Free Death of a Friend by Rebecca Tope

change her name to mine and she says she’s never going to give up her job. It doesn’t look as if I’m ever to be blessed with a son and heir, either.’
    ‘You make it sound like a marriage of convenience.’
    ‘A convenient marriage, certainly,’ Richmond agreed. ‘But make no mistake, I love that woman. And she loves me. I would die for her, without a moment’s hesitation.’
    ‘And would you kill for her?’ Den asked, surprising himself.
    ‘That remains to be seen,’ smiled Richmond with no sign of agitation.

CHAPTER SIX
    As he drove away down the winding lane from High Copse, Den felt he had been there for days. His head was filled with snatches and snippets of information, very few of which seemed to connect to the murder. The main item of interest so far was the brother Frank and his horse-breeding; that was surely of real relevance. If Phil was available, he assumed the two of them would be despatched to Ashburton later that day to have a word with Mr Frank Grattan. Plus, he supposed, Mr Nev Nesbitt, when he finally showed up. Something felt iffy about that particular individual – not only the arm’s-length marriage to Nina, but the leisurely return home to his bereft sons. Checking passenger lists was a job for Jane Nugent, in the scheme of things.
    He felt he’d been immersed in an atmosphere like nothing he could recall experiencing before. The ramshackle, unkempt house, containing people who might have come from another age, or another planet. The strangeness of the relationships, Nina with her absent husband; Charlie, apparently close to both Nina and Alexis; Martha’s patient and surprisingly ordinary husband. And the orphan boys with their bizarrely aristocratic bloodlines and their enviable freedom, living lives that Den could not begin to comprehend. Hugh, so obviously mourning for his mother to the exclusion of everything else; his pale little brother moving from one sheltering aunt to another, more ready, perhaps, to accept a substitute for Nina. And both craving the return of Nevil, their father, if Martha could be believed.
    It was time for lunch. He would stop at the village shop in Chillhampton and get himself a pork pie. Then he had to go and talk to the Grattans, who lived at the northern end of the village. From them he hoped to draw forth a more complete picture of Charlie. Why, for example, was a man of thirty-three still living with the people who’d reared him, and why did he not have a proper job? And what, if anything, did being a Quaker really mean in this day and age?
    * * *
    The interview was painful. Hannah Grattan gave unadorned facts in a soft, patient voice which betrayed none of her feelings. Charlie’s mother, Bill’s wife, had died when the boy was two years old. Hannah had come back from working in Nigeria, in the aftermath of the Biafran War, and had devoted the rest of her life to caring for the two men. Yes, there was another Grattan son, Frank, who had been seventeen when his mother had died. He had left home a week after Hannah arrived, and she had seen very little of him since.
    Den asked to be shown Charlie’s bedroom and Hannah led him up the twisting cottage stairway and onto a landing. Four doors opened from it and she indicated the first one. ‘In there,’ she said. ‘We haven’t touched anything.’
    The room was square, with a low ceiling, the view over open fields. A single bed with a wooden slatted headboard was covered with a handmade patchwork quilt. A large desk was covered with magazines, including Horse and Hound, The Friend, The Vegan and Resurgence , as well as a chaotic litter of papers. A computer sat in one corner, with an expensive-looking laser printer on a second table alongside. Clothes were obviously kept to a minimum, in a neat three-drawered chest under the window. The wall above the desk was covered with newspaperarticles, hand-written addresses, phone numbers, reminders, all attached with Blu-tack.
    The impression was in