need to take his phone,’ I said. ‘And his laptop. And we’ll have to get people to go through the house.’
Kate sighed. ‘Yeah, do whatever.’ She hesitated. ‘Just so you know, there’s, well, emails on his laptop from me saying I’ve had enough.’ She shook her hair off her face. ‘But it wasn’t serious. Normal marital stuff, you know. He’s been difficult recently. But I didn’t kill him.’ She gave a slightly hysterical laugh. ‘If I had, I’d have deleted the emails, wouldn’t I?’
I mentally noted her assumption that she could access her husband’s emails. ‘Where were you today?’
‘What? I was at work all day. You don’t seriously think I might have done it?’
‘Just a formality,’ I said. ‘What did Peter do for a living?’
‘He was a patent attorney. You know, with inventions.’ She leaned forward over the coffee table, took a biscuit and looked at it with horror before dropping it back on the plate. I’d observed with the bereaved, the thin ones never ate the biscuits.
‘It looks like he’d had some chocolate cake. It was in a plastic wrapper saying “Susie’s Cakes” – is that something you bought?’
‘No, never heard of it. But Peter loves cake. He’d never turn it down if someone offered. Was anyone else seen in the woods?’
‘We’re checking that.’
‘I can’t imagine him buying it for himself. There are no shops on the way down there.’ She tapped her fingers against her knee.
There was a buzzy energy about Kate Webster. Not the usual flatness of someone who’d lost a relative. I noticed my toes were curled in my shoes as if I was clutching the floor with them. ‘You say he’d been difficult recently?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Yes. I mean, he’d been grumpy with me. And drinking too much. I thought he was hiding something.’ Her voice caught in her throat. ‘Oh God, it’s going to turn out he was having an affair, isn’t it? I can’t bear it.’ She rose, walked again to the picture window, and stood with her back to us.
I kept my voice gentle. ‘I’m sorry to ask but I don’t suppose, if he was having an affair, you’d have any idea who it might possibly be with?’
She turned and stood silhouetted against the evening sunset, leaning against the window in a way which made me nervous. ‘Christ almighty,’ she said. ‘Of all the questions you hope you’ll never be asked. Who could your husband be having an affair with, in case they…’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Look, he didn’t socialise on his own outside work and they’re mainly men at his office. There was a client he mentioned a couple of times, Lisa something, but he didn’t even like her. No, he wasn’t interested in her.’ She rubbed her nose. ‘Oh God, he would give that impression, wouldn’t he? I can’t believe this is happening. How can this be happening to me?’
Beth stood and walked to the window, gently touched Kate’s arm, and led her back to the sofa. ‘Peter wasn’t having an affair,’ she said.
I took a biscuit. It seemed to relax people when you ate their biscuits. At least that was my story. ‘Can I ask,’ I said, ‘how was his sleeping? And eating?’
Kate crossed and uncrossed her legs. ‘He was always eating. Loved his food. But actually he’d lost a bit of weight recently. And I suppose he had been a bit more tossy and turny over the last year, always dragging the duvet off me. He’s had a few nightmares. I put it down to work stress.’
I turned to Beth. ‘Did you notice anything?’
She shook her head. ‘He seemed okay to me.’
‘Was he on anti-depressants?’
‘No,’ Kate said. ‘He hated drugs. Ironic, given his job.’ A tiny smile twitched at the edges of her lips. ‘He thought they were a sign of feeble-mindedness.’
‘When did you get worried about his drinking?’
‘I wasn’t exactly worried. But, well, it started about a year ago and it’s got worse recently.’ Her lower lip shook. She took a deep breath and continued. ‘I’d get home and he’d be in front of the TV with a beer. He’d claim he’d only had one but sometimes he’d stagger when he got up. And he was hiding the bottles. And other times he smelt like he’d been smoking. Not tobacco either.’
‘Can you imagine him ever wanting to harm himself?’
‘What? No, no.’ She shook her head like a dog shaking off water. ‘No. He wouldn’t do that to me.’
Of course, relatives always said that. But some of us knew better.
I stood. Something caught my eye in the wood-burner. It was an expensive cast-iron thing with a glass front. The fire wasn’t lit, but inside were several half-burnt logs and a few pieces of paper, visible through the sooty glass. They were almost completely singed black but the end of one piece of paper was still intact and had handwriting on it.
‘What are those papers?’ I asked.
Kate jumped up and lunged towards the fireplace. ‘Oh, nothing!’ She grabbed a poker and reached for the door of the wood-burner.
‘Leave it!’ I shouted, as if she was a dog heading for a picnic.
Beth flashed angry eyes at Kate, who froze in a poker-wielding stance. She turned her head slowly towards me, as if wondering whether I had the right to do this. Presumably, she decided I did; she put the poker down on the hearth and stepped back. ‘Sorry.’ She retreated to the sofa. ‘It’s nothing. Just some old papers I was using as scrap.’
I exchanged a look with Jai. ‘Okay, I’d like our people to see them.’
*
I left Jai to finish the interview, and asked to see Peter Hamilton’s study. According to Kate, he’d usually worked there before he went on his walk, and it certainly looked like he’d been planning to return – no suicidal tidying was in evidence. The room had a slightly musty but not unpleasant smell that reminded me of the libraries of my youth. An antique-style desk was strewn with papers covered with handwritten notes, much crossed out. The messiest page was headed ‘Claims’, and chemical formulae spidered their way across it.
Bookcases lined the walls, crammed with unappealing books about biochemistry and patent law, many covered with a layer of dust. But the bottom shelf caught my eye – a collection of photograph albums. I crouched and gently pulled out one of the albums. It was filled with holiday snaps. Kate Webster and Peter Hamilton, very much alive. All bright smiles, white villages and sunny skies. The other albums were similar – happy holidays, any discord well hidden. I eased out the album that looked oldest. The pages were stiff and the plastic sheets that were supposed to keep the photographs in place had yellowed and lost their stickiness. I turned the pages slowly, holding them at their edges.
The early part of the album included wedding photos – a man and a woman, presumably Hamilton’s parents. A later photograph showed the same couple, with two boys and a younger girl who must have been Beth. The woman now sat flaccidly in
