“Damon thought she was spoiled by her father—that’s who she was a doormat for, not Damon. She always tried to persuade him to do whatever her father thought they should do: buy the house he wanted them to buy, tone down his column so as not to embarrass Daddy at the golf club. That’s if you believe Damon,” Hannah added. “I did, actually, about that. I don’t think he lied to me much about anything else—only about loving me.”

“Were Verity and Abigail still on decent terms with Damon?” Sam asked.

“No, terms of pure hatred, in both cases,” said Hannah. “He was vile to both of them, during and after the marriages. There you go: concrete proof that he’s not a man who’s nice to his wives—so why was he to me? What was he hoping to achieve?”

Simon didn’t know, but he wanted to. He reminded himself that Hannah might be lying. That struck him as more likely than her being honest but wrong.

Why dream up such a bizarre lie?

“Do you think Verity or Abigail might have hated Damon enough to kill him?” asked Sam.

“Either, yes, easily,” said Hannah. “But that applies to dozens of people. Every time Damon published a column, he made between three and ten new enemies.”

“A list of names would be helpful,” Simon said. “The ones you know.”

“It’d make more sense to give you a list of people who didn’t hate him,” said Hannah. “Me. There, that was quick. He should have pretended to be kind and caring with more people the way he did with me. He might still be alive.”

“Going back to this morning . . .” said Sam. “You said Damon went up to his study at eight thirty?”

“Yes, after breakfast. I didn’t see or hear from him until ten thirty when I took him up a cup of tea and found him.” Hannah stiffened in her chair at the memory. “What does ‘He is no less dead’ mean?” she asked suddenly, as if the strangeness of the words had only just struck her. “Why would someone put that on the wall?”

“We don’t know,” said Sam. “You can’t think of anything it might mean?”

“No. It makes no sense to me.”

“Between eight thirty and ten thirty, did you hear the doorbell?” Simon asked.

“No, and I would have. It’s loud down here. No one rang the bell.”

“I’m wondering, in that case, how the killer got into the house without breaking in.”

“I don’t know,” said Hannah.

“And you didn’t hear Damon talking to anyone, any footsteps, laughter?” Sam asked.

“No, nothing. But I had the radio on, so nothing that wasn’t really loud would have filtered through. Only the doorbell would have.”

“The phone?” Sam asked. “The landline, I mean.”

Hannah shook her head.