Kenneth Wilcox looked surprised to find the WPC and coroner returning to his shop, but he hid his impatience well as he invited them into his office and asked them to sit down. His secretary, hovering uncertainly in the doorway, waited for instructions, but Kenneth was in no mood to offer them hospitality. If they wanted a cup of tea they could go to a café. He dismissed the pretty blonde girl with a simple nod and smile and then turned his attention to his unwanted visitors.
‘So, has anything new turned up in your investigations, Constable?’ he asked boldly. ‘Only I’m rather surprised to see you back again. I’d have thought your superiors would have been convinced by now that my father-in-law’s death was nothing more than an unfortunate accident.’
Trudy smiled blandly. ‘We were just wondering if you’d thought of anything else that we should know, sir. Very often, after a little while has passed, people remember things that had previously slipped their minds.’
Kenneth looked at her sceptically, and Trudy wondered why Duncan had warned her about him. On the face of it, he was an attractive, successful, middle-aged, happily married man. He had no criminal record, and so far, she’d found nobody who had a bad word to say about him.
Now that she was here, she was wondering if a certain reporter hadn’t been leading her up the garden path in more ways than one. It was more than possible that Duncan had given her bad information, although she couldn’t quite see what he’d have to gain from that.
Still, she might as well push Kenneth a bit and see what happened.
She led with, ‘I understand your father-in-law’s will has now been read, Mr Wilcox. I think I’m right in saying that your wife gets the house in Headington – but nothing more?’
Kenneth’s face went slightly tight, but he managed a nonchalant shrug. ‘We never expected any great legacy,’ he said flatly. ‘Thomas always did think that his daughters should be provided for by their husbands.’
‘So the fact that Matthew Hughes got so much, relatively speaking, and the rest of you almost nothing, doesn’t worry you?’
‘My son has a trust fund so his future’s sorted, that’s the main thing. And we have the house, as you say. Plus I have my own money – and plans for a new shop in town. All in all, I’m well content with my lot, I assure you.’
‘Did you like Thomas Hughes sir?’ she asked mildly. ‘Only we’ve been hearing, from various sources, that he was a bit of a trial to your wife. Treating her more as a servant than a daughter, it seems,’ she exaggerated a little. ‘It must have been a bit of a strain sir. Living with him, I mean.’
Kenneth’s eyes flickered slightly, but his vague smile remained firmly in place. ‘He was sometimes hard to live with, yes. But he was family. You put up with it, when it’s family, don’t you?’
He looked to Clement and gave a small man-to-man shrug.
And suddenly Trudy just knew that she was wasting her time. This man would not be baited into saying something unwise – and certainly not to her. She had the feeling that Mr Wilcox had women firmly filed away in certain categories, and that none of these categories included treating them as his equal.
She also felt as if Duncan, as annoying as he was, was on to something.
There was something about this man that she didn’t like. Something hard and calculating – something that belied his affable charms and ageing good looks.
‘Well, thank you Mr Wilcox, that’s all for now,’ she said, surprising both Clement and Kenneth alike. She stood up abruptly, and as the coroner stepped forward to shake the other man’s out-thrust hand, she turned away, pretending not to notice when Kenneth offered his hand to her.
They found the outer office empty, and as Trudy shut the door firmly behind her, she sighed. ‘I just don’t like that man,’ she said quietly, not wanting her voice to carry. ‘And much as I’m loath to admit it, I think Mr Gillingham might be right about him being a “wrong ‘un.” I just think we’re wasting our time tackling him head on though.’
‘I agree,’ Clement said, surprising her a little by agreeing so promptly. ‘Men like that never give themselves away. Too damned smart by half. Which is why it’s a good thing we have another option open to us.’
‘We do?’ Trudy said, baffled. ‘What’s that then?’
Clement grinned then nodded down at the empty desk beside them. Beside the typewriter and files, the telephone and a vase of rather wilted chrysanthemums, was one of those blocks of wood, with a metal nameplate attached. ‘We ask Miss Susan Royal. Has nobody told you, if you want to know everything there is to know about a man, you can either ask his wife, his valet or his secretary?’
Trudy grinned back. ‘Good idea! I wonder where she is? Perhaps she’d agree to let us take her out for a coffee break?’
Just then Miss Royal herself made an appearance. From the way she was patting her newly brushed hair and the pristine patina of her lipstick, Trudy guessed that she’d just come from the ladies’, after freshening herself up. She was only just out of her teens, Trudy judged, and froze like a rabbit caught in headlights as she saw them watching her with such concentration.
She almost gulped.
Then Clement put on his most avuncular smile and stepped towards her. ‘Ah, Miss Royal, just the young lady we were looking for,’ he reached out to the coat stand beside him, and before she knew what was happening, he was helping her into her woollen overcoat. ‘My companion and myself would like to take you out for coffee.’
‘Oh but …’ She cast a quick, helpless look at her boss’s closed door. ‘I don’t think …’
‘Oh, Mr Wilcox won’t mind,’ Clement lied smoothly. ‘Now, where’s the best coffee shop around these parts, hmm?’
Whilst Trudy and Clement set about learning all they could about her boss from Miss Royal, over at the Tribune’s office, Duncan Gillingham, his face set and cold, typed furiously on his Remington typewriter. He’d pause every now and then to think. Around him, his fellow scribes typed, smoked, typed, chatted, and typed some more, but most of them left him alone.
He had the look of a man who wouldn’t appreciate the latest joke or dirty talk surrounding someone’s less-than-faithful wife.
‘Police admit the Thomas Hughes case is far from closed.’ He contemplated without enthusiasm the headline he’d chosen (surely it needed more punch?) and then the few paragraphs he’d written so far. It was all good solid stuff, but if he was going to skew the focus of the piece from the death of the local bigwig, and turn the spotlight onto his son-in-law he was going to have to be careful.
Tonight, he’d ring up Trudy Loveday and see what progress she was making. And if she hadn’t unearthed any dirt on Wilcox yet, he’d be happy to help her out. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have plenty to spare, since Duncan had made it his mission to know all he could about the man.
Without mentioning Lily at all, he had enough on his private life to do the man’s reputation some serious damage. He just needed a legitimate forum from which to do it. And a murder case, reported in the press, was ideal. He just needed that final push …
With a grim smile he hunched over his typewriter, ramping up the innuendo and narrowing the spotlight from the family as a whole to just one individual. Or maybe, for form’s sake, it might be more prudent to chuck in another suspect as well? Say the other son, Godfrey? Yes, that would make sense. When he’d been doing his research into the family, he’d come across certain rumours that Godfrey had a rather smutty hobby, which his father might not have liked very much. But he mustn’t smear the dirt on Godfrey took thickly – it was vital that Wilcox took the brunt of it.
It really was true, Duncan mused, that the pen was mightier than the sword. A fact that Kenneth Wilcox was soon going to understand better than anyone.