‘Do you know who was blackmailing you?’
‘I thought I did.’
‘Who?’
‘Sophie Whittaker.’
‘Why?’
He shrugged. ‘I can only imagine she found an old picture I kept from our Oxford days in my desk drawer in the vestry. It shows the three of us together at a party – I was kissing Blake. I always keep it locked – you’ve seen what the cleaners are like. One day, around the time she first started asking about the purity pledge, I had to take a phone call and I left her in the vestry on her own. When I got back, she had a smug look on her face. I knew something was wrong, but it wasn’t until she’d left that I realised I’d left the key in the lock. Nothing was missing, but after I received the first letter, I realised what she’d done.’
‘Did you kill Sophie Whittaker?’
His eyes widened. ‘No!’
‘We’ve gone through the statements taken on the night of her murder, Duncan. You were nowhere to be found after the ceremony.’
‘That’s because I made my excuses and left. I had to be up early for the next day’s service.’
Kay nodded to Carys, who slid across the notebook they’d found in the safe deposit box.
‘We found out about a safe deposit box held in Sophie’s name. The entries in this notebook suggest that Sophie was blackmailing all of you on a regular basis, yet you were the only one to pay up.’
‘What?’
‘I can only presume that the thought of being blackmailed didn’t bother Blake Hamilton. Felix Ashgrove certainly wasn’t worried about his reputation. Why did you pay?’
‘I was scared.’ He ran a shaking hand over his face. ‘There was… there was a minor indiscretion a year or so ago and, if anything else happened, I would’ve been kicked out of my church.’ His eyes became pleading. ‘I have nowhere else to go, Detective.’
‘What sort of “minor indiscretion”, Mr Saddleworth?’
He blushed. ‘I had a relationship with a younger member of my congregation. Female.’
‘Was she under age?’
‘No!’
‘Have there been any other indiscretions like that?’
‘Only one,’ he mumbled.
‘Who?’
He lifted his gaze, his eyes miserable. ‘Sophie Whittaker.’
‘When?’
‘I didn’t mean to.’
‘When?’
‘About four months ago. She stayed late one Saturday night – supposedly to ask me about her purity pledge. She seduced me, Detective.’
‘Did it happen again?’
‘No – only the once. I-I realised she was probably using me. For one of such a young age, she certainly had a reputation.’
Kay fought down her anger, and instead wrote a note on the inside of the folder. If Duncan Saddleworth slept with Sophie Whittaker four months ago, then he definitely wasn’t the father of her child, despite what Sophie thought.
Kay’s mind went back to what Carys had mentioned in passing weeks ago – that girls who took a purity pledge were often ignorant about safe sex or any other family planning issues. It simply wasn’t spoken about within those closed church communities.
‘How did you manage to afford to keep up with the blackmail payments? I can’t imagine the church pays that much of a salary?’
Saddleworth tapped his fingers on the desk for a moment, and then slouched in his chair. ‘You might as well know. Blake Hamilton paid me to make sure Sophie’s purity pledge ceremony and engagement to Josh went ahead. He was worried she’d change her mind.’
‘How much?’
‘Enough that I didn’t have to worry about meeting the blackmailer’s demands.’
‘How much money did you pay in response to the letters?’
‘Up to the night Sophie died, nine thousand six hundred pounds.’
Kay caught Carys’s eye. The sum tallied with what they’d found in the safe deposit box.
‘I paid another fifteen hundred pounds nine days ago.’
Kay frowned. ‘Nine days ago?’
‘Yes.’ His top lip curled. ‘You see, Detective, I thought it was Sophie Whittaker blackmailing me because she found out about Blake Hamilton and Felix Ashgrove. I thought it was because she seduced me. Evidently, I was wrong. I’m still being blackmailed.’
‘Do you have the letter?’
In response, he reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a crumpled envelope before sliding it across the table.
Carys caught Kay’s eyes and slipped a pair of gloves on before picking up the envelope and extracting the page from within.
Again, the note had been constructed from words cut out from printed out newspaper articles, demanding money in exchange for secrecy about Duncan’s affairs.
‘Is this the letter that arrived after Sophie’s death?’
He nodded, his eyes full of misery. ‘Yes.’
‘We’ll need to hang on to this, Mr Saddleworth.’ Kay reached over to the recording machine, her finger hovering over the “stop” button.
‘Interview terminated.’
Forty-Eight
‘Are you going to ask him to come down to the station?’
Barnes peered through the windscreen as Blake Hamilton’s house came into view, and flipped the indicator stalk on the steering column.
‘No. I don’t think there’s any need for that. It wouldn’t go down well with Larch, for a start.’
Kay fidgeted in her seat until she could reach the notebook in her bag and flipped through the pages once more. ‘What I do want to find out is if Hamilton’s been receiving letters since Sophie died, like Duncan Saddleworth has.’ She paused on the last page of the notebook to include Sophie’s handwriting. ‘Whoever it is didn’t know about Sophie’s record keeping habits. She was meticulous.’
‘So, someone found out about the blackmailing and when Sophie died, decided it’d be a good way to make some money.’
‘Yeah. When we’re finished here, can you go and speak to Peter Evans again? I’ve got a feeling we still haven’t had the whole story from him. Take it easy – he’s likely trying to protect Sophie’s reputation. I think he really did love her.’
‘Will do. What are you thinking?’
Kay tapped her thumb against the side of the notebook. ‘One of them isn’t telling
