58 Wickham House
Wickham House
Of the minor role played in the affair by Detective Inspector Timothy Peel, neither his colleagues at the Devon and Cornwall
Police nor the broader British public would ever know a thing. He was a page torn from a tattered book—or a ghost note, he
thought, recalling his torturous childhood piano lessons, a softly struck E-flat, scarcely heard and soon forgotten. Slow
to anger or feelings of resentment, he was appalled at how quickly he had been cast aside. The long ride home to Exeter on
the night they brought Alice Winter back to Britain had left him cold. He had watched the events that unfolded next—the murder
of a Russian agent in Copenhagen, the attack on Downing Street—certain in the knowledge that his old friend Gabriel Allon
was the thread that ran through it all. And Ingrid, of course. What a pair of hands she had. Plucked a phone from the jacket
pocket of a Swiss banker as though she were picking a daisy. Too bad it was the wrong bloody phone. Still, it all seemed to
have worked out in the end, though no thanks to DI Timothy Peel. He was not ashamed to admit that from time to time, in moments
of boredom and Cornish loneliness, it left a bitter taste.
Upon his return to duty, he rejoined the team investigating the murder of Gareth Wright, the carpenter who ended up in a shallow grave near the old mining town of Sticker.
In Peel’s absence the case had gone cold as ice.
Having been away for a few days—truth be told, it seemed more like a month—he took it upon himself to conduct a thorough review of his colleagues’ work.
He read the notes and transcripts from the door-to-doors, he scoured the forensics reports from the SOCOs, he ran down the owner or operator of every vehicle that had passed a plate-recognition camera on the B3287 around the time Gareth Wright was last reported alive.
It was the camera that led Peel to the doorstep of one Trevor Knox of the hamlet of Blackwater. Knox, it seemed, had dabbled
in carpentry himself before embarking on a life of crime. He claimed not to know the victim, but interviews with friends and
associates revealed that some years earlier Trevor Knox had worked with Gareth Wright on a couple of projects—apparently not
with any proficiency or diligence. Furthermore his explanation as to why he was in Sticker on or about the night of the murder
didn’t hold a drop of water. Claimed he went there to see an old girlfriend, but the girlfriend said that if Trevor Knox ever
showed up at her door, the D&C Police would have another murder to investigate. She was a bit of a wreck, the old girlfriend,
but Peel couldn’t help but admire her style.
He took his findings to DCI Tony Fletcher, and Fletcher, after a few choice words to the other members of the investigative
team, granted Peel permission to place Trevor Knox under surveillance. He conducted much of it personally and after a fortnight
was convinced that it was time to interview the subject again, this time at headquarters in Exeter with a recorder rolling.
On a cold and rainswept morning in early September he dispatched a half-dozen uniforms to rouse Knox from his Blackwater bed and bring him in.
But Peel scarcely had time to caution his prime suspect when DCI Fletcher entered the room and brought the interview to an abrupt end.
And so it was that Timothy Peel was thrust once more into the strange case of Edward Knight and the missing British socialite who was not really missing.
It had been two months since she last set foot in Wickham House, but all the old rules still applied, especially those regarding
her bereaved husband’s office door, which was never to be opened or even knocked upon when closed. Charlotte Rose, Wickham’s
chief housekeeper, had violated the rule early in her tenure and had received such a tongue lashing—first from Mr. Knight,
then from his personal assistant, Mr. Higgins—that the thought of violating it a second time never crossed her mind. She got
the worst of it from Higgins, or Hiccups as the late Alice Winter used to call him, not only behind his back but straight
to his face. Alice had loathed Higgins, and Higgins had loathed her in return.
But Higgins, thankfully, was gone, as was his replacement, a lovely fellow called Nigel Whitcombe. Charlotte had been sorry
to see Mr. Whitcombe go, though she was pleased that Mr. Knight had finally rid himself of the security men who sat in a parked
car just inside the manor’s front gate. Every morning they insisted on inspecting Charlotte’s driving license as though they
had never laid eyes on her before. She reckoned she would have had an easier time getting into Number 10 wearing a suicide
vest.
On that morning, however, Charlotte Rose rolled unmolested through Wickham’s grand gate in her dowdy little Vauxhall and parked in her usual spot in the rear courtyard.
She entered the house through the flower room and headed to the kitchen, passing the door of Mr. Knight’s office along the way.
It was tightly closed, which was not unusual, as Mr. Knight was an early riser and a dogged worker.
What was unusual was the silence within.
Mr. Knight had a booming telephone voice and typically watched the financial news at a wall-vibrating
volume.
Ninety minutes later, long after Charlotte commenced her daily cleaning of the enormous manor, she made a return visit to
Mr. Knight’s wing of the house and saw that the situation had not changed. A closed door, silence within. Gently, soundlessly,
she tried the door’s latch and discovered it was locked. Next, after first calling Mr. Knight’s name, she gave the door the
tenderest of knocks, but there was no answer. Nor did she receive any answer when she dialed the number for Mr. Knight’s mobile
phone, though she could hear the device ringing inside the office, clear as a bell.
At which point, having lived through the drama of Ms. Winter’s abduction, Charlotte Rose thought it best to telephone the
Devon and Cornwall Police. Two fresh-faced PCs appeared at Wickham House a few minutes later and, after obtaining permission
from higher authority, forced the lock on the office door, whereupon they discovered Edward Knight seated at his desk, with
two bullet holes in his chest and a third in the center of his forehead.
The two fresh-faced constables rang DCI Fletcher, and DI Timothy Peel was soon flying along the A3052 in an unmarked car,
siren howling, grille lights flashing. Arriving at Wickham House, he donned the requisite protective gear and took control
of the crime scene. His first stop inside the house was the victim’s office. He was troubled by the lack of evidence of a
struggle, which suggested the victim knew his killer. He was more troubled, though, by the fact that the property’s elaborate
security system had been switched off, which implied the killer possessed knowledge of the manor’s inner workings.
Fortunately the plate-recognition camera located approximately a mile from Wickham House was working just fine that morning, and at 6:07 a.m., which just so happened to coincide with the estimated time of death, the camera snapped a photo of a Ford Fiesta that had
been reported stolen the previous evening in Swindon. A vehicle search undertaken at Peel’s directive revealed that in the
intervening two hours and fifteen minutes, the Ford had passed three more plate-recognition cameras—one west of Exeter, one
in little Launceston, and a third near Truro.
It didn’t take a genius to see that the driver of the vehicle, whoever he was, and for whatever reason, was headed straight
for the western tip of the Cornish Peninsula. Peel requested a helicopter from the National Police Air Service and, in his
capacity as a newly certified AFO, a Glock 19 pistol. Before boarding the helicopter he placed a last phone call, mobile to
mobile. As was frequently the case, the call failed to connect. The cell service out there was for the birds.