The Hutton Inquiry

MRS KELLY: Thank you, my Lord.

MRS KELLY: I can see you and hear you.

MRS KELLY: That is correct.

MRS KELLY: We had met when he was at Leeds University. I was studying at Birmingham Training College at the time before I moved on to Birmingham University.

MRS KELLY: That is fine.

MRS KELLY: He went on to do an MSc. He was then able to join me at Birmingham University for one year there.

MRS KELLY: I was doing my first degree.

MRS KELLY: He was doing his second degree.

MRS KELLY: After Birmingham he went on to do a Doctorate at Oxford University.

MRS KELLY: Not entirely. It was something to do with viruses and insect viruses.

MRS KELLY: He then went on to do a post-doc fellowship at Warwick University for three years and then went back to Oxford, by invitation, to work back at the then Institute of Virology.

MRS KELLY: We were living at that time at Eynsham.

MRS KELLY: That is right.

MRS KELLY: I was, I was a teacher.

MRS KELLY: In 1974.

MRS KELLY: At that time, he was working in the NERC, Institute of Virology.

MRS KELLY: He was doing a great deal of science. Terribly sorry, I do not know the details of what he was doing, but he was involved in a lot of laboratory work and in teaching and training other people.

MRS KELLY: Yes, about 1984 by invitation he went to Porton Down.

MRS KELLY: Yes, he led a department of microbiology there and set it up in a much bigger -- as a much bigger set-up than it was initially. He took quite a number of people with him from Oxford to do that.

MRS KELLY: That is near Salisbury.

MRS KELLY: We had intended to move but could not find anywhere suitable. At that time we lived in a rather nice house in Kingston Bagpuize so we decided to stay, so he travelled 50 miles each way each day. Sometimes he would stay down in the officers' mess.

MRS KELLY: Yes, towards the end of the 1980s, about 1987 I think, he was involved in some work in Russia where he seemed to establish quite a good reputation and was asked back several times.

MRS KELLY: He certainly interrogated a defector at some point, but it was weapons monitoring.

MRS KELLY: Weeks at a time, anything up to three weeks, generally shorter than that.

MRS KELLY: In general terms he felt it was really very exciting work. This was the beginning of the time when he began to become extremely dedicated to his work. He became more of -- what shall I say -- a workaholic than he had before. He really did get involved in that.

MRS KELLY: Very much so.

MRS KELLY: He was asked to get involved in the UNSCOM, United Nations Special Commission on Iraq and then spent a lot of time going out to the UN headquarters in New York.

MRS KELLY: That was just after the first Gulf War I believe.

MRS KELLY: Yes, he did. He went there nearly 40 times altogether, anything up to three weeks at a time.

MRS KELLY: Generally, yes. Generally not anything more.

MRS KELLY: Yes, indeed. In fact he had been on a TV training course paid by his employers, which required to give press briefings over quite a long period of time both formally and informally.

MRS KELLY: Yes, frequently. Yes.

MRS KELLY: Only in general terms. Sometimes I could hear him saying: well, I need to check with the Foreign Office, or whatever, first, or sometimes he would say: I am not able to talk on that particular topic, I can give you some background. He was never very long on the phone with these journalists.

MRS KELLY: Yes, much more involved.

MRS KELLY: Mostly by telephone -- yes, by telephone. It was before the days, then, of computers.

MRS KELLY: That is right.

MRS KELLY: Indeed.

MRS KELLY: That is right.

MRS KELLY: Yes, he felt that his job there was not finished, that Iraq did indeed have plenty of weapons to discuss and to reveal. It was quite a frustrating time I think after 1988 when they were effectively thrown out of Iraq and he was not able to continue there. But he did do quite a lot of background work still. He still carried on working in that field.

MRS KELLY: Yes. I was never quite aware of who he worked for. Since we had three children under the age of 2, he had taken over the family finances, so where all the inputs came from into our family income I was not terribly sure. It was always a bit unclear as to who he was working for. I had the impression he sometimes was invited to give talks and what have you and be paid separately. Sometimes he would be paid for some things by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and sometimes by the United Nations. So there was a secondment in there somewhere, but I was never always terribly sure where that was.

MRS KELLY: Indeed, indeed.

MRS KELLY: Yes, he did; he was quite frustrated about that in a way because it was a kind of I think the press called it a hole. To some extent it was. He was content in some ways, and I think he would have done the whole job for nothing had he not had to support a wife and family, but, yes, it was a bit frustrating for him. It had to be dealt with every now and again. But he was so busy that very often he could not check on his new income increments.

