Deadly Deceit

by Nancy Buckingham

  Talking to Jillian like this had been helpful, Kate felt, in getting to grips with the background to the case. But the time had come to broach the real purpose of this morning’s interview.

  ‘Tell me, Jillian,’ she said, ‘how did Sebastian discover that you’d seen Barry Slater again? I mean recently. In fact, shortly before his death?’

  Kate waited, taking shallow breaths. What now? A convincing denial that there’d been any such meeting? If so, her whole line of reasoning about why Knox had suddenly been precipitated into doing murder would go up in a puff of smoke.

  Even before Jillian uttered a word in reply, the look of terror in her eyes told Kate that she was not wrong. She suppressed a surge of triumph.

  ‘I... I didn’t think you’d find out,’ the girl said miserably. ‘How did you?’

  ‘Never mind about how I found out. It’s how Sebastian found out that I want to know.’

  ‘It ... it must have been my father who told him.’

  ‘Your father?’

  ‘Yes. You see, last Tuesday, when I left the office to go for lunch, Barry was waiting for me outside. It was an awful shock, because I really thought I’d seen the last of him. He wanted me to go and have a drink with him, and at first I refused. But Barry wouldn’t take no for an answer, and I didn’t want a scene right there outside the auction rooms where anyone might see, so in the end I agreed. I decided that I’d have to make Barry understand once and for all that what had happened between us had been a horrible mistake and that I didn’t want to see him ever again. Anyway, we went into the Clarence, the lounge bar there, and we’d hardly sat down when my father appeared from the manager’s office. He sells wine to the hotel, you see, that’s why he would have been there.’

  She’d dried up, so Kate prompted her. ‘He spotted you and Slater, I take it?’

  ‘Yes. He came straight over to us, and I could see he was furious. He told Barry that I was engaged to be married to another man, and he had no right to interfere in my life and make trouble. Barry stood up to him. He was in an odd sort of mood . . . oh, I don’t know, almost as if he was enjoying the whole thing. But I kept begging him to go away, and in the end he did - for my sake, he said.’

  ‘Leaving the impression that he intended trying to see you again?’

  ‘Well . . . yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘What happened then, Jillian?’

  ‘My father said we’d better go somewhere quiet, where we could talk, and he took me to the Old Vicarage restaurant along by the church. He told me that I mustn’t ever see Barry again, he was a thoroughly bad lot. I tried to explain that I’d only agreed to have a drink with him to avoid a scene outside the auction rooms, but he wouldn’t listen. He went on and on about how I could easily ruin my whole life if I carried on like this, being so stupid and willful. He said he wasn’t going to tell my mother, because she’d be so terribly upset and ashamed of me, but I’d better come to my senses and do some good hard thinking.’

  ‘But presumably he told Sebastian about the incident?’ ‘I didn’t realise that Sebastian knew about it. I’ve hardly seen him these past few days. But I suppose my father must have told him.’

  Or instead, Kate thought, Murdoch had himself done the job on Slater. Removed the intruder, as he saw it, from doing any further harm to the life he seemed to have mapped out for his adopted daughter.

  ‘Very well, Jillian, that will be all for now. You may go.’ The girl gazed at her pitiably. ‘It will be all right for Martin now, won’t it? Now that I’ve explained why he did it?’

  ‘That’s not for me to say, Jillian. The action he took was very wrong - he was fully aware of that - and no amount of excuses or justification can alter the fact.’

  * * * *

  ‘Oh, it’s you again.’

  The surprise, Kate knew, was merely an act. She had been inspected through the spyhole before the door was opened.

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Ms Grainger, but I need to have another word with you.’

  Dawn Grainger stood back. ‘No dishy sergeant in tow today? I am disappointed.’

  ‘May I come in?’

  ‘If you must, I suppose.’

  In the living room, Dawn motioned Kate into a chair and perched herself on the arm of the sofa, crossing her ankles in a languidly relaxed gesture. But there was a tenseness to her body that told Kate she was nervous.

  ‘What is it this time, then?’ she drawled.

  ‘The same as last time. When I was here on Wednesday you spun me a tale about how Sebastian Knox had spent the previous night with you here.’

