address.’ She pinned her card onto a cork board next to the sort of motivational messages that her more hippy-dippy friends posted on Facebook. ‘Please get in touch.’
The women filed out, leaving Caroline and Jen in the room.
‘I’m sorry if they seemed rude,’ Caroline said. ‘Some of them haven’t had good experiences with the police. And they have so little confidence. Aggression is often the only way they know to assert themselves.’
Jen nodded. She supposed that made sense. She’d been thought a moody, angry cow when she worked in Merseyside. Work had been the only place she could fight back.
‘Was Simon’s wallet stolen when he was killed?’ Caroline asked. ‘Is that why you asked about the money?’
‘We think he had another source of income and it’s possible that he was a victim of theft. Have you noticed any of your clients suddenly flashing the cash? New clothes? Suddenly moving into new accommodation?’
Caroline shook her head. ‘Sorry.’ She got to her feet and led Jen from the room. She was wearing smart black shoes with a small heel and they clicked on the wooden floor, marking a rhythm, as Jen followed. Outside in the corridor they paused. The chatting women had gone. Jen had the sense that there was something Caroline wanted to say. She waited.
‘I was wondering about the funeral,’ Caroline said. ‘I’d like to do that for him, if there’s nobody else. Organize it, I mean. Ed would help. Unless Simon’s wife…’
Jen remembered her conversation with Kate in the big flat overlooking the Downs. The woman’s memories of Simon as a schoolboy and a soldier. ‘I’m not sure. Would you like me to ask?’
‘Yes!’ Caroline sounded pleased, grateful. ‘I feel that I let Simon down in life. At least I could do something to help now.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
MATTHEW ARRIVED BACK AT THE STATION from Lovacott just in time to grab a sandwich before Jason Cramer, the solicitor from Exeter, turned up. All the way back in the car, the detective had been thinking about Maurice’s account of Grace Salter landing at the Braddick house, desperate, bruised and bleeding. He’d been trying to work out if there could be another explanation for what might have happened. He still found it hard to reconcile his memories of the upright, principled man he’d admired when he was a boy with this new image of a bully and a wife-beater.
Cramer arrived right on time. He was red-faced, jovial and had spent the morning golfing and his lunchtime in the clubhouse. Matthew hoped he hadn’t driven from the golf course into Barnstaple after a liquid lunch. When they sat across his desk and started talking, however, he discovered that Cramer was quite sober and very sharp. Matthew decided that the jolly demeanour was a professional front, a ploy to make his opponents underestimate him.
‘I saw that a man had been killed on the coast, but I didn’t relate that incident to my client. Though perhaps I should have done, in the circumstance. How did you find out about my involvement with Mr Walden?’
‘You’d sent a letter to one of his addresses.’
‘So I did, arranging an appointment.’
‘Can you tell me what he was consulting you about?’
‘Not in any detail.’ Cramer leaned back in his seat. ‘Not because I’m being difficult, but because I wasn’t clear in my own mind exactly what he wanted.’
‘Had you met him?’
‘No. We had two telephone conversations and then I wrote to confirm an appointment for him to come into the office in Exeter.’
‘That was the letter we saw.’ Matthew took the letter, still in its plastic transparent envelope, and placed it on the desk.
Cramer glanced at it. ‘Yes.’
‘Did he give you any idea why he’d chosen to come to you, rather than a more local solicitor?’ This had been troubling Matthew since he’d first seen the letter. Walden didn’t drive and the train journey along the Taw Valley between Barnstaple and Exeter was pretty but very slow.
Cramer shrugged. ‘Word of mouth probably. That’s how most people choose their lawyers.’ He gave a little chortle. ‘And we are very good.’
Matthew wasn’t sure that Walden mixed with many people who would recommend a lawyer based in the county town. ‘You must have some idea why he needed your advice, if you spoke twice on the phone.’
‘Really, I’m not sure that I do. He came across as rather a strange chap. A bit intense. At first it seemed a straightforward matter of writing his will. He had no living relatives and he was considering