A Fatal Truth

by Faith Martin

Sir Basil Fletcher glanced at his watch when Dr Clement Ryder walked into the hotel dining room where they’d arranged to meet, and saw that it was just gone noon. It was rather early to be thinking of eating lunch, but Sir Basil had another appointment at two o’clock, and he wasn’t the kind of man who liked to rush his meals. At fifty-six, his digestion wasn’t as good as it once was.

  But when one of the city’s coroners called him and asked to meet for a friendly chat, his newspaperman’s nose for a story had twitched irresistibly. Although he now owned several regional papers, and his days as a cub reporter working for someone else were long gone, he still felt excitement run through his veins whenever the possibility of a good story loomed on the horizon.

  True, he had perfectly good editors overseeing the day-to-day running of each of his papers, and they in turn had a whole flock of reporters and stringers to call upon to gather in the hot stories and report the latest scandals, but still. Every now and then he liked to dip his toe in the water, so to speak.

  He recognised Dr Ryder the moment he appeared in the doorway, of course, for his lunch guest was a man of some significance. First as a surgeon, and now as a coroner, he was a man of influence with powerful friends in high places in both town and gown. In a city like Oxford, Dr Ryder often dined at High Tables in various colleges. He also had the ear (reluctantly, or so it was rumoured) of the police.

  Naturally, over the last few years especially, the Tribune had reported on some of the inquests where this man had held sway. Known to be someone of high principles and with no tolerance whatsoever for suffering fools gladly – or suffering them in any other way, come to that – he was what Sir Basil recognised as definitely being a ‘character’. And thus he was someone that it didn’t pay to ignore.

  Tall, handsome, with a shock of white hair and impeccably dressed in a suit that screamed of the attentions of a tailor in Savile Row, Sir Basil wasn’t at all surprised when the head waiter himself deigned to leave his reservation podium and offer his services in person.

  Sir Basil was under no illusions that he himself could so effortlessly command a room. He had neither the looks nor that certain air that made head waiters notice him. Only the fact that he was well known here in his home city (and that he had acquired a title for services to journalism in the Honours List a decade ago) ensured that he could get the best table and the best efforts of the waiters.

  He watched in slightly disgruntled amusement as the head waiter (a terrible snob who went by the unlikely name of Cedric) escorted Clement to his table, and smiled a friendly acknowledgement as the coroner reached him.

  ‘Clement, nice to see you again,’ he said amiably. Oxford was too small a city for its prominent men not to cross paths fairly regularly. Especially when you were fellow Masons and members of the same golf club.

  ‘Basil, you’re looking well,’ Clement responded, just as amiably. For a while they were taken up with the usual ritual of choosing the wine (for help with which Cedric imperiously summoned over the wine waiter) and then perusing the menu and ordering the food, but eventually they were left alone to get down to business.

  Clement began cautiously. ‘So, how’s life treating you, Basil?’ he asked briskly.

  ‘Fine, can’t really complain,’ his companion said. A rather overweight man, with the florid complexion of someone who had either high blood pressure, or who was perhaps a little too appreciative of the finer things in life, Sir Basil’s small dark eyes twinkled with mischief as he watched his old acquaintance.

  Clement, perhaps sensing the other man’s amusement, let his own lips twist into a smile. So much for pleasantries, he thought ruefully. He should have known there was no point in employing subtlety when engaged with a man who had made his fortune selling newspapers.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about this Thomas Hughes story that you and your atrocious rag are busy pushing,’ he said jovially.

  Sir Basil, not one whit insulted (even he conceded the Oxford Tribune was rather a rag – but a very profitable rag), grinned widely. ‘I rather thought it might be. The inquest was one of yours, wasn’t it?’

  He knew that it was, of course, because the moment Dr Ryder had rung to ask him to meet up for lunch, he’d been racking his brains as to what the coroner might possibly want with him. And for a man as wily as Sir Basil, (who moreover flattered himself that he always had his finger firmly on the pulse of what was happening in society) that hadn’t taken long to figure out.