  ‘It was one of many nights, let me tell you.’

  ‘I’m only interested in Tuesday night. Now, do I get the truth the hard way, or the easy way?’

  ‘Which is which?’ she asked with a lazy smile.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure I don’t need to spell it out. I’d much prefer not to waste time, Ms Grainger, because I’m investigating a murder. The murder of a man named Barry Slater.’

  ‘Yes, I read about it.’ Dawn suddenly went rigid. ‘Here, you can’t think I had anything to do with that?’

  ‘You could well be implicated.’

  ‘That’s crazy. I didn’t even know the guy. Never heard of him before I saw his name in the paper.’

  ‘Giving false information to the police when there’s murder involved is an extremely serious matter.’

  ‘But I didn’t know it was anything to do with murder when I . . .’

  ‘When you lied to us?’

  Fear fought with disbelief in the woman’s face. ‘You’re having me on, aren’t you? Sebastian would never - he isn’t the type.’

  ‘Anybody’s the type, given the right circumstances. And he’s got quite a temper, hasn’t he?’

  ‘No worse than the next man. Well . . . not a lot worse.’

  Women in Dawn’s profession didn’t see the best side of any man. Kate wondered if Sebastian had ever roughed her up.

  She said, ‘Now, let’s get this straight. Sebastian Knox asked you to give him an alibi for the night that Barry Slater was killed, right?’|

  ‘Not straight out like that, he didn’t, or I’d have told him no dice.’

  ‘However, he did ask you to provide him with an alibi for Tuesday night?’

  Dawn bit her lip, still undecided. ‘I’d hate to get Sebastian into trouble.’

  ‘It’s more a matter of getting yourself out of trouble. Come clean with me now, and you’ll get off lightly. Mess me around any longer, and you’ll be in it up to your neck.’

  ‘Okay, then,’ she said after a moment’s hesitation. ‘Sebastian wasn’t here that night. Only I really didn’t have any idea . . . him being a solicitor, I thought he’d just been juggling with his clients’ money or something.’

  Victory! Kate was eager to have Knox face her in an interview room again, so she could nail him to the ground with this new evidence.

  ‘You’ll have to come to the station to give me a statement, Dawn.’

  ‘Do I have to? I don’t like being seen in those places. It doesn’t do my reputation any good.’

  ‘Tough luck!’

  A new alarm came into Dawn’s heavily made-up eyes. ‘You won’t want me to be a witness or anything? Standing up in court spouting evidence for the prosecution isn’t my sort of thing. The punters wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘You should have thought about that, shouldn’t you, before you got yourself into this situation?’

  * * * *

  Kate phoned Boulter from the car, so as not to waste a single minute.

  ‘Dawn Grainger sang. Knox’s alibi has just been bust wide open.’

  ‘Nice work, guv. Do I have him brought in?’

  ‘ASAP, Tim, if not sooner. I’ll be back in a few minutes and we’ll work out our line of attack. I don’t anticipate a lot of trouble breaking him now, though.’

  Driving through the Sunday-hushed streets of Marlingford, Kate’s spirits were riding high. By evening, with a bit of luck,
she’d have got the case wrapped up. All over bar the paperwork. She would ring Richard, and line up a celebration. A slap-up meal somewhere, her treat. Then back to her place for a nightcap. And so to bed.

  But only minutes after she’d arrived back at the office, Boulter came in looking decidedly morose.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she said, seeing his face. ‘Something’s gone wrong.’

  ‘I should say so. Would you believe it, guv, Knox has done a runner on us.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Kate cursed herself for letting Knox get away. She should have been a jump ahead of him. Not he of her.

  ‘Details, Tim,’ she said grimly.

  ‘According to his mother, he left the house yesterday afternoon soon after lunch, saying that he’d be back in a couple of hours. Only he wasn’t. There’s been neither sight nor sound of him since. As soon as you phoned me, guv, I rang the nick at Wynchford and told them you wanted Knox brought in pronto. They’ve just phoned back to say he’s missing. Apparently, it was Mrs Knox’s wedding anniversary yesterday, and Sebastian has always been meticulous about remembering it. He’d arranged to take her out to dinner last night. Booked a table at the Trout Inn in Steeple Harlop. No cancellation, I’ve just checked. Mrs Knox was terribly upset. She’s convinced that her son must have had an accident.’

