The Reckoning (20 page)

‘It won't have escaped your notice that the press have got their teeth into this.'

Billy confined his response to a grimace. The biggest-selling paper, the
Daily Mirror
– it claimed to have more than three million readers – had been going to town on the story. Having earlier toyed with the term ‘mystery gunman' in its headlines, it had switched following the murder of Canning to the more picturesque ‘faceless killer', while its main rival, the
Daily Express
, had stuck loyally to its own invention, ‘silent stalker'.

Like all the papers, they had been asking why. Why these particular men had been chosen as victims? What was the motive behind the killings? But none had come up with an answer yet, other than to suggest that there might be a lunatic on the loose.

‘With any luck we'll be given a stay of grace. Chances are they'll be busy for the next few days with this royal shindig.'

The chief super was referring to the forthcoming wedding between the heir to the throne, Princess Elizabeth, and Prince Philip of Greece, due to take place at Westminster Abbey later that month.

‘But it won't last. They'll soon turn their attention our way again. And on that happy note I'll take my leave of you. It's time I went home.'

He moved to fasten the stud on his collar.

‘Unless you've got something more to tell me?'

Billy hesitated.

‘It's a long shot, sir, but while we're waiting to see that court-martial file I thought I'd pursue the question of whether the shooter called on his victims in advance. As Mr Madden says, he can't have been acquainted with them all personally and, except in the case of Canning, he had to be sure who he was killing. Just their names wouldn't have been enough. Now we know Ozzie Gibson had a visitor, and it could well have been the same bloke who shot him later. As far as Drummond is concerned, we haven't been able to make that link. The identities of the men who called at his consulting rooms prior to his murder – people not on his regular roster of patients – have all been checked. But that still leaves Mrs Singleton . . .'

‘The Oxford lady?'

‘I didn't get a chance to interview her properly when I was down there. She was too upset. But it's been more than a week now and I want her questioned again. I just can't believe this bloke put a bullet in her husband's head without being sure he had the right man. They must have had some kind of contact beforehand and, even if Mrs Singleton wasn't present, it's odds-on her husband talked to her about it later. They were a close couple. She said herself they kept nothing from each other.'

‘What will you do – get the local plod to talk to her?'

Billy shook his head. ‘I'd rather we handled it ourselves. I want to see if we can draw her out, get her talking.'

‘And you think
you're
the man to do that?'

The look of sheer disbelief on the chief super's homely features made Billy laugh out loud.

‘Not really, sir. In fact, I reckon it's more a job for a woman.'

‘A
woman
?' Charlie was bemused.

‘That's why I'm sending Poole. She's going down to Oxford tomorrow.'

17

‘A
SALESMAN?
' L
ILY ASKED
. ‘What sort? What was he selling?'

‘Vacuum cleaners,' Mrs Singleton said. ‘Door-to-door. He looked exhausted, poor man, so I invited him in for a cup of tea and let him show me his cleaner. It did a perfectly good job on the living-room carpet. But I had to tell him we didn't want one and he looked so disappointed.'

‘Was Mr Singleton here?' A moment ago Lily had come alert: now she was trying to keep her excitement in check. It was the first anyone had heard of this ‘salesman'. There'd been no mention of him in the file she'd been given to read.

‘Oh, yes. He was retired, you know. He was usually at home.'

‘Did they meet? Did the salesman talk to him at all?'

‘Oh dear, I can't remember.' Mrs Singleton frowned. ‘Perhaps. Tom was here in the sitting room when the man demonstrated his cleaner. I had to ask him to move his feet. Why are you asking these questions?' She looked curiously at Lily.

‘No special reason. We're just trying to find out if anything unusual, to do with your husband, happened before . . . before . . .' Lily lost her tongue for a moment.

‘Before he was shot?' Mrs Singleton patted her hand. ‘It's all right, my dear. I've had to get used to saying that. Well, I suppose that salesman coming to the house was a little out of the
ordinary – we don't get many – but I doubt there was anything sinister about his visit.'