  ‘Yes – as I’m sure you’re aware,’ Clement said, with a matching grin. ‘Look here, Basil, let’s stop fencing about, shall we? You’re a man who makes his living out of knowing what’s what. Do you know – or does this reporter of yours, Gillingham – actually know something about the Thomas Hughes affair that the police don’t? Or is it just so much pie-in-the-sky made up to sell more papers to the gullible public?’

  Sir Basil sighed wearily.

  ‘I don’t personally know anything at all about it,’ the newspaper owner admitted cautiously. ‘But then, it’s been many a year since I sat down at a typewriter to personally knock out a story. So I don’t have the contacts I once had. I’m more of an overseer nowadays, than anything else. But I don’t think it’s much of a secret that, as a financier, our Mr Hughes sailed rather close to the wind a couple of times. I knew people – and I’m sure you did too – who got their fingers burned once or twice by unwisely investing in some of his more … shall we say, imaginative, schemes?’

  Clement nodded. He paused as the waiter bought their first course – farmhouse pâté for Sir Basil, and mulligatawny soup for himself. When they were once more alone, he said, ‘Yes, but the Tribune seems to be pointing the finger more at the immediate family. This reporter, Gillingham – I’m beginning to get the feeling that he’s on a bit of a crusade of some kind. One or two of his follow-up articles seem to have been written with the express purpose of upsetting the Hughes family.’

  Sir Basil ripped apart a slice of thick farmhouse loaf and set about studiously buttering it. Finally, smearing a large portion of pâté onto it, he eyed the comestible with vague disfavour, and put the piece down, uneaten, on his side-plate.

  Clement, who knew his companion usually had a very hearty appetite indeed, watched this procedure with some interest.

  ‘All right, just between you and me, Clement,’ Sir Basil said, glancing around uneasily at the still almost-deserted dining room, ‘can you assure me this will go no further?’

  Clement smiled, not at all missing the irony of having one of the county’s biggest purveyors of gossip asking him for secrecy and discretion. ‘I can assure you I won’t go spreading whatever you say across the front pages of your rivals,’ he promised dryly.

  ‘Touché!’ Sir Basil said with a grin. ‘Right. Well, the thing is, I don’t know what Gillingham’s up to, but I’m willing to let him have his head.’

  Clement nodded. ‘You trust his instincts then?’

  Sir Basil snorted inelegantly. ‘In a pig’s eye!’ he said, his already roseate face turning an even rosier shade of puce. ‘The little blister is a pain in my … proverbial. He’s cocky, clever and just riding to be taken down a peg or too. And I, for one, will be on the sidelines cheering.’

  Seeing Clement’s look of surprise at such vehemence, he gave a long sigh. ‘Sorry, sorry. But just the thought of that … that … mongrel makes my blood boil.’ The newspaperman reached for his glass and took a long gulp of wine, quaffing it like water. No doubt, such cavalier treatment of such a fine vintage would have made the wine waiter (and Cedric) cry, if they had witnessed it.

  ‘If you feel like that about it, I’m surprised you’re letting him have so much headline space,’ Clement said, patently fishing for more information.

  ‘Oh, of course, he’s a good reporter,’ Sir Basil reluctantly admitted. ‘Maybe one of our best, I suppose. And Bill Niven, my chief editor at the Tribune thinks so too, worse luck, and he’s a good man. I’d back his judgement any day of the week.’
Sir Basil paused to sigh heavily. ‘But just between the two of us, I’m hoping against hope that Mr Duncan Gillingham comes a cropper sooner or later. And preferably sooner. I suppose that’s why I’m willing to give him so much rope over this Hughes affair. With any luck, he’ll hang himself with it.’

  Clement absently swirled his soup with his spoon, whilst eyeing his companion thoughtfully. Poor old Basil certainly was in a funk about something, he mused. ‘Mind telling me why you want to see your own reporter make such a hash of things?’

  ‘Because the bugger’s all but engaged to my Glenda, that’s why!’ Sir Basil said grimly.

  ‘Ah,’ Clement said. Glenda, he knew, was Sir Basil’s only child and the apple of his eye. And as a father himself, he now understood completely what was troubling the other man. ‘I take it you don’t approve? His family not out of the top drawer, is that it? He picks his nose and doesn’t know his fish fork from his pickle spoon?’