  ‘That angle’s been followed up?’

  Boulter gave her a look of sad reproach.

  ‘Okay. So put out a general call for him. And his car. Alert all possible points of departure, and let’s hope to God we’re not too late.’

  Kate drove to the Knox residence on the outskirts of Wynchford. It was a spacious, double-fronted Victorian house with bay windows and a turreted roof, set in an acre or more of ground. The white paintwork gleamed, the gravel driveway was rolled table-smooth, the lawns close-mown and the borders neatly tended.

  The Knox family wasn’t short of a bob or two.

  The woman who answered the door was in her sixties. Tallish, very slender, white hair upswept in an elegant coiffure. She wore a deceptively simple dress of pale blue linen that spoke loudly of a hefty price tag. A look of alarm in her fine eyes was barely discernible.

  ‘Mrs Knox?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Kate introduced herself and showed her warrant card. ‘We spoke on the phone the other day, if you remember.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ The mask of self-control was only precariously maintained. ‘Have you brought news of my son? Is he ... injured?’

  ‘I have no information, I’m afraid, Mrs Knox. I was hoping that you might be able to assist me in finding him. May I come in?’

  She seemed to hesitate, then nodded jerkily and led Kate across a large square hall to a small room on the left which appeared to be her personal sitting room-cum-study. She indicated an upholstered tub chair to one side of the writing table.

  ‘Please have a seat, Chief Inspector.’ She sat down herself and regarded Kate bleakly. ‘What has happened to my son?’

  Kate returned her gaze directly. ‘Do you really not know, Mrs Knox? If you do, if you have the slightest idea where he might be, you’d be advised to tell me. It will be best for your son, in the long run.’

  An emphatic shaking of her head. ‘Sebastian said, yesterday afternoon, that he would only be out for a short while. I expected him back by early evening at the very latest. He was taking me out for dinner, you see.’

  ‘You didn’t report him to us as missing. Why was that?’

  She fingered the linen of her skirt. ‘It - it seemed too soon for such drastic measures.’

  ‘I see. If you feared he might have had an accident, did you phone around the hospitals?’

  She nodded tightly. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I did.’

  ‘What other enquiries have you made?’

  ‘This morning I tried to telephone his secretary, Miss Fittleworth. But I was unable to reach her. She quite often goes to have lunch somewhere with an old family friend on Sunday, I believe.’

  ‘But no one else? You haven’t tried to contact his fiancée, for instance?’

  ‘No. I - I wished to avoid acting too . . . precipitately.’

  Kate guessed that, given Sebastian’s penchant for staying out all night (and it was a safe bet that his mother wasn’t deceived by his creeping in early before he thought she’d be awake), Mrs Knox was scared of his wrath.

  Probing this theory, Kate said, ‘You thought your son would be annoyed if he returned home safely today to find that you’d been broadcasting his overnight absence?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ she agreed, and when Kate remained silent, she added, ‘It’s understandable, isn’t it, that he wouldn’t like a big fuss made unnecessarily?’

  ‘Your son has a quick temper, hasn’t he?’

  Mrs Knox tried to smile, and failed dismally. ‘Sebastian doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Nor did his father. What intelligent man does?’

  ‘I understand that when Sebastian left the house yesterday, he drove off in his car. Did he take any clothes with him? Have you checked?’

  ‘No, why on earth should he . . .’

  An awareness was there, Kate felt convinced, that her son might possibly be on the run from the law. It was as if she was being forced to face up to something she had dreaded for a very long time. Yet the situation between Jillian and Slater had been of very recent date. Kate shook the thought away as a mere flight of fancy. The poor woman was distraught, bewildered, unable to find any explanation that fitted the facts.

  ‘Perhaps we could look in Sebastian’s room, Mrs Knox, to see if he did take any clothes. And what about his passport? I’d like you to see if that is missing.’

