There was a silence. Waldegrave’s discomfort was palpable.
‘My daddy died,’ Orlando informed the room. Her gaze was direct and eager, seeking a reaction. Strike, who felt that something was required of one of them, said:
‘I know. It’s very sad.’
‘Edna said it was sad,’ replied Orlando, as though she had hoped for something more original, and she slid out of the room again.
‘Sit down,’ Leonora invited the two men. ‘They for me?’ she added, indicating the flowers in Waldegrave’s hand.
‘Yes,’ he said, fumbling a little as he handed them over but remaining on his feet. ‘Look, Leonora, I don’t want to take up any of your time just now, you must be so busy with – with arrangements and—’
‘They won’t let me have his body,’ said Leonora with devastating honesty, ‘so I can’t make no arrangements yet.’
‘Oh, and there’s a card,’ said Waldegrave desperately, feeling in his pockets. ‘Here… well, if there’s anything we can do, Leonora, anything—’
‘Can’t see what anyone can do,’ said Leonora shortly, taking the envelope he proffered. She sat down at the table where Strike had already pulled up a chair, glad to take the weight off his leg.
‘Well, I think I’ll be off, leave you to it,’ said Waldegrave. ‘Listen, Leonora, I hate to ask at a time like this, but Bombyx Mori… have you got a copy here?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Owen took it with him.’
‘I’m so sorry, but it would help us if… could I have a look and see if any of it’s been left behind?’
She peered up at him through those huge, outdated glasses.
‘Police’ve taken anything he left,’ she said. ‘They went through the study like a dose of salts yesterday. Locked it up and taken the key – I can’t even go in there myself now.’
‘Oh, well, if the police need… no,’ said Waldegrave, ‘fair enough. No, I’ll see myself out, don’t get up.’
He walked up the hall and they heard the front door close behind him.
‘Dunno why he came,’ said Leonora sullenly. ‘Make him feel like he’s done something nice, I suppose.’
She opened the card he had given her. There was a watercolour of violets on the front. Inside were many signatures.
‘Being all nice now, because they feel guilty,’ said Leonora, throwing the card down on the Formica-topped table.
‘Guilty?’
‘They never appreciated him. You got to market books,’ she said, surprisingly. ‘You got to promote ’em. It’s up to the publishers to give ’em a push. They wouldn’t never get him on TV or anything like he needed.’
Strike guessed that these were complaints she had learned from her husband.
‘Leonora,’ he said, taking out his notebook. ‘Is it all right if I ask you a couple of questions?’
‘I s’pose. I don’t know nothing, though.’
‘Have you heard from anyone who spoke to Owen or saw him after he left here on the fifth?’
She shook her head.
‘No friends, no family?’
‘No one,’ she said. ‘D’you want a cup of tea?’
‘Yeah, that’d be great,’ said Strike, who did not much fancy anything made in this grubby kitchen, but wanted to keep her talking.
‘How well d’you know the people at Owen’s publisher?’ he asked over the noisy filling of the kettle.
She shrugged.
‘Hardly at all. Met that Jerry when Owen done a book signing once.’
‘You’re not friendly with anyone at Roper Chard?’
‘No. Why would I be? It was Owen worked with them, not me.’
‘And you haven’t read Bombyx Mori, have you?’ Strike asked her casually.
‘I’ve told you that already. I don’t like reading ’em till they’re published. Why’s everyone keep asking me that?’ she said, looking up from the plastic bag in which she had been rummaging for biscuits.
‘What was the matter with the body?’ she demanded suddenly. ‘What happened to him? They won’t tell me. They took his toothbrush for DNA to identify him. Why won’t they let me see him?’
He had dealt with this question before, from other wives, from distraught parents. He fell back, as so often before, on partial truth.
‘He’d been lying there for a while,’ he said.
‘How long?’
‘They don’t know yet.’
‘How was it done?’
‘I don’t think they know that exactly, yet.’
‘But they must…’
She fell silent as Orlando shuffled back into the room, clutching not just her plush orang-utan but also a sheaf of brightly coloured drawings.
‘Where’s Jerry gone?’
‘Back to work,’ said Leonora.
‘He’s got nice hair. I don’t like your hair,’ she told Strike. ‘It’s fuzzy.’
‘I don’t like it much, either,’ he said.
‘He don’t want to look at pictures now, Dodo,’ said her mother impatiently, but Orlando ignored her mother and spread her paintings out on the table for Strike to see.
‘I did them.’
They were recognisably flowers, fish and birds. A child’s menu could be read through the back of one of them.
‘They’re very good,’ said Strike. ‘Leonora, d’you know if the police found any bits of Bombyx Mori yesterday, when they searched the study?’
‘Yeah,’ she said, dropping teabags into chipped mugs. ‘Two old typewriter ribbons; they’d fallen down the back of the desk. They come out and ask me where the rest of ’em were; I said, he took ’em when he went.’
‘I like Daddy’s study,’ announced Orlando, ‘because he gives me paper for drawing.’
‘It’s a tip, that study,’ said Leonora, switching the kettle on. ‘Took ’em ages to look through everything.’
‘Auntie Liz went in there,’ said Orlando.
‘When?’ asked Leonora, glaring at her daughter with two mugs in her hands.
‘When she came and you were in the loo,’ said Orlando. ‘She walked into Daddy’s study. I seen her.’
‘She don’t have no right to go in there,’ said Leonora. ‘Was she poking around?’