‘I just can’t believe it. He’s that bad . . . this is awful, darling.’ Cleo’s voice was breaking up and she started crying again.

He hugged her tight.

She bowed her head for some moments, then looked up at him, sniffing and wiping her tears. ‘Look, I wasn’t going to tell you this, not tonight anyway, but maybe you should hear it before you see it for yourself.’ She fell silent.

‘See what?’

She shook her head. ‘Forget it, I shouldn’t tell you. Now isn’t the time.’

He looked hard at her. ‘You can’t leave me dangling. What is it? Tell me?’

She shook her head. ‘I shouldn’t have raised it, not tonight.’

‘Well you have,’ he said, his anxiety rising again. ‘So what is it? Tell me, please?’

‘Bruno’s two favourite hens, Fraulein Andrea and Fraulein Julia.’ She looked at him flatly.

‘Yes, what about them?’

Hesitating again, she said, ‘I went out this morning to let them out. But I couldn’t find them anywhere. So I looked inside the hen house thinking they might be broody and sitting in nesting boxes. They were in there.’ She looked at him with a strange expression.

After some moments, Roy Grace said, ‘Broody, as you thought?’

She shook her head. ‘No, Roy. They were dead.’

‘Dead?’

She nodded.

‘Poor things. It said in that book you got that sometimes they die suddenly and young – often when an egg gets stuck. Is that what happened – they got egg-bound?’

She gave him a resigned look. ‘I wish I could say it was.’ She shook her head again. ‘But I don’t think getting an egg stuck would do that to Andrea and Julia.’

‘What is it? What aren’t you telling me?’

‘Both had their necks wrung, their heads twisted round the wrong way.’

54

Tuesday 3 September

‘The time is 7.39 p.m., Tuesday,’ Norman Potting said for the benefit of the recording. ‘DS Potting and DS Exton interviewing Niall Paternoster, under caution in the presence of his solicitor. This is the fourth interview.’

‘Niall,’ Exton began, ‘can we go back to your wife’s engagement and wedding rings and her passport. Why were they apparently hidden under a floorboard? How did they get there?’

Looking increasingly ragged and short-tempered, Niall replied, ‘I haven’t a clue.’

Exton looked him in the eye. ‘Did you put them there?’

‘No bloody way. I can only think Eden put them there.’

‘Why would your wife do that?’

‘I haven’t a clue. You’re the detectives, not me.’

Ignoring the remark, Exton glanced at his notes.

‘Your wife is normally active on a number of social media platforms, but there’s been no activity by her on any since Thursday night. Can you explain that?’

‘I was with her through until Sunday afternoon, so I don’t know why she didn’t post. She’s always on it, bloody lives on it.’

Exton nodded politely. ‘You told us you didn’t know why Eden wasn’t answering her phone and that it appeared to be switched off. Can you explain how it came to be underneath your bed in the house? How did it get there? Were you responsible for hiding it there? Is there something you’re not telling us?’ He stared hard at Paternoster, but the man just gave a ‘couldn’t care less’ shrug.