  The pain in those fine eyes intensified. But, rising to her feet, she said in a carefully controlled voice, ‘I’ll take you upstairs, then. Sebastian’s passport will be in the safe at his office, though. That’s where he keeps all important documents.

  ‘I see. I’ll have that checked later.’

  Sebastian’s room had the touch of a fond mother’s care in the fussy drapes at the windows, the dove-grey fitted carpet, the choice antique pieces. But the extreme, almost obsessive tidiness was surely his. Kate had a feeling that Sebastian Knox was a man who’d never leave the loose coins from his pocket lying around in careless piles, never toss a tie or shirt aside and leave it where it happened to fall. Not a bit like Richard!

  ‘Mrs Knox, I’d like you to have a look around, please, and tell me if anything is missing. Any of your son’s clothes, for example.’

  ‘You’re quite mistaken. I watched Sebastian leave the house yesterday. I’d have noticed if he was carrying a bag.’

  ‘All the same, please look.’

  She went through the motions, opening the fitted cupboards, sliding out drawers. But after a moment she stood back, shaking her head.

  ‘As I told you, everything is still here.’

  ‘Would Sebastian have any private papers at home? Personal correspondence, that sort of thing?’

  ‘No, he dealt with everything like that at the office.’

  ‘Do you have a key to the office premises?’

  ‘No. His secretary would have, of course.’

  ‘That’s Miss Fittleworth, you said. Let me have her address, please. And her phone number. I’ll contact her when she gets home.’

  ‘It will be in my address book downstairs.’

  ‘Then I’ll take it before I leave.’ Kate had sensed a coolness in Mrs Knox’s voice each time the secretary was mentioned. Testing the feeling, she enquired, ‘Has Miss Fittleworth worked with your son for long?’

  The composed features tightened almost imperceptibly in what was surely disapproval. ‘She was my husband’s secretary for some years. When he died, she stayed on to work for Sebastian.’

  ‘So she’s almost one of the family, I suppose?’

  The question was impertinent, Mrs Knox’s composed face now said. Or worse than impertinent - offensive. ‘Miss Fittleworth is an employee, Chief Inspector.’
>
  ‘Mrs Knox, what did your son tell you about a man named Barry Slater?’

  She seemed agitated now, but she clung to dignity. ‘That was the wretched man who was murdered the other day? You surely can’t imagine that Sebastian had anything to do with his death. It’s unthinkable.’

  ‘But you did know that he and your son had a serious disagreement? And you knew what had caused it?’

  ‘I suppose you’re referring to that unpleasant business concerning his fiancée. I heard something mentioned, but I didn’t give it any credence.’

  ‘By whom did you hear it mentioned? By Sebastian?’

  A slight shudder passed through her at the very idea of such indelicacy. ‘An acquaintance. I can’t remember who it was.’

  It didn’t really matter how she’d heard. Wasn’t there always a kindly someone ready and eager to pass on the dirt?

  ‘You said you didn’t believe it, Mrs Knox. Why not?’

  ‘Well, for heaven’s sake! Jillian is very young and immature, and I know that she’s sometimes been rather foolish in the past. I’m aware, too, that young people these days view sexual matters in a very different light from my generation. Even so, I cannot believe that Jillian could have behaved so monstrously as to become involved with another man when she is engaged to my son.’

  ‘I think the fact is beyond dispute, Mrs Knox. But more to the point, your son was convinced of it. He was heard to utter threats against Slater. Violent threats.’

  ‘Spoken in the heat of the moment, I’m sure. Obviously, Sebastian was very distressed.’

  ‘Are you saying that although he was apt to lose his temper quickly, it didn’t last?’

  She was silent. A basically honest woman unable to find a suitable evasion. Kate let it go.

  ‘I’d like to see your son’s shotguns now, please. He told me he owned a pair that he inherited from his father.’

  ‘Oh!’ A hand pressed against her throat betrayed deep emotion in this controlled woman. ‘You believe, don’t you, that Sebastian might have killed this man Slater? And because you suspect him, he has been forced to flee. To stay away until you discover the real truth. That is what has happened, only that. My son is keeping out of your way until you are obliged to realise that he is entirely innocent.’