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‘When did you last speak to your husband?’ DCI Hollander asks.
‘He phoned me the day the news about Copper Beech broke. We agreed it was better I stayed out of the way: with my public profile, it’d only make things worse if I came home.’
‘Was that the last time you talked to him? Ten days ago?’
‘Yes.’
‘You haven’t had any contact with him since then? No phone calls, no texts, no emails?’
‘No,’ Stacey says awkwardly.
‘Nothing? Was it normal for you not to speak to your husband for long periods of time?’ DCI Hollander asks.
‘I told you, we were working through someissues.’
‘Did he tell you he was going away?’
‘No.’
‘Because the thing is,’ DS Mehdi adds, looking up from the bookshelf, ‘no one seems to have seen him since August twenty-eighth, five days before the news about Copper Beech broke on September second.’
This is a very practised double-act, Stacey realises. Not quite good-cop bad-cop, but a skilled and slick team nonetheless.
‘There were journalists camped outside our house for days,’ she says. ‘I’m sure Felix is just lying low for a bit, until it all blows over.’
‘You think, or youknow?’
She hesitates. ‘I just assumed.’
‘So you don’t know where he is?’
‘No.’
‘According to you, you and your husband were working through a few marital issues, but the subject of divorce had never come up,’ DCI Hollander says. ‘You say it wasn’t usual to spend significant time apart, even though you’d recently moved into a hotel. Your husband was plunged into a major crisis at work, such that you had journalists camping outside your house. And he suddenly broke off all contact with you ten days ago, and you didn’t think that was odd?’
His tone is even, calm; he sounds genuinely interested in her answer.
‘I told you,’ Stacey says. ‘I just assumed he was lying low for a bit.’
‘Lying low from hiswife?’
She drops her gaze to her lap. ‘I thought … I thought maybe the newspapers were right,’ she says, sounding ashamed. ‘Maybe he did take all that money. I didn’t … I didn’t want to talk to him.’
‘His mother, Frances, hasreported him missing,’ DCI Hollander says. ‘She says he hasn’t phoned her in over a fortnight, which is apparently very unusual for him. She says he normally checks in to see how she is at least every other day.’
DS Mehdi finally sits down opposite her and leans forward, his hands dangling between his knees. His socks don’t match, she notices: one black, one grey. ‘Mrs Porter, can you tell me about your husband’s relationship with Millie Downton?’
She knew they’d end up here sooner or later, but the abrupt change of subject sets her nerves jangling.
‘They didn’t get on,’ she says.
‘Didn’t get on? According to several witnesses, they had a very public argument at the Hurlingham Club on—’ he breaks off to consult his notebook, ‘—on the afternoon of August twenty-first, just over three weeks ago. There was even an allegation that Mrs Porter broke your husband’s finger.’
‘It wasn’t broken,’ Stacey says.
‘But the fightdidget physical?’
‘It was a misunderstanding,’ she says. ‘Millie thought she wasdefendingme—’