They had been sitting at opposite ends of the small sofa in the living room for close to half an hour, and up to now the older woman had provided little in the way of information. All of which had only served to increase Lily's frustration. She'd been waiting for a chance to show her mettle ever since she'd been picked to work on the case and, while she had done well enough up to now – the interview she had had with Sally Abbot during their hurried visit to Winchester had earned her a pat on the back from Styles – she felt she was yet to make any real mark on the investigation. Like all recruits to the Metropolitan Police she had had to serve her time in the uniformed branch, where her attempts to join CID had been consistently thwarted for no reason she could see, other than the fact that she was a woman. It had required the intervention first of Styles and, later and more crucially, of Chief Inspector Sinclair before she had finally been given the chance. But even that hadn't marked the end of her struggle to assert herself. The assignments she'd been given up to now had been mundane, most of them concerned with minor complaints or bureaucratic drudgery, the kind thought suitable for one of her sex (or so Lily believed). But now she had been given an opportunity to shine and she was determined to make the most of it.

The recent introduction of a new element into the investigation – its seeming link to the First World War – had caught her imagination. As it happened, her own father had died in the conflict, and images of the flickering figures stumbling across cratered battlefields, as captured by old newsreels, were etched in her memory. But the orders she'd received from Styles had been clear.

‘Whatever you do, don't ask her about that court martial. We're keeping quiet about it for now. The records will tell us whether or not her husband was present. If you mention the
subject, she's bound to talk to others about it and word will get out. Stick to the question of any visitors that Singleton might have had. That's what we want to know about.'

Confined to this single aspect of the investigation, Lily's hopes had been further dented before the interview began when she had called at the central police station in Oxford following her arrival by train and had met the officer in charge of the inquiry, Inspector Morgan.

‘I've asked Mrs Singleton several times if anything happened in the days leading up to her husband's murder that might be linked to it – anything at all – but she insists there wasn't,' he had told her. ‘I believe her, too. I mean I believe
she
believes it. You'll have a hard time convincing her otherwise.'

At least the red-haired inspector's greeting had been friendly enough, which as far as Lily was concerned made a pleasant change from the thinly disguised hostility she was used to encountering from so many of her male colleagues. She knew that most of them held it as an article of faith that there was no place for women in the force, and she'd developed a thick skin as far as the looks and the sniggers she heard behind her back were concerned.

‘So your guv'nor thinks this job needs a woman's touch.' Morgan had risen from his desk to shake her by the hand when she'd been shown into his office. His Welsh accent lent a musical lilt to his words. ‘That's fine by me, but I'm still not sure what he's hoping to find out. If I didn't know better, I'd say he was clutching at straws. But maybe you'll prove me wrong. Let's hope so.'

‘About this salesman – is there anything more you can tell me about him? Can you describe him to me?'

Lily tried to keep her voice calm, her excitement under control. It was the first hint Mrs Singleton had given that there
might be something here worth following up: that her journey to Oxford hadn't been wasted. Before that they had been chatting in an informal way, with Lily taking care not to act the policewoman. Instead, she had allowed the older woman to treat her in a motherly fashion, taking advantage of the brief exchange they had had the previous afternoon when she had rung to arrange the interview.

‘Oh, I see – you're a
detective
, are you?' Mrs Singleton had sounded surprised when Lily had identified herself. ‘I didn't know there were any – women detectives, I mean. What a good idea.'

The friendly note having been struck, Lily had worked hard to maintain it since her arrival at the house, a small semi-detached dwelling in north Oxford, where she had been dropped by a police driver after her meeting with Morgan. Walking up the short path from the gate, she had heard the sound of a dog barking inside. Before she'd had time to lift the brass knocker the door had opened.

‘Detective-Constable Poole?'

