Free (2011) Only the Innocent by Rachel Abbott Page B

surprised at the directness of the gaze that Laura Fletcher gave him. Although wearing glasses today, Tom could see her eyes were no longer red from weeping, and whilst she was still quietly spoken there seemed to be a new determination in her demeanour.
    ‘Detective Chief Inspector, as you appear to have about fifteen minutes before you must leave - I presume to attend my husband’s post-mortem - do you think we could spend that time going through what you already know, please? I was too shocked last night to respond, and I want to help in any way I can.’
    ‘If you’re sure you don’t want a few minutes alone, Lady Fletcher?’
    ‘No, thank you. What I’d really like is for this all to be over as quickly as possible, and if you don’t mind I would prefer it if you would call me Laura. I never really wanted a title, and now that Hugo’s dead I’d really like to rid myself of the formality of it all. Not too many years ago, everybody called me Laura - from the milkman to my clients. Now it’s the most difficult thing in the world to get past the bloody title.’
    Slightly surprised by Laura’s tone of voice, Tom decided to give her some time whether she believed she needed it or not. Why was she so different today? he wondered. He could only imagine it was because she wanted to get any questions out of the way to give herself space to grieve.
    ‘Okay, Laura it is. Please call me Tom. I’ll go and find DS Robinson - Becky - and we’ll spend the next ten or fifteen minutes filling in some gaps. Excuse me for a moment.’ He left her with her cup of tea and went to have a quick word with Becky to discuss interview tactics, but also to alert her to the change in Laura’s manner.
    But by the time he returned to the office with Becky, Laura’s veneer of determination had seeped away, and she seemed to have retreated into herself once again. She was sitting perfectly still, gazing at nothing, her mind clearly miles away. Tom moved around to the other side of the desk and took his seat, while Becky pulled up a chair to the side. Laura turned to look at Tom, and for a moment seemed surprised that there was anybody else in the room. She appeared to mentally shake herself, straighten her back and square her shoulders, as if to do battle.
    ‘Okay, Laura. I’m going to bring you up to date with what we know at the moment, and please feel free to interrupt. When we come to Oxfordshire we’ll need to look through Sir Hugo’s things, and try to see if there is anything that would point to a motive.’
    ‘That’s fine - but please just refer to him as Hugo. He would hate it; titles were something of a family obsession. But he’s not here to know any different, is he?’
    If he thought she was difficult to read last night, today it was impossible. It was as if she’d built a wall around her grief, which she determinedly reassembled each time it started to crumble. And now she was using antagonism against her dead husband to strengthen her defences. But anger against the deceased was a natural reaction in the early stages of grief, and Tom was more than happy to drop all formalities if that made her more comfortable.
    ‘We know that Beryl Stubbs found your husband - Hugo - at about 12.45. That’s an approximation, but she was too upset and shocked to phone it in until about 1.45. The local police arrived on the scene just before 2 pm. We estimate the time of death to be between 11.30 and 12. Mrs Stubbs probably arrived less than an hour after your husband died, and if she hadn’t missed the first bus because of an argument with her husband, she would probably have interrupted the scene.’
    Tom smiled to try to take the edge off things a little.
    ‘Beryl likes to blame her husband for just about everything, but on this occasion he may possibly have saved her life.’
    Laura had once more gone very pale, the hard facts of her husband’s death no doubt breaking through her carefully constructed barricade.
    ‘Do you