MRS KELLY: Only a little. He kept it very privately to himself. It was a few years ago, perhaps five or six years ago, when I realised he was reading the Koran and he was becoming perhaps gentler in his ways, in some ways. It really was a spiritual revelation for him. He read widely on the subject and met a number of people. I think there was one interpreter, Mike Peddison, who in fact later became a family friend, who was quite influential there. He certainly went to a number of meetings in our own local area too until about two years ago and then that dropped off somewhat.

MRS KELLY: Yes, in terms of meetings. His faith did not drop off. Right to the very end that was important to him, I believe.

MRS KELLY: I think the prayer meeting structure in the local area changed from being larger groups right down to twos or threes. He found that less comforting and less comfortable.

MRS KELLY: In January time he was a little more tired than he had been. It was fine. He was looking forward to our daughter's wedding and looking forward to the year. He had some trepidation though about the war coming up. He believed in it but was obviously sad that we seemed to be moving towards that position.

MRS KELLY: Yes, but only in general terms. Later on he gave a date to it. At that stage he was thinking perhaps of 2005. He was a little bit worried about his pension requirements there and we still had a mortgage to pay on the house, so he was going to leave it as late as he could.

MRS KELLY: That is right.

MRS KELLY: That is right, he did, the day after.

MRS KELLY: He was working at the United Nations. I think he was supporting one of the commissioners there, I am not sure.

MRS KELLY: He returned a few days later. I am not sure. My own diary, I am afraid, is lost. I am using a mid year diary so I do not have reference to my own diary at that time.

MRS KELLY: He went to the Middle East twice, I think, in May. Once to Kuwait and then he came back to sort out a visa and then went back to Baghdad, although -- actually it was a little later in June I believe. Yes, he was backwards and forwards from New York.

MRS KELLY: I am still waiting to see it.

MRS KELLY: Can you give me a bit more information about it?

MRS KELLY: Is this the one where it was scribbled at the top left-hand corner?

MRS KELLY: This is something we found in his filing cabinet a couple of weeks ago or so. It was headed -- this was a trawl for people to be on the New Year's Honours List.

MRS KELLY: And scribbled in the top left-hand corner was: "How about David Kelly? Iraq is topical."

MRS KELLY: That is right.

MRS KELLY: In his filing cabinet. There were a few files left after the police had been and taken what they needed.

MRS KELLY: No, he had not mentioned that. It was headed "confidential".

MRS KELLY: I do not believe there was an honour suggested. He had already got a CMG in 1996. So it might well have been a knighthood, I really do not know.

MRS KELLY: Oh indeed, yes. It was not an easy thing to live with in many ways. He would travel and say: I am going away for a week on Tuesday 4th, I will be back on Monday 11th or whatever and then that would change. It often changed two or three times and the length of stay would change too. Yes, he was travelling quite regularly.

MRS KELLY: Yes, he did. He kept his travel to the weekends so he could use the full week for working. So he would often arrive back either fairly early on Sunday morning or Monday morning. Usually on a Sunday morning at breakfast time, then rest for a few hours before he prepared for the next day.

MRS KELLY: He did.

MRS KELLY: Yes, that is right.

MRS KELLY: No. No.

MRS KELLY: No, he was not good at holidays. He was always on call. He always had his mobile phone on and he took a minimum amount of time. He would try to slot in his gardening duties, mowing the lawns and so on between work, either in the evening or very occasionally he would take a day in lieu.

MRS KELLY: Yes, he did. Our field and the lawns had got very, very long and he seemed to be driven. He really had to spend a long time doing that and he was extremely tired afterwards. We have a very old, battered ride-on mower and that was a seven hour job, and he made himself stick at it all day with just breaks for water and food. He was extremely tired. This was fitted in tightly between two visits.

MRS KELLY: Yes.

MRS KELLY: Yes, I was. He just said that he was meeting him in London, which was unusual for him to go and meet somebody in London. He was up there anyway. I just recognised the name from somewhere, I am not quite sure where.

MRS KELLY: No, he would never tell me the nature of his meetings. Generally it was for briefings. I think Andrew Gilligan was going into and then coming out of Baghdad and he was being briefed by Andrew Gilligan, basically.

MRS KELLY: Not at the time, no. The only thing I was aware of was that he became very much more taciturn. He became more difficult to talk to, he became more tense, withdrawn and we as a family expressed this worry to each other, we each noticed it.

MRS KELLY: The last week of June, I would think. We were worried about him before then. He seemed to be under a little bit of strain in terms of travelling. He was tired and looking his age. He seemed to have aged quite a bit. It is that last week in June particularly when we really noticed a great deal of change in him.

MRS KELLY: That is right.

