When she spoke like that, I glimpsed the woman who had once patrolled the corridors at Moxham Heath Primary School as the deputy headmaster’s wife. I knew exactly what she must have been like. ‘Tuck in your shirt tail! Let’s have a little less noise, please. No running in the corridor!’ We’d had a matron just like that at my prep school. We’d all been terrified of her.

I went back to the trolley and poured a second measure, but I made sure it was smaller than the first. Hawthorne wouldn’t be too pleased if she passed out before she could tell us what he wanted to know. I gave her the glass and she took another swig. It was quite a performance, especially considering it was only four o’clock in the afternoon – but then I suspected that time had no meaning for her. There were no clocks in the room, perhaps deliberately.

‘I’m not frightened of you, Mr Hawthorne.’ She wasn’t quite slurring her words, but the alcohol had certainly had an effect on her speech. It had released her inhibitions, emboldened her. ‘Those two boys deserved everything they got. They crept into Philip’s study and they put that bust on the top of the door and when he walked in, it fell onto his head and broke his skull. He went into a coma and the next day he died.’ It took her a few moments to recover. ‘I always told him to get rid of that stupid thing. He had no interest in Cicero. But he thought it impressed the children.’

‘What sort of man was your husband, Mrs Alden?’

‘Not an easy one.’ She swirled the whisky in the glass, tempted to finish it. ‘He took a long time to find himself when he came out of the army. He missed the camaraderie. He wanted to come back to Wiltshire because that was where he was born – he grew up in Corsham. His parents had the manor there, but their money had gone long before I met him. We were both poor as church mice. He had his army pension, but that never went very far. We didn’t even have our own home.’

‘You have this one. And you live here rent-free.’

She hesitated. ‘Yes. The school has been very kind to me.’

‘Why did your husband become a teacher?’

‘He needed a job and we needed somewhere to live. I was the one who suggested it. Obviously, if Philip could get a job in a private boarding school, he would get accommodation, which would kill two birds with one stone. He did apply to several prep schools in the area, but they wouldn’t have him, so he did a teacher-training course and after a couple of years in Trowbridge – dreadful place! – he ended up at Moxham Heath Primary School. We rented a home to begin with, but when he was promoted to deputy head we were given Glebe Cottage. I’ve been here ever since.’