Trudy saw him the moment she walked into the café. He had changed his suit since she’d met him at the bus stop that morning, and she couldn’t help but wonder if he’d gone back to his home to change into a nicer suit in order to impress her.
Then, more pragmatically, she told herself he’d probably had to interview someone prominent earlier that afternoon and his editor had told him to make himself look very smart and presentable.
As she approached, she saw the moment he noticed her, and watched his face light up. She wouldn’t have been human if she hadn’t felt pleased at the unspoken compliment, and for a moment, her breath fluttered in her throat. Then she was smiling politely at him, and heard herself say coolly, ‘Mr Gillingham, thank you for waiting.’
‘You’re not late,’ Duncan said at once, half-rising politely from his seat, as she drew out one of the chairs in front of her.
The café was almost empty, with the lunch hour crowd long departed, and the afternoon tea brigade not yet in evidence, but the few customers who were there, Duncan noticed with a hidden smile, were covertly watching her. He didn’t find it in the least surprising – the combination of an attractive young woman, wearing a police officer’s uniform, was bound to bring her attention, no matter where she went.
To his intense gratification, Trudy swept off her cap, revealing a mass of curly near-black hair, which had been twisted into a becoming chignon atop her head. A few strands had escaped their confines during the day, and now lay curling over her forehead, and creeping out to caress her cheek. He had to resist the urge to reach out and push one back from just below her ear.
She did not, however, take off her jacket. Perhaps too much informality wasn’t to be expected on their first meeting.
And Duncan was going to do everything he could to make damned sure that this was only their first meeting.
‘So, thanks for meeting me,’ he began, glancing up as the waitress approached. She was slightly older than Trudy, a pretty girl with blonde hair and big brown eyes, and Trudy noticed the way that she smiled at him as she came up to his side.
‘Let me treat you to afternoon tea,’ Duncan said to Trudy, who smiled briefly but shook her head.
‘Just a cup of tea for me please,’ she said firmly to the waitress, who barely glanced at her. Even though she didn’t think finger sandwiches and dainty cakes counted as offering a bribe, it had been drummed into her at training college that a police officer always had to be careful about accepting any kind of ‘gift’ from the public, witnesses and especially suspects. Although, of course, the reporter could hardly be said to fall into the latter category, Trudy thought gratefully.
‘And for the gentleman?’ the waitress prompted, her smile widening ever further as Duncan looked up at her.
‘Oh, the same for me too, thanks.’ He gave her a determinedly vague smile. He had noticed that the WPC hadn’t failed to register the blonde girl’s obvious interest in him, and he wanted to make sure that Trudy Loveday knew that it wasn’t reciprocal.
The waitress left with obvious reluctance, and Trudy was careful to keep her face bland as she glanced across the table.
His black hair gleamed in the light from the streetlamp outside the window, and she thought again how attractive he was. A bit like Cary Grant, but darker, and with a hint of danger about him. Perhaps it was his unusual green eyes.
‘So, Mr Gillingham …’ she began crisply, telling herself that she was going to keep this all strictly professional, but before she could even begin, he grinned at her and interrupted.
‘Oh please, call me Duncan,’ he said. ‘I hope we’re going to get to know one another a bit over this Hughes story, and it seems so formal to go on calling each other Mr this and Constable that, don’t you think?’
His smile was so winning, and he was so obviously sure of his charm, that Trudy couldn’t stop herself from shooting back coolly, ‘No, I don’t think, Mr Gillingham.’ She reached into her satchel for her notebook and ostentatiously turned to a fresh page.
When she looked at him again, he was grinning, trying to look abashed, and failing. ‘Sorry, but I do I really have to keep calling you Constable Loveday?’
‘Yes, Mr Gillingham, you do,’ Trudy said, resisting the urge to grin back at him. ‘This is official police business.’
‘And what if it wasn’t? Could I call you by your first name then? By the way, what is it?’ he cajoled cheekily.
Trudy, who never used her full name, (what her parents were thinking of, naming her after her Aunt Gertrude she had no idea!) sighed patiently. ‘This morning you said you had some information about the death of Mr Thomas Hughes.’ She tapped her notebook tellingly with a biro pen.
When she’d been at school, she, like all her classmates, had learned to write with an old-fashioned nib and a bottle of ink, and she was forever thankful to Mr Biro for his wonderful invention. Even so, some of her older colleagues still only used pencils whenever they could, and regarded the ‘new-fangled’ biro pens with suspicion.
‘From the stories you’ve been writing for your newspaper in the last few days, you’ve been hinting about Mr Hughes’s death not being an accident,’ Trudy swept on. ‘Do you care to tell me why you think that there was something untoward happening at the bonfire party that night? I take it you attended the coroner’s inquest?’
‘I did,’ he assured her. ‘And duly listened and made note of the man’s nearest and dearest trotting out the family line,’ Duncan added, eyes twinkling. She really did look lovely when she was being all severe and constabulary. But a slight flush on her cheeks and the quickness of her breathing told him that WPC Loveday was not as coolly indifferent to him as she would have him believe.
‘You think they were lying?’ she asked sharply, and all at once she really was all business. Which told him that, pretty as a picture though she might be, this lady also had ambition – and would be no pushover.
Duncan sighed a little, and hastily reminded himself where his true priorities lay. It was all very well flirting with the unexpectedly delightful police officer in charge of the case, but he had to remember that he needed to lead this particular horse to water – and make her drink it.
‘Oh, maybe not lying, exactly,’ he said casually, preparing the ground carefully, ‘but let’s just say, they were not exactly falling over themselves to be perfectly truthful either.’