MRS KELLY: Before he went out he was really glad to be going. He was slightly nervous of what he might find there. He knew it was an occupied country and he would be staying in some very uncomfortable conditions. He had not been out for a number of years. I think he had begun to realise he had aged a little bit since he was last there in 1998. So a little bit of trepidation.

MRS KELLY: Yes and no. He came back with mixed feelings. So much had changed, he was quite sad for the Iraqis. He did not actually meet any of them while he was over there. He was very much impounded within a presidential palace, along with some US military people. He was sleeping on a floor with no electricity, stagnant water from the lakes outside, 40-degrees plus. It was very difficult for him from a physical point of view. He was glad he was involved. He had had difficulty trying to get back there in a way. I got the feeling that he wanted to go back many weeks before and there had been various hold-ups in that.

MRS KELLY: Just changes of date.

MRS KELLY: Constant changes of date.

MRS KELLY: No. Within two or three days he had gone off to Baltimore where --

MRS KELLY: I think he was giving a speech at Johns Hopkins University.

MRS KELLY: No.

MRS KELLY: I am not absolutely certain. About 20th June.

MRS KELLY: Yes, he spent a day, I think I mentioned to you, the seven hours in the paddock I think was at that particular time. The second time that year in fact when he had spent quite a long time trying to get the garden sorted out. Because I am disabled, I am not able to do that myself, so he was trying to do that before he went away again.

MRS KELLY: I am not sure immediately, but later on he went on some courses, but that was a little bit later. He was in London quite a lot at that stage, backwards and forwards.

MRS KELLY: Yes, yes. He worried me somewhat one day, one evening, by suddenly getting up from his chair one evening, having been quite withdrawn and worried I think, and he went upstairs to dress, change his clothes. He came down looking rather smarter than he would normally be at home, rather smarter than he would normally be if he were just popping down to the local pub for a game of crib or something like that. He said he was going to walk to the Hind's Head at the other end of the village and off he went, seeming very preoccupied. That again would have been just before that letter was sent. About half an hour or 40 minutes later he came back and I said: You have been quick. You cannot walk there and back in that time, and he replied: I went for a walk instead to think something through. I was immediately worried, the way he said it. He said it slowly. I immediately thought perhaps he was worrying about me or something. So he said: no, no, it is not you, it is a professional thing. I said: do you want to talk about it? He said no. I remember that because I was actually quite worried about him at this time and I was really getting quite anxious.

MRS KELLY: No, he had given up alcohol completely on becoming a Baha'i some years previously. He had only ever had a pint a night or something like that, or a pint every other night or twice a week.

MRS KELLY: Other people have suggested he was losing weight. I did not notice that particularly, but I think he was. He certainly looked worried. He looked just very withdrawn. He was coping physically overall reasonably well.

MRS KELLY: Right.

MRS KELLY: No, I was totally unaware of anything other than the feeling that he was not enjoying his work so much, that he was more withdrawn. He was more driven in the things he was doing in his leisure time at home. But that is all I noticed.

MRS KELLY: Indeed he did.

MRS KELLY: That is right.

MRS KELLY: He set off on the morning of the -- was it the morning or the evening before? He set off in the car, unusual for him. He was worried about getting there in time and so on.

MRS KELLY: On the Sunday, yes, that must have been right.

MRS KELLY: Yes. Having got there, I had expected him to be away for two days. He rang me. He was on a train going to London for an interview. He did not say what that interview was about. He did not sound unduly odd about that and I did not pick up any kind of stress factor from him at all. I did not assume anything other than it was yet one more change of plan that was quite normal with him.

MRS KELLY: He had warned me he might come back that evening. In the event, he actually went back and rejoined the course. He was able to catch up with everybody else and continue and then complete the course he was on.

MRS KELLY: That is right.

MRS KELLY: About 7 o'clock, I think.

MRS KELLY: Quiet. I was busy. I was busy interviewing some people for my local History Society. So I did not actually talk to him for long at that immediate point on his return. It was a little bit later we spoke.

MRS KELLY: Well, we had a meal and then we went in to sit and watch the news. He seemed a little bit reluctant to come and watch the news. The main story was a source had identified itself. Immediately David said to me "it's me".

MRS KELLY: That is right.

MRS KELLY: I am not sure. I think it was probably Channel 4, I am not sure.

MRS KELLY: "It's me". My reaction was total dismay. My heart sank. I was terribly worried because the fact that he had said that to me, I knew then he was aware his name would be in the public domain quite soon. He confirmed that feeling of course.

