“Your appearance is unusual,” said Simon. “Lots of men, maybe even most, would prefer a supermodel type, but not everyone’s the same. You must know that from your patients—aren’t some of their problems unique? And Damon . . . from a quick look at some of his writing, he doesn’t strike me as having been an average man.”

“He wasn’t,” said Hannah. “And thank you for not saying what everyone else I’ve ever discussed this with has said: that I’m beautiful in my own way, that men are just as likely to fall in love with me as they are with a stunning model. Of course they aren’t!”

“Stunning models often don’t look as if they’d be very interesting if you got to know them,” said Sam.

Hannah ignored him and addressed Simon instead. “You mentioned my patients. You’re right. Most psychological problems and relationship issues are as common as physical attraction to pretty faces and hourglass figures, but every now and then someone turns up with a completely new one, and I think, ‘Wow. I really ought to write a paper about this case and publish it in a journal.’ I had a patient recently who had a pathological terror of train and bus drivers, taxi drivers, airplane pilots. She was neurotically convinced that all the people who might conceivably drive her anywhere were in league against her, conspiring to take her to some unspeakably frightening destination that she couldn’t even imagine. She really believed that if they succeeded in getting her there, she’d be destroyed. I mean, she knew logically that it couldn’t be true, but she couldn’t get over her phobia.”

“I feel that way every time I get the number forty-five bus from Rawndesley to Spilling in the morning,” Uzma called out from the other side of the room. “The speed of some of those drivers, tearing around corners.”

Hannah looked sharply at Sam as if to say, Isn’t it bad enough that my husband’s been murdered? Did you have to send me this idiot as well?

“So maybe Damon had outlandish taste in women,” said Simon, enjoying Sam’s discomfort at his frankness. “Maybe odd-looking was his thing.”

“No,” said Hannah. “There might be a rare man somewhere on this earth whose perfect fantasy woman looks as if she’s been assembled from odd parts found at a flea market, but not Damon. You’d know that if you’d read his columns. He wrote in one that he could never love an ugly woman. When I asked him about it, he said, ‘You’re not ugly, darling,’ as I knew he would. His two ex-wives are both beautiful: Princess Doormat and Dr. Despot.”

“Pardon?” said Sam.

“That’s what Damon called them, in his column.”

“We’ll need to talk to them. What are their real names?”

“Verity Hewson, doormat, and Abigail Meredith, despot.”

“Why ‘Princess Doormat’?” Simon asked.