising – he was still one of only a handful of people who came from here who could afford to own and run a car.
He quickly walked up the neat garden path, guarded by two rows of trimmed privet hedges, and then his mother was opening the front door, beaming a smile of welcome at him. ‘Hello love! What a nice surprise.’ He got his colouring from her, although her once raven-black hair was now grey.
‘Hello Mum,’ he said briefly, pausing to brush her cheek with a kiss as he stepped past her into the hall. ‘Dad at work?’
‘Where else would he be?’ Sandra Gillingham asked primly.
Duncan smiled amiably. His father, Gordon, had always been a ‘good provider’ for himself and his sister Lily, and in his mother’s eyes, there was no higher praise than that.
‘Is Lily in?’ he asked mildly. ‘I wanted to ask her if she wanted to go to the pictures tonight. I think there’s a Doris Day feature on that she wanted to see.’
‘Oh, I’m sure she’ll like that. Yes, she’s upstairs. She doesn’t start work until lunchtime today. Go on up, I dare say she heard you arrive.’
Duncan again brushed her cheek then charged up the stairs, taking them two at a time, as he’d done as a teenager. The family called it ‘gallumping’ about, and he knew his mother would be smiling and shaking her head behind him.
However, once on the landing, he became still for a moment, then walked more quietly to his sister’s room and tapped on it. ‘Lil, you in?’ he called softly through the door.
A moment later, the door was pulled open, and his little sister was staring up at him. Lily, at twenty-two, had blossomed from a rather gawky teenager, into a rare beauty. She had the same ‘black Irish’ colouring as himself, only her eyes were more blue than his own green. She was wearing a long, shapeless winter woollen dress and house slippers, but no amount of camouflage could hide the attractive shape of her figure or distract from her flawless complexion.
‘Hello, I thought I heard the car,’ she said flatly, holding the door open to allow him in. Her bedroom was small, with one single bed, a dressing table and a single chair. He pulled the chair out and sat on it with the same force of habit that his sister used when she perched on the side of the bed.
As children, they’d often assumed the same pose, talking and amicably arguing. Perhaps because there had only been the two of them (for some reason, the Gillinghams hadn’t had a large family, unlike most of their neighbours) the two of them had been relatively close. There’d certainly been none of the sibling rivalry that plagued quite a number of his school friends.