MRS KELLY: Desperately unhappy about it, really really unhappy about it. Totally dismayed. He mentioned he had had a reprimand at that stage from the MoD but they had not been unsupportive, were his words. We talked a little bit generally about it and what it would mean for him in real terms. He was a bit backward in coming forward, may I say, in saying what he meant. I deliberately at that point said: would it mean a pension problem, would it mean you having to leave your job? He said it could be if it got worse, yes.

MRS KELLY: That the MoD had not been unsupportive.

MRS KELLY: That is right.

MRS KELLY: Total dismay.

MRS KELLY: Yes. Because the MoD had revealed that a source had made itself known, he, in his own mind, said that he knew from that point that the press would soon put two and two together. We have an amazing press in this country who it does not take them long to find out details of this sort and he is well known of course in his field, so that would have been another easy job for them.

MRS KELLY: No, we did not.

MRS KELLY: Yes.

MRS KELLY: Yes, he was supposed to be going to London so I was quite surprised when he said he was going to work in the garden all day. Again he got on to his vegetable patch and was working in a rather lacklustre way that particular day but he did receive and make some phone calls as well.

MRS KELLY: Yes, we did in the evening.

MRS KELLY: Not absolutely certain. It was something like 7.30 or something like that.

MRS KELLY: It turned out to be Nick Rufford.

MRS KELLY: We had both been sitting out having our coffee in the garden after dinner that evening. I was watering the plants and David went to put some tools away he had been using during the day which involved him going into the yard which lay between our house and the main road outside.

MRS KELLY: I suddenly looked up and there was David talking to somebody. I had not got my glasses on so I moved a little bit closer with the hosepipe to see who it was and I recognised it as Nick Rufford. Nick had been to our house before but only by arrangement, he never just turned up before this. No journalist just turned up before this, so I was extremely alarmed about that.

MRS KELLY: To be absolutely fair I am not sure now what I heard. David confirmed what I thought I had heard afterwards. I heard him say -- I heard Nick say, I think, "Rupert Murdoch" and I heard David say, "Please leave now". The conversation only took place over about four or five minutes maximum.

MRS KELLY: Yes, I did. He came over to me and said that Nick had said that Murdoch had offered hotel accommodation for both of us away from the media spotlight in return for an article by David. He, David, was to be named that night and that the press were on their way in droves. That was the language David used, I am not sure Nick used that. He also added -- he was very upset and his voice had a break in it at this stage. He got the impression from Nick that the gloves were off now, that Nick would use David's name in any article that he wrote and he was extremely upset.

MRS KELLY: Yes, I had. He said several times over coffee, over lunch, over afternoon tea that he felt totally let down and betrayed. It seemed to me that this was all part of what might have happened anyway because it seemed to have been a very loose arrangement with the MoD, they did not seem to take a lot of account of his time. There was a lot of wasting of his time. I just felt that this must have been very frustrating for him. David often said: they are not using me properly. He felt that the MoD were not quite sure how to use his expertise at times, although I have later seen his manager's reports on his staff appraisals where he obviously did warrant his or respect his expertise. But that is not the impression that I got.

MRS KELLY: He did not say in so many terms but I believed he meant the MoD because they were the ones that had effectively let his name be known in the public domain.

MRS KELLY: Well, he did not know about it until after it had happened. So he was -- I think initially he had been led to believe that it would not go into the public domain. He had received assurances and that is why he was so very upset about it.

MRS KELLY: Not until after the event.

MRS KELLY: From his line manager, from all their seniors and from the people he had been interviewed by.

MRS KELLY: Yes, indeed.

MRS KELLY: I think it was probably trepidation that this was the moment. He was not quite sure when it would actually happen but since Nick had come it was going to be a big problem. He knew that.

MRS KELLY: The MoD, yes. He never said that about the Foreign Office when he worked there or for UNSCOM in those days either.

MRS KELLY: Well, he often found that he was doing perhaps slightly lower order jobs than he might be doing. He was filling his time giving briefings, giving speeches, key note speeches and others when perhaps he might have been more involved in perhaps higher level policy making. There was a letter I came up with where it was suggested that David should be used in policy making rather more than he was being.

MRS KELLY: Yes, he did. He came across and told me what Nick had said.

MRS KELLY: That is right. That is right.

MRS KELLY: Extremely upset at two levels. One that he was being -- you know, the press were on their way in droves, as Nick had put it, and also that his friendship with Nick -- because he always used to work so hard, because he was a workaholic to all intents, most of his friendships, in fact his close friendships were all with people he worked with on a regular basis, so if he gave a regular briefing to someone, very often it would become not a close friendship but a friendship nevertheless. He felt that friendship was now at an end.

MRS KELLY: We hovered a bit. I said I knew a house that was available to us, if we needed it, down in the south-west of England, and he did not pick up on that initially.

