Basil Vesey

Basil Vesey is 37 and a reserve major and financier in the City. Born in Surrey, the son of a colonel, educated at Harrow, he went from school straight to the war, where he served as an airman. He came back decorated and quiet, opened a small brokerage with a partner and, within a few years, was managing the fortune of half of London's clubs. He met Leonora at a dinner in 1919 and married her six months later.

He spends his days in an oak-paneled room on the second floor of a City building, facing the exchange, with a mahogany desk, a black two-piece telephone, a shelf of accounting books and a green leather armchair. A tall window looks onto a church clock. His club, the Army and Navy, serves lunch at 12:30. At home, he likes to say he sleeps on a camp bed, and he really does.

He is tall, athletic, of military bearing, with a handsome, closed face, a short trimmed mustache and short brown hair parted on the side. He wears a well-cut gray tweed suit, a regimental tie and a leather-strap wristwatch. Between his fingers, an unlit cigarette, which he rarely lights. Cold, dry, too polite, he hates scandal more than he hates disorder.

About the quarrel with his wife, he is direct. He says they argued on Friday morning because he told her he wanted a divorce. He said it, took his hat and left for the City. He is not proud of his tone, but refuses to pretend to a marriage that has ended. About Roderick Wraxall, her agent, he remarks that she trusts the other man more than her husband, and perhaps rightly. When the detective states, without proof, that he got rid of his wife, he asks the man to control himself.

It could be the dignity of an officer who doesn't know how to show pain and prefers dry courtesy. It could be the ice of someone who has every answer ready. The detective will have to decide which.