  Sir Basil was forced to laugh. ‘I wish. No, snobbery’s got nothing to do with it,’ he admitted. ‘I just don’t trust the man, Clement, and that’s a fact. He’s too damned smooth, too damned good-looking, too damned clever. You know the sort?’

  Clement did. ‘Ambitious, is he?’ he asked succinctly.

  ‘Yes. And using my Glenda to climb the ladder,’ Sir Basil growled. ‘The trouble is, right now, she just can’t see it. She’s too caught up in first love – and you know how that can be,’ he added darkly.

  Clement smiled with real sympathy now. ‘Oh yes. I dare say he can do no wrong in her eyes.’

  ‘Exactly!’ Sir Basil huffed. ‘But I know the little toad doesn’t really love her. He just sees her as a way of getting his hands on what will one day be all hers. I’m just hoping and praying that she’ll see him in his true light before she goes and marries him. At least I’m going to insist on a long engagement.’

  So saying, Sir Basil drained his wine, then stared morosely into the empty glass.

  Clement sighed. Although he could sympathise with the man, listening to his woes wasn’t really what he was here for. ‘So, you don’t know if Gillingham has any real basis for his innuendo that Hughes’s accident might not have been so accidental?’ he pressed.

  ‘Hmm? Sorry, I’ve no idea what Gillingham knows, might have guessed or otherwise surmises,’ Sir Basil said, raising his eyes from his glass and reaching for the wine bottle to pour another.

  Clement, watching him, wondered if he’d started drinking earlier in the day.

  ‘But surely he’s told his editor what he’s working on?’ Clement wasn’t about to give up.

  Sir Basil again sighed as he poured his second glass of wine. ‘No, I’m afraid not. Like a lot of his kind, he’s a bit paranoid that if he gives too much away, he might get scooped. And how well I understand that! As a junior reporter myself once, I liked to play my cards close to my chest as well. Trust no one, that’s our motto! It gets to be a habit. But like I said, Bill rates him, so he’s willing to let him have his head for a while, and see what comes of it.’

  Sir Basil eyed his wine thoughtfully. ‘He’s certainly got his nose to the grindstone on this one, I’ll give him that. He’s obviously hot on digging up the dirt in that family. And much as I might like to think that he’ll over-reach himself one day and fall spectacularly flat on his face, thus giving Glenda second thoughts, I’m not exactly holding my breath. For all that I can’t stand the little swine, I have to admit he does have the nasty habit of being right. So he’s probably onto something about this Hughes affair. But what …?’ Sir Basil shrugged graphically.

  And with that, Clement had, perforce, to be content.

  Chapter 22

  ‘So we’re finally visiting the scene of the crime,’ Trudy said thoughtfully, as Clement’s ‘Auntie’ Rover laboriously climbed Headington Hill on their way towards the address where it had all begun. ‘If this had been a straightforward investigation, any police officer in charge would probably have visited the Wilcoxes’ home before doing anything else.’

  Not that looking at a pile of ashes could probably tell them much, she mused philosophically. And she had seen the photographs taken of the shed and the surrounding gardens just after the incident, when she’d gone through the coroner’s files at the outset of the case.

  Still, there was nothing better than seeing something with your own eyes.

  As they pulled up outside the nice, large, detached house, Trudy wondered at how ordinary it all looked. Both the Wilcox house and the neighbouring houses were set in a wide, tree-lined avenue. You’d hardly have believed that just a short while ago, the area would have been bathed in the flashing lights from police cars, an ambulance, and a fire engine.

  Now, fallen autumnal leaves blew around in little eddies as a cold and rising wind played with them, but on Bonfire Night, the wind had been much stronger.

  As she got out of the car, Trudy found herself automatically sniffing the air, but of course now – and given the damp weather they’d had – there was no residual scent of charred wood left in the air. In fact, because the fire’s location had been retained in the back garden, there were no visible scars of the tragedy at all.

  She’d only ever been at the scene of a house fire once so far in her career – a case of suspected arson, which had subsequently proved to be a case of faulty wiring. But she could still picture the blackened, charred shell of the family home where, luckily, no one had died, and the smell of acrid burning was something she’d never forget.