MRS KELLY: Yes, I did. The phone rang inside the house and he went in to answer it, came out and he said: I think we will be needing that house after all. The MoD press office have just rung to say we ought to leave the house and quickly so that we would not be followed by the press.

MRS KELLY: It was the Ministry of Defence press office.

MRS KELLY: Yes. Whether he had offered anything else in the interim I do not know, that was never mentioned.

MRS KELLY: Indeed. We immediately went into the house and packed and within about 10 minutes we had left the house.

MRS KELLY: No, no, no.

MRS KELLY: We headed along the road towards the M4 and got to -- about 9.30, 9.45 we got as far as Weston-Super-Mare and decided to pull in at a hotel there for the night.

MRS KELLY: Yes. He was driving, very, very tense and I was trying to persuade him not to take or make any calls while we were actually driving. So before we got on to M4, we pulled over and tried to get hold of his line manager Bryan Wells. I cannot remember at that time exactly when he did make contact with Bryan, it may have been rather later. It did take some time to get hold of him but he did make contact with someone called Kate at the MoD press office.

MRS KELLY: No, he was -- I think he used a phrase like "cut and run". David would never use that phrase in normal terms. He was obviously exceedingly upset, we were both were, very anxious, very stressed.

MRS KELLY: Very taut. His whole demeanour was very tight. I was extremely worried because he was insisting on driving. I asked if I could drive, he would not let me. He was very, very tired and so was I by this time.

MRS KELLY: I think he did as we were driving along the M4.

MRS KELLY: Only that we had left home and that we were heading towards the south-west of England and was this okay because it was going further away from London, and he got the assurance that for the time being that was fine.

MRS KELLY: Weston-Super-Mare.

MRS KELLY: We stayed overnight. We had a rather sleepless night but we stayed overnight there en route to Cornwall.

MRS KELLY: We were.

MRS KELLY: We did, in the main dining room. We had asked for The Times to be delivered. We just read it as we finished our breakfast. We just read a couple of articles that were about David.

MRS KELLY: The first one if I remember correctly -- I am sure I do -- was written by Nick Rufford giving a brief outline of his contact with David, naming him in his article. Then there was another article inside with a photograph of David and a run down of his career given I presume by an MoD source naming him as a middle ranking official.

MRS KELLY: Well, there was several references to his lowly status. I do not know whether it was more my reaction or his but he was rather knocked back by that.

MRS KELLY: He did a little, yes.

MRS KELLY: Yes, we did. He made a few calls on his mobile in the garden of the hotel.

MRS KELLY: He was calling MoD, but I do not know who he spoke to.

MRS KELLY: No, he did not. He just said I was okay to continue down towards Cornwall.

MRS KELLY: I did my packing. He had already more or less done his own.

MRS KELLY: No, there was not. He had a briefcase and we each had a small suitcase each.

MRS KELLY: We did, yes.

MRS KELLY: We left the hotel about 8.30, 8.45, that sort of time.

MRS KELLY: That was about noon or just after.

MRS KELLY: Not quite as tense as the night before but still very tense. I was trying to say to him how nice Cornwall was, we could visit places like the Eden Project and Lost Gardens of Heligan, and so on, which I had visited several times before, so I was trying to make conversation to relax him and try and turn this in some way into a holiday. We had not had holidays together for so long that I was trying to make this a kind of positive experience for him.

MRS KELLY: We did, but I think he then became more upset at that stage and very tense. I could not comfort him. He seemed to withdraw into himself completely. And I decided that the best I could do, and I made a policy thing here then that I would keep him properly fed, good food, attractive food and then keep him occupied as pleasantly as possible. So although he was less stressed in one sense, he was more upset by now.

MRS KELLY: No, not at this stage. We both had a meal and then lay down for a little while before going out into the local village for a walk.

MRS KELLY: Yes. There were several calls made. Certainly he had spoken to Olivia, or rather Olivia Bosch had phoned his mobile just as we were looking over the harbour, which I hoped would be a positive experience, looking over the harbour, but in fact she was telling him about the press coverage and that did seem to upset him more.

MRS KELLY: That is right, and I think for IISS, the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

MRS KELLY: He was upset. He did not like his name being in the public domain. He did not like being -- becoming the story.

MRS KELLY: Yes.

MRS KELLY: We stayed down in Cornwall that night.

MRS KELLY: On the Friday we decided to go to the Lost Gardens of Heligan. It was only a short drive so we thought that would be apt after the long day or two before.

MRS KELLY: That is right, yes.