Trudy continued to tap her notebook with her pen. ‘In what way, exactly, Mr Gillingham?’ she asked with exaggerated patience.
‘You know, by now of course, about the old man’s dodgy business ventures?’ he began cautiously. He needed to lay the groundwork before he started to steer her in the right direction, and it wouldn’t do to let her know that she was being manipulated.
‘I’ve done my research, Mr Gillingham. None of Mr Hughes’s financial affairs were illegal,’ she shot back crisply, confirming his opinion that WPC Loveday had her wits about her.
‘No, but a lot of people lost a lot of money because of him. And you’ll have noticed that he never invested any of his own pennies when it came to the more risky schemes? It’s no wonder he made a fortune.’
‘If that’s all you have …’ Trudy began to make getting-ready-to-leave gestures, and Duncan laughed, holding his hands out in an appeasing gesture.
‘All right, all right, obviously that’s not all.’
Trudy sighed elaborately and leaned back in her chair, looking cross and bored, but the truth was she was enjoying herself enormously.
Just then, the waitress returned with the tray and took her time setting out the teapot, milk jug, sugar bowl, and cups and saucers. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing else you’d like, sir?’ she asked coyly.
Duncan again smiled vaguely at her but shook his head, and with a small sigh, she slipped away.
‘So what else do you have to go on?’ Trudy pressed.
‘You know the man’s youngest daughter hated him, don’t you? Caroline Hughes. She blamed him for her mother’s death.’
Trudy gave nothing away, but it was obvious this man had done a lot of digging and had unearthed a lot of the Hughes family secrets in the process. Was it possible he’d discovered something that she and Clement had, so far, missed?
‘And that he made his older daughter, Alice’s life, hardly worth living?’ Duncan went on. ‘I’ve spoken to the Wilcoxes’ daily woman and the old part-time gardener who both say the old man treated her like a slave. Even reduced her to tears sometimes.’
Duncan took a sip of his tea, watching her closely for any reaction. Annoyingly, though, he couldn’t tell if she was impressed or not.
Trudy continued to say nothing. She hadn’t known about the latter, but when she took a moment to think about it, it didn’t exactly surprise her. From all that she’d learned about the dead man, he’d been selfish and uncaring about his treatment of those supposedly nearest and dearest to him for all his life.
‘And did you know that his eldest son only received a measly pension in the old man’s will?’ Duncan pressed on, his twinkling green eyes daring her to deny any of it.
Trudy, who in spite of herself, was becoming more and more impressed by the depth of the man’s knowledge, wondered grimly who he had charmed in the solicitor’s office to get such information. Probably one of the partners’ secretaries no doubt, she thought sourly.
‘So it’s not as if there weren’t a lot of people glad to see the back of him, Constable,’ Duncan insisted. ‘Surely, by now, you’ve gathered some evidence that the blow he took to his head wasn’t the result of any exploding firework? I mean, you have to ask yourself, how likely is it that one of them knocked him out? Would a rocket really have the heft behind it to knock a man clean out? Wasn’t it mentioned at the inquest that he might have hit his head on a wooden shelf? It’s not such a leap, is it, to say that he was hit over the head by something wooden? Otherwise, any grown man should have been able to crawl out of that shed when it caught fire unless he’d already been seriously incapacitated, surely?’
Trudy blinked. ‘Mr Gillingham, I do hope you haven’t asked me here to try and pump me for information?’ she said indignantly. ‘Because if you have, I can tell you now that you’re wasting your time. If, or when, the police force has any information it wants to share with the press, our—’
‘All right, all right, pax,’ Duncan grinned. ‘And as if I’d dare try and grill you, WPC Loveday!’
Trudy reached for the sugar bowl and added two lumps to her steaming cup of tea and slowly stirred it in. ‘Do you actually have anything relevant to tell me, Mr Gillingham, or are you just wasting my time? You do know it’s an offence to waste police time, I take it?’ she added with a slight smile.
‘Are you going to arrest me, Officer?’
‘Don’t tempt me!’ Trudy shot back, and for a moment Duncan felt a distinct stirring in his loins at the thought of this woman slipping the handcuffs on him. Then he laughed and dragged his mind back to the matter in hand.
‘All right – straight up this time,’ he said, leaning forward a little in his chair, and casting a quick glance around. ‘Have you cottoned on yet to what a truly nasty piece of work Mr Kenneth Wilcox is?’ he asked, his voice deadly serious now.
Trudy felt her chest tighten slightly. ‘Go on,’ she said cautiously.
She wasn’t a fool, and she knew that when a journalist invited you to a café, you could bet all the doughnuts on the menu that they would try and get something from you that they could quote in one of their stories. And she’d made a promise to herself that she would give this handsome young man not even a crumb that he could put in print and attribute to a ‘source within the police force’.
But she was now very aware that if Duncan had discovered something of real importance, then she needed to get that information out of him – and to do so without resorting to quid pro quo.
She felt herself tensing as she realised that she was going to have to be very careful now – not by so much as by a look or a gesture must she give away that she had no idea what he was getting at.
‘Mr Kenneth Wilcox – husband of Alice, and prime mover and shaker around the bonfire that night,’ Duncan said drolly, careful to keep his voice light and neutral. ‘Of all the people there that night, who would have known the contents of the shed better than him? What’s more, he would have had ample time before the family members started to arrive to make a good reconnaissance of that garden shed. And who knows what he might have done whilst he was in there?’
Trudy allowed herself to smile sceptically. ‘Like what? Set up a booby trap for his father-in-law?’
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.