  Now she looked around the pleasant leafy avenue with interest. They were right on the outskirts of the Headington area here, which, due to its elevated position, boasted fine views of the surrounding countryside and of Oxford itself, laid out in all its splendour below. She wondered, idly, just how many spires there were (dreaming or not) but didn’t fancy actually counting them.

  ‘Nice area,’ Clement commented, as if reading her mind. He wouldn’t have minded living here himself.

  ‘Well, he was a rich man wasn’t he, our Mr Hughes?’ Trudy said pragmatically. ‘How do you think Mrs Wilcox took it when the will was read? Getting only the house, I mean, and a trust fund for her son, but no actual money herself?’

  ‘Let’s find out, shall we?’ Clement said with a smile. ‘But remember, we need to speak to the children too. They’ll both be home from school for their lunch, I take it?’

  Trudy nodded. After meeting Clement outside the hotel where he’d had lunch with Sir Basil Fletcher, she’d made a quick check of her research on the family in her notebook. ‘Yes, their daughter Olivia has just turned fifteen, and she goes to the local girls’ grammar more or less at the end of the road. And their boy, Lucas, is ten, and attends the local primary school, which is about hundred yards or so that way.’ She pointed vaguely behind her.

  After walking up the crazy-paving path set in a large and well-maintained front garden, by mutual consent, instead of knocking at the door, they skirted around the side of the house, which led them into a large, slightly overgrown back garden. Large and mature shrubs, lilac trees and one or two scraggly examples of topiary gave it a rather romantic, semi-gothic look, especially in the dim, grey, November afternoon.

  Clement supposed that the family only engaged a gardener during the summer months, and that the grounds were allowed to let themselves go a bit from autumn until the springtime brought a new burst of growing activity.

  The plot, he saw at once, backed onto a large field, where farmland took over from suburbia. He looked across the pleasant scenery to where a large and majestic elm tree, host at the moment to a pair of noisy rooks, stood leafless and magnificent against the skyline. He was not a photographer, but if he were, he thought he might have taken a photograph of that lone, skeletal image. He’d always liked elms – they were his favourite tree, and he couldn’t imagine the English landscape without them.

  ‘It seems a bit lonely,’ Trudy said, looking out over the furrowed, bare earth, which had clearly been recently ploughed by the
local farmer. ‘And not many places where a stray spark might have blown in from. Apart from their immediate neighbours on either side,’ she said, glancing to her left and right.

  In each instance, a six-foot tall, wooden-panelled fence provided privacy. ‘Still, on a windy night, I suppose the embers that caught on the shed might not have come from the Wilcoxes’ own bonfire. I expect that’s some comfort to them,’ she added.

  ‘If the fire was accidental, yes,’ Clement reminded her sombrely.

  Trudy glanced at him sharply. ‘You’re more inclined to think it was deliberate then?’

  Thus challenged, Clement was forced to shrug helplessly. ‘How can we possibly tell? There’s no forensic or medical evidence to tell us one way or another, is there?’

  Trudy agreed glumly. ‘You think we’re just wasting our time then?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that – not yet anyway. Let’s go and hear what the lady of the house has to say about things. And let’s hope either Olivia or Lucas had sharper eyes than those of the adults present that night.’

  Alice Wilcox looked much as Clement remembered her from the witness stand in his courtroom. Slightly plump and pretty, and with her auburn-tinged hair a little unkempt, she looked at them blankly from big hazel eyes as she stood in the doorway. At their knocking, she’d answered the door promptly, and her momentary confusion fled as she suddenly recognised Clement.

  ‘Oh, Dr Ryder. Please, do come in. Oh yes, Godfrey said you’d called round to speak to him, and might do the same for me. And you’ve talked to my husband too, of course,’ she added belatedly. ‘Would you like to come into the parlour? The children are in the kitchen at the moment eating their lunch.’

  ‘Well, actually Mrs Wilcox, it was both you and the children we wanted to talk to,’ Trudy said, deliberately inserting herself into the older woman’s notice. In Alice Wilcox, she recognised a woman who would automatically defer to a man, and she needed to establish her own presence and authority quickly. ‘And I’m sure you’d prefer to be present when we talk to them, yes?’