MRS KELLY: I am not sure whether we did or not. No, I think we went back home -- we spent a long morning there during which he had taken a call from several people from MoD explaining about the Foreign Affairs Committee on the Tuesday and an Intelligence Committee the following Wednesday.

MRS KELLY: Certainly one was from Bryan Wells. I am not sure if it was Bryan who told him that the former Foreign Affairs Committee would be televised.

MRS KELLY: He was ballistic. He just did not like that idea at all. He felt it -- he did not say this in so many words but he felt it would be a kind of continuation of a kind of reprimand into the public domain. That was not going to be very comfortable for him.

MRS KELLY: He was less worried about that one, less worried about that.

MRS KELLY: He was really upset. I had hoped the morning would be positive and pleasurable for him. He did not see the gardens at all. He was in a world of his own. He was really quite stressed, very strained, and conversation was extremely difficult.

MRS KELLY: We went home for lunch and then went down towards the village again. I tried to keep him busy and then we just relaxed during the evening. We took some calls from the family again.

MRS KELLY: Very unhappy. Very unhappy. He had in fact -- I remember him speaking -- I should have mentioned this before -- he had made an arrangement to go to London on the Monday to prepare. He was worried about whether he would have to cope with briefings from the MoD on top of his thoughts and feelings that he had already got.

MRS KELLY: That is right, about that day. Certainly the televising, he did not know about that before Friday 11th July.

MRS KELLY: We are indeed. We set off to the Eden Project.

MRS KELLY: It is a huge quarry which has some biospheres in it with tropical and warm temperate plantings within. It is a huge project down there and he had never seen it.

MRS KELLY: No. Although it was a lovely World Heritage site, he seemed very grim, very unhappy, extremely tense, but accepting the process he was going through. He knew he would have to go forward the following week. I was trying to relax him. He was eating, he was drinking soft drinks but it was a very grim time for both of us. I have never, in all the Russian visits and all the difficulties he had in Iraq, where he had lots of discomforts, lots of horrors, guns pointing at him, munitions left lying around, I had never known him to be as unhappy as he was then.

MRS KELLY: It was tangible.

MRS KELLY: Absolutely, palpable.

MRS KELLY: Somehow we got through the day. I am not terribly sure what we did now. We certainly went back home. We wandered along the beach at some stage. That was not easy for him. It was just a nightmare. That is all I can describe it as.

MRS KELLY: No, but there did not seem to be anything in the way of support. I was surprised nobody rang him and said: look, you know, why does not somebody come down to talk to you? And that had not happened.

MRS KELLY: That is right.

MRS KELLY: I stayed in Cornwall. David wanted to set off early. I tried to delay him. He was extremely tense. The MoD had offered, by now, to put him up at a hotel in Horse Guards but we all thought, especially our daughter Rachel, he would be more comfortable with her. So he set off about 11.30. Before that we walked down into Mevagissey and he insisted on buying a Sunday Times to see whether Nick Rufford had in fact written anything further, and Nick had indeed written something further --

MRS KELLY: The article gave the impression that Nick had had a full blown interview with David at our home in Oxfordshire. That was not the case. And he said something like: Thanks Nick, the MoD will think I have been talking to the press after I expressly said that I would not, and that was in no way an interview that he gave. But Nick gave the impression that it was.

MRS KELLY: Yes, and it did not help. There were other comments about his junior status, about -- it was just a total belittling in some ways. But the thing he was worried about was the Nick Rufford article.

MRS KELLY: He was. He was angry and upset. He almost immediately tried to get hold of Bryan Wells. He could not get him straight away, but Bryan rang him later, which is why he did not leave until about 11.30. He told Bryan how he was feeling, that he really was upset and he did not think it was fair that this article was presenting it as a full blown interview.

MRS KELLY: He was in dismay. He did not say too much about it. It affected me perhaps more than him at that stage. He hated that. It was not fair. He had been working extremely hard, working his socks off for years. I think he must have felt it was unfair. He was so stressed by now that the belittling hit him perhaps rather later than at this stage.

MRS KELLY: No, he drove by car. I was worried about this. I asked him to drive extremely carefully and to take his time and he got to Rachel's house, I do not know, about 5 o'clock I think. He did ring me and he sounded bone weary. My heart went out to him. He really was suffering at this stage.

MRS KELLY: He did, to say he had arrived. I had asked him to do that.

MRS KELLY: Not between me and David. He really was very, very tired. I spoke to Rachel, she said he is fine, he is fine. She was trying to buck me up, I think. They had a meal together and he went to bed, I think it was early. He did not take a number of other calls. I think Sarah, his sister, had phoned and he talked to various other people, but not to me again that evening.

MRS KELLY: That is right. That is right.

