Free The Thread of Evidence by Bernard Knight

reckon I loved her then, but I came to hate her before those couple of years were past.’
    Peter could see the old man’s pale eyes moistening behind his old-fashioned glasses. He hurriedly changed the subject.
    â€˜But what about her actual disappearance – why should there be all that nonsense about her being dead?’
    â€˜The last few months were worse than ever, boy. She would come home from Liverpool, or from being with Lloyd, and start fighting right away – real fighting, shouting, screaming, kicking – everything! She even came at me with a knife once, in her temper – saying how I’d ruined her life and was keeping her short of everything. It was terrible!’
    Roland rose abruptly from the fireside and began pacing the floor again.
    â€˜I started hitting her back in the end – partly to keep her off me. She used to go mad with rage. But, in the end, it was hate and temper on my part, too – God forgive me!’
    Peter heard his uncle’s voice tremble. He had never before seen him in anything other than his usual placid and rather vague state of mind. The change was disturbing, almost frightening; and Peter was suddenly afraid that the old man was going to break down altogether.
    â€˜But what actually happened at the end?’ he persisted, trying to stem the flood of emotion by concentrating on fact.
    Roland Hewitt stopped walking around and leant heavily on the edge of the kitchen table, staring down at the cloth.
    â€˜One day, she didn’t come home. Must have been the middle of September, nineteen twenty-nine. There was nothing new in that. For a couple of weeks I thought she had gone on one of her trips to Liverpool. But then a letter came for her in her sister’s handwriting, so I knew she couldn’t be there. After another week, there was a second letter. Then, soon after, this sister – another bitch cast out of the same mould as Mavis herself – arrived on the doorstep demanding to know where Mavis was. Just about hysterical, she was.’
    Peter’s uncle paused as the scene flooded back into his mind.
    â€˜I didn’t have any time for this sister and I told her so. I’d had about enough of Mavis’s antics by then. I wasn’t anxious to go hunting around the country, looking for her. I thought she was probably with some man. The sister raised the roof. I sent her packing, and she went straight to the police in Aberystwyth – saying that I’d done away with my wife.’
    Peter stared at Roland incredulously. ‘But that’s just plain ridiculous! Surely they didn’t take any notice of a silly accusation like that.’
    â€˜It wasn’t just her word, boy. I didn’t know it then, but Mavis had been writing to her sister saying that she was going to leave me and that I was ill-treating her and injuring her and all the rest of it. The last time she went home, she showed some bruises to her.’
    â€˜What was the point of that?’
    â€˜I think she was working up to getting a divorce herself. She was a cunning little devil. She probably thought that, if she could divorce me for cruelty before I left her, she would get a good settlement and be free to carry on her affairs. Anyway, there were some letters as well, to this sister, which suggested that I was on the point of doing something drastic to her. Then that swine Ceri Lloyd went to the police with a lot of lies and made it worse still.’
    â€˜What happened then?’
    â€˜This sister had gone to the local paper in Aber and spun them the same yarn. They published an appeal for anyone who knew where Mavis was to contact them. Damn reporters came pestering me at Bryn Glas. Then the police came nosing around. A wonder I wasn’t had up for turning a shotgun on someone, the trouble I had over those few weeks.’
    â€˜What did the police have to say to you?’
    â€˜I don’t think they took it very seriously