Lily had found herself looking into a pair of eyes as blue as her own, but with a weight of sadness in them that remained unchanged in spite of the smile of welcome being offered to her. Grey-haired, but with her good looks still intact, thanks to the kind of bone structure that Lily would have given her right arm for, Eleanor Singleton was in her late fifties, or thereabouts.

‘Don't mind Sandy. He always barks at visitors.' The Sealyham had been sniffing at Lily's ankles. ‘I can't break him of the habit, and he's too old now to learn any new tricks.'

Instead of showing her visitor into the sitting room, as Lily had expected, she had taken her instead to the kitchen at the back of the house, where she had busied herself making tea for them and where, seemingly anxious to postpone the business of the interview, she had peppered her guest with questions.

‘Did you apply to be a detective? Did you have to pass an
exam? Was there any opposition to your joining the police force? I ask because when I was a nurse – it was during the first war – the medical profession was quite hostile to the idea of women doctors. Now, of course, it's quite different.'

When the tea was ready they had gone into the small sitting room at the front of the house and, after settling her visitor on the sofa and taking up her own position at the other end of it, she had turned her gentle gaze on Lily.

‘I've been racking my brains since we spoke on the telephone yesterday, trying to remember if there was anything Tom ever said to me that might be of help. But truly there was nothing. We've lived very quietly since he retired.'

Discouraged at the outset, Lily had introduced the subject of visitors to the house, in particular callers who might have turned up unexpectedly. But even there the knowledge gleaned had been scanty.

‘Well, let me think.' Mrs Singleton's white brow had furrowed. ‘We do get callers, of course. The vicar drops in unannounced from time to time and various neighbours and tradesmen, but you don't mean them. We had one of those lovely French onion-sellers knock on the door only a day or two before Tom was . . . before he died. They disappeared during the war, but now they're back. He was a sweet old man. Then there was a lady who came by collecting money for Armistice Day – Remembrance Day, they call it now – and handing out poppies. Tom gave her something, naturally. He always did, every year. And then there was the rag-and-bone man . . .' Her voice trailed off. ‘I'm sorry, this isn't helping at all. No, there's been no one – no one you could say was a surprise caller, and certainly nobody who upset Tom.'

It was at this point that she had suddenly remembered.

‘But wait a minute – there
was
someone else. A salesman. He came by that same week. I'd forgotten all about him.'

Now, with something to bite on at last, Lily pressed on.

‘Can you describe him to me?'

‘Oh dear . . . not very well, I fear.' Mrs Singleton put a hand to her temple. ‘He was quite a young man – in his early thirties, I'd say.'

‘How tall was he? Do you remember? And his build? Was he light or heavy?'

‘How
tall
?' She seemed thrown by the question. ‘Oh, of average height, or perhaps a little shorter than that: not as tall as my husband, for example.' She caught her breath and a tear shone in the corner of her eye. She brushed it away. ‘He wasn't a big man; he was on the thin side.' She shook her head. ‘Really he was quite ordinary; very obliging, in the way salesmen can be, not pushy at all. I think he was disappointed when I didn't place an order for one of his cleaners. I may have encouraged him too much.'

She eyed Lily.

‘You surely don't think he had anything to do with it?'

‘Oh no. I mean I don't think anything at all.' Lily revealed nothing of her thoughts. ‘All I'm doing now is gathering information: facts. That's what we do mostly. Then later on, when I go back to London, I'll sit down with my guv'nor and see what we can make of them.'

‘Your guv'nor . . .' Mrs Singleton seemed to take pleasure in the word, as though it were new to her. ‘That sounds very sensible.'

She sighed then and Lily saw that, in spite of her friendly manner, she was exhausted, most likely from the strain of the interview; from having to keep up a front. The pain was still there in the soft blue eyes. It hadn't diminished.

‘Just one more question. You don't happen to remember his name by any chance?'

It was a million-to-one shot, and Lily couldn't believe her luck when, after only the briefest of pauses, her hostess gave a crisp nod.