He was looking for papers, letters, address books. Where would they be? In the desk where Runcorn had already looked, or in some other similar kind of place. He moved quickly to the desk, opened it and started with the pigeonholes, then the drawers. There was surprisingly little for a woman who conducted her own affairs, and nothing dating farther back than a few months. Presumably that was when she had come to London.

There was nothing else to Emma, which was not surprising. They would naturally all have been posted. He was chilled inside at the thought of what Emma might have. And it seemed Katrina had not kept Emma’s other letters, at least not in the desk. Nor was there any note of her address. Was it one that she knew so well there was no need to note it down?

He stood in the middle of the floor, staring around him. Where else might she keep anything on paper? Where did she cook? Did she have recipe books, kitchen accounts that were separate? A diary? Where did women keep diaries? Bedside table or cabinet? Under the mattress, if it were private enough.

He searched more and more frantically, trying to steady his hands and be methodical, miss nothing, replace everything as he had found it. There were no other letters, no address book, only the cooking notes any woman might have, a book of recipes handed on from Eveline Mary M. Austin, and brief memos on how to launder certain difficult fabrics.

He found the diary just as he was about to give up. He had actually sat down on the bed, sweat on his face, frustration making his hands stiff and clumsy, when he felt a hardness in the lace-covered decorative pillow at the head, over the coverlet. He fished inside the fold at the back and drew out the hardcovered little book. He knew instantly what it was, and opened it, gulping his breath at fear of what he would find. It could be anything, more doubts of himself, words that would prove Dalgarno’s guilt, or even someone else’s, or nothing of use at all. And he hated the intrusion. Diaries were often intimate and shatteringly private. He did not want to read it, and he had to.

Inside the flyleaf was an inscription: “To my dearest Katrina, from your Aunt Eveline.” He only glanced at the pages. The first date was over ten years ago, and the entries were sporadic, sometimes merely the notation of a date, at others a page or more, even two for events of great importance to her. He had not time to read them all, and he concentrated on the more recent ones, particularly since meeting Dalgarno.