people he knew and there were other children from Sunnycroft School there with their mothers. He had spoken briefly to one of the mothers who was a customer at his shop.
At seven o’clock he had duly taken the children back to the flat. Jane was there and they all had supper and then watched television. The children went to bed at about nine and he spent the next hour or so in his workshop. He and Jane went to bed around half past ten. On Saturday morning he busied himself as usual in the shop and workshop. Simon spent the morning with him. Katie went out shopping with Jane and afterwards stayed with her while she attended to the housework and cooking.
On Saturday afternoon he left his assistant and one of the repairmen in charge while he and Jane took the children to a nearby safari park. Again they saw and spoke to other children and parents known to them from school. They returned to the flat at about eight. On Sunday they all four spent the day in a riverside town fifteen miles away. They took a boat out on the river, ate a picnic lunch and tea on the river bank, returning home around half past seven.
It seemed highly probable that Venetia had died very shortly after Roy drove away from the cottage with the children on Friday afternoon and the preliminary medical examination tended to support this impression. A short distance from the cottage, on the common, they had found a spot on a small rise, beneath the overhanging branches of a hawthorn, where the grass had recently been flattened. Someone standing under the branches could look down unobserved on the cottage and garden.
Chief Inspector Kelsey had asked Franklin if he had ever before seen the silky brown scarf that had been stuffed down Venetia’s throat but Franklin had shaken his head.
The Chief Inspector stood now looking down at Franklin as he sat at the table with his head on his arms. ‘Have you no idea where your wife–your ex-wife–might have been intending to spend the weekend?’ he asked suddenly.
Franklin raised his head and sat slowly up. His face was flushed, he had an air of immense fatigue. ‘No idea at all. She never used to say where she was going when I went to collect the children. She never even used to tell the children where she was going.’ Making sure they would be in no position to reveal information about her private life, Kelsey reflected, however skilfully Roy or Jane might try to pump them.
‘Can you tell me about any men friends she may have had?’ he asked. ‘Do you know if she was thinking of marrying again?’
Again Franklin shook his head. ‘I’m sure she did have men friends but she never mentioned them to me. I wouldn’t have expected her to. She certainly never said anything about marrying again.’
‘Did you ever make any attempt to find out about men friends?’
He frowned. ‘I certainly did not. It was none of my business.’ The divorce had come about because of his own infidelity, not that of his wife. He had never been jealous of her, had never been given cause to be jealous during their marriage, he didn’t consider himself a jealous man.
‘Would you have objected to her marrying again?’
He began to look angry. ‘No, of course I would not. Why on earth should I object? I married again myself, I’m very happily married.’
‘Did Venetia bear you any resentment over the divorce?’
‘She did not,’ Franklin said brusquely. ‘We were on good terms. She was never a trouble-maker, she was always easy-going, never aggressive, never the sort to make unnecessary difficulties.’
The Chief asked if Venetia had had any kind of job.
‘No,’ Franklin told him. ‘She never worked after we were married. She wasn’t the type to want a career.’
‘Do you know of any close women friends?’
‘I’m afraid not.’ He supplied the Chief with patchy details of various women Venetia had been friendly with during their marriage but the friendships had never been close. ‘I’ve no idea if she still saw any of them,’ he added. He had been able to identify the picture postcard in the hall at the cottage–sent from Italy on holiday–as being from a married couple they had both known slightly during their marriage; he hadn’t seen anything of them since the divorce.
‘What about her family?’
Franklin looked thunderstruck. ‘Her mother! I’d forgotten about her. I’ll have to tell her.’ He looked appalled at the notion. ‘She’s a widow,’ he told Kelsey. ‘Venetia’s father died some years ago, not long after we were married. Her mother sold the house and went back to Wychford, that was where she’d lived as a girl.’ Wychford was a small town ten miles to the west of Cannonbridge. ‘She can’t get about much, she suffers badly from arthritis. She moved into sheltered accommodation a few years ago, one of those places with a warden. I haven’t seen her since the divorce.’ He grimaced. ‘She was pretty upset about all that–even though she’d never thought me good enough for her daughter.’ Venetia had been an only child and he knew of no other relatives.
He looked uneasily up at Kelsey. ‘I’ll have to go over to see Mrs Stacey–Venetia’s mother. I can’t very well tell her over the phone.’ He pushed back his chair. ‘I’d better get cracking.’
‘We can tell her if you like,’ Kelsey offered. ‘We’ll have to see her anyway.’
Detective Sergeant Lambert drove the chief over to Wychford. When they reached the apartment block Kelsey sought out the warden and explained his errand. She took them along to Mrs Stacey’s flat, going in first to prepare the ground, and staying in the room while the Chief broke the news.
Mrs Stacey was a small, slight woman in her late sixties, looking several years older. Her habitual manner appeared withdrawn and self-absorbed; she had a faded, desiccated air, a resigned and melancholy expression.
It seemed to Sergeant Lambert that she bore the news with a good deal more fortitude and self-control than might have been expected. As if she were walled off in her little flat from the happenings of the larger life outside and what filtered through to her restricted world could have no very profound or lasting effect on the small routines of her daily existence.
The warden brought in a tray of tea and waited till Mrs Stacey felt able to answer questions. When the door had finally closed behind the warden Kelsey began by asking Mrs Stacey if she had any idea where her daughter had intended going for the weekend.
‘No idea at all,’ she told him. ‘But then I wouldn’t expect to know.’ She spoke without any sign of emotion, she might have been talking of some chance acquaintance.
She hadn’t seen much of Venetia since she’d moved back to Wychford, she had seen even less of her after the divorce. ‘She brought the children over to see me once in a way. For my birthday or at Christmastime.’ She gestured with a knobby hand. ‘She had her own life. We were never close, I was almost forty when she was born. She was always a lot closer to her father.’
Kelsey asked when she had last seen her daughter. ‘The best part of two months ago,’ she said. ‘It was a Sunday, early in March, a beautiful sunny day. She just put the children in the car and brought them over. She could be like that sometimes, acted on impulse.’ She looked at Kelsey with no expression on her lined, withered face. ‘She didn’t let me know they were coming. I don’t have my own phone here but people can ring the warden.’ Her hands drooped in her lap. ‘I was having a nap after lunch when they came . . .’ Her voice trailed away. It’s beginning to get to her, Sergeant Lambert thought.
‘Did you notice anything in particular about her state of mind?’ Kelsey asked. ‘Did she appear worried in any way? Did she mention any difficulties?’
‘Do you mean difficulties about money? As far as I knew, she was all right for money. She never complained of being short and she always seemed able to afford what she wanted. She never discussed her financial affairs with me.’
‘Did she mention any other kind of worries? Of a personal kind, perhaps?’
She shook her head slowly. ‘She seemed perfectly