MRS KELLY: Yes, I did. After he had returned to Rachel's he rang me to say that the day had not been too tormenting. He was not worried about what had gone on by that day. I asked if he was being supported by the MoD and he said: I suppose so, yes. He always previously said yes when I asked this question on several occasions before, so he was a little bit less certain, I felt. I was a bit worried about the lack of support or the lack of apparent support. He was not an easy man to support in some ways, he would always try to give the impression that he was okay, and I think his immediate line manager was a much younger man than him and he would have tried, as he did with us, to protect him from his own feelings. He tried to keep his feelings to himself.

MRS KELLY: He said he was very, very upset about that and I think it was on this day that he said that somebody had told him over the phone while we were down in Cornwall that Jack Straw, who he had supported a few weeks earlier at the Foreign Affairs Committee --

MRS KELLY: Right, yes. He had gone through the Foreign Affairs Committee, so he knew it could be quite a tough range of interviews effectively there, and someone had said to him while we were in Cornwall: Jack Straw had said he was upset at the technical support at that Committee meeting, he had been accompanied by somebody so junior.

MRS KELLY: He laughed. It was kind of a hysterical laugh in a way. He was deeply, deeply hurt.

MRS KELLY: No, not really, except to say he had been working on biological weapons at a very high level and here he was being treated rather like a fly, really, I think was the phrase he used.

MRS KELLY: He was quite modest about his work. He never boasted. In our many years together he was not a boasting man, he was a very shy, retiring guy and he just felt he could make a small difference. At an international level that really was quite enough for him. He felt that was a good place to be.

MRS KELLY: That is right.

MRS KELLY: Later on. This was our 36th wedding anniversary so I was constantly thinking of him all day. He rang that evening and said it had been a total nightmare because the times and dates had been switched and then switched again and there had been a bomb scare, I think, somewhere near the Houses of Parliament so it was difficult for the car to drive him up and he had had to run the gauntlet of the press. Certainly from the television pictures I saw later he really did look very stressed, I could see that.

MRS KELLY: Yes.

MRS KELLY: He looked very uncomfortable, very hot, very stressed.

MRS KELLY: Very little. He felt that he had not done good justice to himself. He felt that they had been -- I think it was Andrew Mackinlay, he misunderstood it initially and felt it was an insult, the comment about "you are chaff" and the "fall guy". He was deeply offended about that at the time. He did ask Bryan Wells later whether it was intended as an insult because he could not believe it. Bryan Wells said: certainly not, the first part was a military term. But David -- that had upset him.

MRS KELLY: That is right. He had said then that the next Committee was going to be held the next day, though there had been a possibility they were going to be both held on that Tuesday. But he had said -- his final comment about the Foreign Affairs Committee was that he just did not want to know. He just -- he was in a nightmare position.

MRS KELLY: He said: I did not want to know. And that was something he would say very infrequently but it just meant he wanted to put that to one side and move on.

MRS KELLY: At my daughter Rachel's.

MRS KELLY: Still at Rachel's.

MRS KELLY: That is right.

MRS KELLY: Later on I meet up with him. I spend the day returning from Cornwall by train, he having taken the car. I met up with him, our daughter and her fiance at about 7.45.

MRS KELLY: That is at Rachel's house.

MRS KELLY: Yes, we had a meal together.

MRS KELLY: He looked totally exhausted. He was able to converse a little, but it was very, very strained. I felt he was very, very tired. He was sort of used up. He said that -- I asked him about the intelligence -- the ISC Committee that day but he only said it had gone all right. And that was not a phrase he would normally use. He was obviously very stressed.

MRS KELLY: No, no. He was very withdrawn, very tired. I did not seek to go over old ground at this stage.

MRS KELLY: No, I had made the assumption that he would be going and so did he at some point but there was no discussion about that on this day.

MRS KELLY: We then made our way home. He drove. Again he insisted on driving home. He did not speak at all during that journey. He was very tense and very, very tired.

MRS KELLY: About 20 minutes.

MRS KELLY: There was a great deal of post which he would normally pick up and take into his study. He did not do that, but he did go into his study to download e-mails so he switched on his computer, downloaded e-mails. I am not sure whether he actually answered any or deleted any. He shortly went to bed. We were both very, very tired. So within about half an hour or so he went off to bed.

MRS KELLY: About half past 8. It is rather later than normal. We were both tired.

MRS KELLY: Tired, subdued, but not depressed. I have no idea. He had never seemed depressed in all of this, but he was very tired and very subdued.

MRS KELLY: He said he had a report to write for the MoD. This is the one that somebody on the Foreign Affairs Committee referred to as his "homework" I think.

MRS KELLY: That is right.

