Hennessey sat silently next to Webster and opposite Hemmings in the softly decorated and carpeted orange-hued interview suite. He felt that Mr and Mrs Hemmings probably would have made an odd couple in life, more because of their personalities than anything else. Hennessey, for some reason, thought that Edith Hemmings must have been a spirited person in life, the clothes she wore, her courageous presence of mind in hiding the electricity bill in her shoe, that, he felt, showed initiative. And she had been adventurous enough to relocate from Canada. Yet here was her husband who dressed in a dull manner, and had a monotonous tone of voice. . almost whiny, Hennessey thought. Her hairstyle contrasted with his centre-parted style, attached to his skull with cream as if he was the very caricature of a Victorian railway booking clerk. The image of them as a couple didn’t gel in his mind. He also found the job that Hemmings gave, ‘an under manager in the biscuit factory’, not the sort of job that would attract a woman of Edith Hemmings’s taste in clothes, and he was a man who whined about having to take time off work while ‘our Edith was missing’. . again, not the sort of husband he would have thought to Edith Hemmings’s taste.
‘Were you long married?’ Hennessey asked.
‘No, sir. . just a few months.’
‘Months!’
‘Yes, sir, about eighteen, that’s all. Just a year and a half, if that. I was a bachelor getting close to retirement and I thought, well that’s me, lived alone, set to die alone, then along comes our Edith. We met in a pub in town. It was she who started to talk to me. I was just in there for a pint to get out of the house for an hour or two. . I get fed up with my own company now and again. . and it changed my life. I’ve never been very successful with women and I wondered what she wanted at first but she seemed properly interested in me and then one thing led to another and another and another and eventually we got married quietly at the registry office and she came and settled with me in my little house in Dringhouses. She was keen to know that I owned the house and that I wasn’t renting it, she just wanted that bit of security, I assumed, and that’s fair enough. So, anyway, I showed her the papers about the house, the little bit of mortgage I am still paying off. . after that she was OK about it. Quite happy. She was Mrs Hemmings. Mine. . our Edith for me to come home to.’
‘I see.’ Hennessey rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his meaty hands together. ‘What do you know about your late wife’s background?’
‘Very little, tell you the truth. It might seem strange but it really was a very rapid thing we did. One day I was alone in the world. . not unhappy. . lifelong bachelor, the next married and the next a widower.’
‘Was she employed, or did she have any outside interest?’
Hemmings shrugged. ‘Well, she was not employed when she was my wife but before that. . well, she was working as a sort of housemaid but not a maid. . a helper. . like a companion, she and the elderly gentleman who owned the house, somewhere in the country outside York, somewhere like that. . out in the sticks. She didn’t talk about it very much; frankly, to be honest, she didn’t talk about her life very much at all.’
‘Do you have the old boy’s address?’ Hennessey asked warmly.
‘Yes, I have it. I can let you have it. It’s at home though. But yes, I can let you have her previous address.’
‘We’d like to chat to him. He might help us get to know more about your wife, nothing more than that.’
‘It’s more his family that is likely to help you. I think that he was a bit gone in the head and difficult to live with. I think our Edith was glad to get away from there. That was the impression I got anyway.’
‘I see. . so. . can I ask you, when did you last see your wife?’
‘See? Two days ago. Wednesday today, so last saw her on Sunday, so then that’s three days ago. She left the house to go to the shops on Sunday evening about five p.m. We had run out of milk and so she put on her white coat and said, “I’ll be back soon”. . or “I’ll be ten minutes”, something like that. There’s a little shop just five minutes’ walk away, you understand; it opens seven days a week and stays open late. It has to do that to compete with the supermarkets. . bad position for a man to be in, I always thought. I don’t earn much at the biscuit factory but at least the hours are civilized.’
‘Yes. . yes. .’ Hennessey allowed impatience to edge into his voice.
‘So when she didn’t come back after about an hour I went out looking for her. Who wouldn’t? I went to the shop but the fella said Edith hadn’t come in that evening. I said that she must have done but he said she never did. He knows our Edith, you see. So I began to get worried because she had not taken anything with her, just about enough money in her purse to buy the pint of milk she went out for. I checked when I got back, all of her clothes were there, all of her shoes, all of her documents, even her passport and her birth certificate, her Canadian driving licence, her jewellery, it was all still there. All of it. She hadn’t left me. She left the house to go to the corner shop to buy some milk for herself and her husband so that we could have a nice cup of tea on a quiet Sunday evening before we went to bed for the night and that was it.’
‘I see,’ Hennessey sat slowly back in his chair. ‘Do you know of anyone who’d want to harm her?’
‘No, sir, no one, she only knew me in York. That’s all, just me. She had no friends. . no enemies but. .’ Hemmings voice faltered.
‘But?’ Hennessey pressed.
‘But what?’ Webster assisted Hennessey.
‘But. . well, I didn’t know her very long, she might have been my wife but she seemed to come from nowhere. . like she was suddenly there. . out of the blue. . but she did always seem to have a history. She gave the impression that she had left some sort of life behind her. But what that was I cannot say. . I do not know. Even in marriage she was a private person.’
‘She must have told you something about herself?’
‘She told me that she had grown up in Quebec and moved to Ontario when she was very young. She told me that. She never mentioned any brothers or sisters. . she said that her parents were both deceased. She did tell me that sort of little orphan Annie number but apart from that she really hardly told me anything.’
‘What was your marriage like?’
‘What’s any marriage like?’ Hemmings reacted defensively, Hennessey thought. ‘We were middle-aged, we settled down. . quietly. We had an understanding, she didn’t like too many demands made on her. . if you see what I mean.’
‘All right, I understand, we won’t go there. . unless it becomes relevant.’
‘Thank you, sir, I appreciate that.’ Hemmings paused and took a deep breath. He clearly had powerful lungs. ‘She cooked the meals and kept the house tidy and did the laundry and I worked at the biscuit factory and earned our money. And that was our little house. Hardly glamorous, hardly the good life, but we ate, we were dry when it rained and we didn’t fight. Never had fights. . that I appreciated. No fights. It was just nice to have someone to come home to after years of being alone. She even warmed my slippers by the fire for me to come home to. That was a nice touch, especially this winter just gone. I must admit things could have been more passionate but it was convenient for both of us and at our age that means a lot. It wasn’t marital bliss but it was better than being alone and she, like me, was beyond the first flush of youth.’