‘Mind if I sit in?’

Her presence immediately calmed Nicholas Graves. He sat down without another word, and Hobbes followed suit. Latimer remained standing. She took charge.

‘Nicholas, were you close to your father?’

‘Not particularly, no.’

‘So you didn’t see him very often?’

‘No, not really, not these days … now and then.’

Hobbes let his sergeant do the talking. She must’ve been watching at the glass the whole time: so much for not wanting to join in.

Latimer asked, ‘When was the last time you saw him?’

‘Oh, that would be, let me see … about four years ago. I don’t have any children of my own, you see.’

‘Right. No grandchildren, no reason to visit.’

A single nod in response.

‘What about your mother?’

At this question there was a definite change in Nicholas’s appearance: his whole face seemed to fold inwards, the sides of the cheeks almost touching each other. It was a startling thing to witness. Hobbes was staring at a man who wanted nothing more than to vanish into himself.

Latimer pressed the point. ‘She’s in a home, I believe?’

‘Yes, that’s right. She went in about … five years ago, it was.’

‘For?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘What kind of home?’

‘Just an old people’s home.’ He paused, blinking. ‘She isn’t crazy or anything like that. Just, you know, a bit under the weather.’

‘I see.’

And then Nicholas said something interesting: ‘We took Mary Estelle away from him, from Father.’ He ended the statement with a weak smile.

Hobbes nodded, giving nothing away. ‘Do you have any siblings?’ he asked.

‘I have two sisters, Rosamund and Camilla. One older, one younger. I was born in the middle.’

‘And did they go round to Bridlemere very much?’

‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. We are a … separated family.’ His voice took on a definite and very deliberate edge. ‘We have, each of us, taken very differing pathways through life.’ The skin around his eyes twitched at a sudden thought. ‘Oh dear. I’ll have to inform them today.’

Latimer took a seat at the table and smiled, hoping to draw him closer. Graves responded well to this: he leaned forwards just a little way.

‘Nicholas, are you sure you don’t know what the dresses might mean? You have no clue at all?’

He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, I really don’t.’

‘But you do understand our concern, if some of them have human blood smeared on them?’

‘My father – our father, I should say – he was never a rational man, or a kind one. In fact, he was often the opposite. Leonard Graves was a creative person, a playwright. He was fêted in his day, before the fashion in drama changed in the 1950s. Like many of that generation, the first night of Look Back in Anger made him terribly out of date.’

Hobbes asked a question of his own: ‘He was more interested in his job than in the family, is that what you mean?’