‘Had they lived here long?’

‘I think they’d always been here, as far as I know. The family was born and bred in this house. We moved in – that’s Andrew and me, and our daughter – we moved here, oh, nearly ten years ago now. I can’t believe it’s been that long! Anyway, no one else in the street seemed to care for the Graveses very much, from what I could tell, so I felt I had to help. What else could I do? He was so lonely, these last few years especially.’

‘Was he ill?’

‘He had a very nasty cough, and I was always telling him to get it seen to. But he was a hardy soul. The type of man who never surrenders. But here, you know …’ she touched her chest above her heart ‘… in here, something had given in.’

Hobbes thought about this. ‘Was he depressed?’

‘How do you mean? He wasn’t crazy –’

‘I’m not saying that.’

‘– or anything like it, not that I could tell.’

‘I mean …’ Hobbes hesitated.

Latimer came in to help him. ‘Was he sad about his life, about being alone, and so on?’

‘Well …’ Mrs Travis considered, ‘… he missed his wife, but I said that, didn’t I?’

‘Anything else?’

Now she looked intently at DS Latimer. ‘Leonard wasn’t exactly a talkative man. In fact most of the time he just sat in the kitchen, mumbling to himself about the rotten state of the world. But on occasion he would speak to me, and he’d smile and laugh – he really was a nice man when that happened.’

Hobbes said, ‘What did he talk about?’

‘About the theatre. It was the one thing he loved. He was involved in it himself, when he was younger.’

‘As an actor?’

‘Maybe. Or more of a director. I could never get complete sense out of him. He spoke in opposite directions, if you know what I mean.’

She walked to the nearest wall and singled out one of the many framed photographs hanging there. ‘This is him as a younger man.’

Hobbes went over to look at the image. It showed a man in his early thirties, darkly handsome with brushed-back hair, wearing a sharp suit and a tie over a white shirt. A glamorous woman stood at his side. She was wearing an evening gown; it was a black-and-white photograph but Hobbes could imagine the dazzle of the many sequins covering the outfit. The backdrop showed a bunch of other people, all well dressed, smoking cigars, supping champagne in a club of some kind, very like one of those upscale drinking dens he remembered from his youth, patrolling the streets of Soho.

‘This is his wife, Mary.’ Mrs Travis pointed to the woman in the photograph. ‘Although he always referred to her as Mary Estelle, her professional name. She was an actress. Quite well-known, I think, in her day.’

‘He spoke of her often?’

‘Oh, yes. They were devoted to each other. She’s very beautiful, don’t you think?’