Hello, my fiancee’s been missing for four days ... so I’ve decided to report it

Author murder trial hears lover’s call to police

CHILDREN’S author Helen Bailey’s fiance told police ‘things just haven’t been going well’ when he reported her disappearance, a court heard yesterday.

Ian Stewart phoned the police four days after he smothered the writer and dumped her in a cesspit at their home, jurors were told.

An 18-minute audio recording of his call was played for the first time at Miss Bailey’s murder trial. During the call, Stewart said his fiancee ‘talked about wanting space because things just haven’t gone well for her recently ... or for us’.

At one point, Stewart, 56, used the past tense to describe their plans to get married before correcting himself.

When asked by the police operator if he was sure his fiancee was not in the house, he said: ‘We have a large house and I have literally checked everywhere.’

Stewart claimed she had left a note saying she needed ‘space and time alone’ and that he should not ‘contact her in any way’.

He said Miss Bailey, 51, had written that she was going to their holiday cottage in Broadstairs, Kent – but attempts to find her there had been futile. The police operator appeared to express surprise that it had taken Stewart four days to report Miss Bailey missing.

During the call, Stewart struggled to remember his fiancee’s date of birth, her eye colour and the address of their holiday cottage. He claimed the last time he saw her they had shared a kiss goodbye and he asked her what she wanted for dinner.

Stewart told the operator it was a ‘shock’ to return home from a doctor’s appointment to discover a note saying she had left.

‘It was a shock – she had talked about it, but it was still a shock,’ he said. ‘She had talked about wanting space because things haven’t been going well for her recently or for us. She’s never done anything like this before.’

Asked if she might have committed suicide, Stewart said: ‘Well, I would say no but she has been very, very anxious and very worried about a lot of things and she is a worrier. She’s a natural worrier.

‘It can be just about anything. It can be big things. We were planning to get married, well, we are planning to get married, and the venue went wrong. She is a nervous, worrying person.

‘I’ve been wanting her to go to the doctors for a while.’

The operator asked him if she was likely to be a victim of abuse. Stewart replied: ‘I know she’s a very strong person. It would be very hard to abuse Helen. She’d come back to you very strongly.’

He was then asked directly if his fiancee was ‘likely to have been involved or subjected to crime’. The operator was forced to repeat the question before Stewart replied: ‘No’.

Later that day officers carried out a full interview with Stewart and searched the couple’s £1.5million home in Royston, Hertfordshire.

Notes of a conversation he had with a police officer were also read to St Albans Crown Court. One said: ‘She is concerned whether I want to marry her.’

Detective Constable Kerry Burrows told the jury Stewart appeared distracted when he saw police searching the house. He added: ‘Some time further into speaking with him, he seemed to pay attention to the movements going on in the hallway. He moved back in his chair, he seemed to be focusing his attention there.’

Two days later, Stewart posted a public appeal on Facebook directed towards his fiancee, saying: ‘Wherever are you?’

Prosecutors claim Stewart plied Miss Bailey, who wrote the Electra Brown and Daisy Daven- port novels for teenagers, with sedatives for more than a month before smothering her and dumping her and her dachshund Boris in a cesspit at their home on April 11 last year.

The computer software engineer allegedly carried out the murder so he could inherit her £4million fortune.

Stewart denies murder, perverting the course of justice, preventing a lawful burial and fraud. The trial continues.

‘She’s never done anything like this’