him than me.’ Matthew thought she sounded petulant and spoiled like a child in the playground, dropped for another ‘best friend’. Perhaps such a beautiful woman was used to getting her own way. It must have been hard, though, having a stranger about the place when the friends had been so close. Hard, too, for Walden to live with the resentment.
‘When did you last see him?’ Jen directed the question towards Caroline.
‘As I said, I heard him yesterday morning but I didn’t see him. Sometimes I gave him a lift into Barnstaple, but not yesterday. I shouted up to ask him, but he said he wasn’t ready and he’d make his own way in. Something important had turned up. I wondered if he had a meeting at the hotel to discuss starting work there again at the beginning of the season.’
‘Did he volunteer at the Woodyard every day?’
‘Most days,’ Caroline said. ‘He enjoyed it.’
‘Who organized the placement?’
‘I did.’ Caroline paused. ‘My father’s on the board of trustees, so I know the place. I thought it would be great for Simon’s confidence; it would help him to prepare for paid work again.’
‘Simon Walden had psychiatric problems?’ Jen asked it as a question but it was clear that she knew the answer.
‘He’d suffered from depression and alcohol dependence, but there’d been a huge improvement since he started living here.’ The reply was almost defensive.
‘You were his social worker?’
Caroline hesitated. ‘His project worker. My father set up a small charity at St Cuthbert’s in memory of my mother, a place where people in crisis would be made welcome. She suffered depression and committed suicide when I was a teenager. It changed my life. Neither of us wanted any other family to go through that loss. I trained as a psychiatric social worker and took over the running of the project once I’d had a few years’ experience in the field. We run it as a safe space for people with mental health problems during the day and organize evening group sessions a couple of times a week.’
Caroline seemed young, in her early thirties at most. Matthew wondered how she could spend her day in such emotionally intense situations, working with people who must remind her of her mother. He found the notion horrific. But then, he thought, he was spending his working day investigating murder. The sensory overload in this room made him feel suddenly ill, as if he’d overdosed on sugar, and besides, they shouldn’t be having this conversation in front of a witness.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘I suggest Miss Henry heads off to work. Let’s leave Miss Preece and Sergeant Rafferty here to chat in private.’ He turned to Gaby. ‘I’ll catch up with you at the Woodyard later if I need to.’
Gaby stood up. He followed her out of the house. She lingered on the step, but he turned away and walked briskly up the hill to his car.
Chapter Seven
MAURICE BRADDICK HAD GOT INTO THE habit of watching television at breakfast time. When he was working there’d been no time for anything but a quick cup of tea and then he’d be out of the house, driving into Barnstaple to Butchers’ Row, often arriving before the others even though he had furthest to go. He’d pick up something to eat when he got to the shop – Pam, the owner’s wife, made bacon sandwiches to sell to the stallholders in the pannier market – or he’d hang on until lunchtime and have a pasty. He didn’t think much about work now, because it was too painful to remember the companionship and the jokes, what he was missing.
After his retirement, he and Maggie would sit together for a few moments in the kitchen once the taxi had come for Luce and they were on their own. They’d have another cup of tea and chat over their plans for the day. Maggie had never been a great one for TV, because she hadn’t been able to stay still for long enough to watch it. She’d be on her feet and out into the garden. Or up to the village to organize the over-sixties club or chivvying him to drive her out with the meals-on-wheels. He’d never minded. He liked being told what to do.
Now, he and Lucy watched the small television in the kitchen while they ate their breakfast. Lucy had her favourite presenters and it made her day if one of them was on. There was a woman with short hair and