MRS KELLY: He just got on with it, basically.

MRS KELLY: Probably about 9 o'clock, quarter to 9.

MRS KELLY: In his study. It was a downstairs room to the left of the front door, one side of the dining room.

MRS KELLY: He had a range of computers, laptops and his own desk-top computer.

MRS KELLY: That is right.

MRS KELLY: Yes.

MRS KELLY: I do not know. I heard later there were seven. He would often be given a laptop purely for one individual discussion at the United Nations. If he was going to interrogate somebody, for instance, they would give him a laptop in order for that to go just on its own.

MRS KELLY: Yes. He had a business line in there. The house line also went in there and he had a mobile too.

MRS KELLY: Yes.

MRS KELLY: That is right.

MRS KELLY: He came out for coffee. We had a quick word.

MRS KELLY: That would be about 11 I think, something of that order.

MRS KELLY: Yes, he was certainly on the phone quite a bit I think, not as much --

MRS KELLY: Yes, I could hear the phone ringing from time to time, but he picked it up. We did not actually sit together to have coffee then and we did not really talk at that stage.

MRS KELLY: He went back to carry on. I left the house for a few minutes to meet somebody and pick up some photographs. I came back, went into his study to try and lighten the atmosphere a bit by showing him some photographs and some other data I had got for the History Society. He smiled, stood up and then said he had not quite finished. But a few minutes later he went to sit in the sitting room all by himself without saying anything, which was quite unusual for him, but he went and sat in the sitting room.

MRS KELLY: Not absolutely certain, it was something like quarter to 12, I think.

MRS KELLY: I was a bit longer than that. I was about half an hour.

MRS KELLY: From about 12.30 I would think.

MRS KELLY: No, he just sat and he looked really very tired. By this time I had started with a huge headache and begun to feel sick. In fact I was physically sick several times at this stage because he looked so desperate.

MRS KELLY: Yes, he did. I said to him -- he did not want any but he did have some lunch. I made some sandwiches and he had a glass of water. We sat together at the table opposite each other. I tried to make conversation. I was feeling pretty wretched, so was he. He looked distracted and dejected.

MRS KELLY: Oh, I just thought he had a broken heart. He really was very, very -- he had shrunk into himself. He looked as though he had shrunk, but I had no idea at that stage of what he might do later, absolutely no idea at all.

MRS KELLY: No, no. He could not put two sentences together. He could not talk at all.

MRS KELLY: That is right.

MRS KELLY: I went to go and have a lie down after lunch, which is something I quite often did just to cope with my arthritis. I said to him, "What are you going to do?" He said, "I will probably go for my walk".

MRS KELLY: No, no.

MRS KELLY: That is right.

MRS KELLY: That is right.

MRS KELLY: It would be about half past 1, quarter to 2 perhaps.

MRS KELLY: He went into his study. Then shortly after I had laid down he came to ask me if I was okay. I said: yes, I will be fine. And then he went to change into his jeans. He would be around the house in a tracksuit or tracksuit bottoms during the day. So he went to change and put on his shoes. Then I assumed he had left the house.

MRS KELLY: That is right. He had intended to go for this regular walk of his. He had a bad back so that was the strategy for that.

MRS KELLY: Well, the phone rang a little bit later on and I assumed he had left so I suddenly realised I had not got a cordless phone and I thought it might be an important call for him, perhaps from the MoD. So I went downstairs to find the telephone in the dining room. By this time the ringing had stopped and I was aware of David talking quietly on a phone. I said something like: I thought you had gone out for a walk. He did not respond of course because he was talking on the phone.

MRS KELLY: In his study.

MRS KELLY: Not exactly, no. Getting on for 3, I would think.

MRS KELLY: I assumed it was the MoD, I am not sure.

MRS KELLY: Well, the phone rang again at about 3.20, after which -- it was a call for me -- a return call for me, and I could not settle in bed so I got up at that stage and I was aware that definitely David had left by this time.

MRS KELLY: He had gone by 3.20.

MRS KELLY: That is right, yes.

MRS KELLY: I was still feeling extremely ill so I went to sit in the sitting room. I could not settle, I put the TV on, which is unheard of for me at that time of the day. There were a few callers at the front door. I answered those and had a short chat with each of them. Then I began to get rather worried because normally if David was going for a longer walk, he would say. It was a kind of family tradition, if you were going for a longer walk you would say where you were going and what time you would be back.

MRS KELLY: He had not said that. He just said: I am going for my walk.

MRS KELLY: About 15 minutes, depending if he met somebody, perhaps 20 minutes, 25 minutes.

MRS KELLY: Probably late afternoon. Rachel rang, my daughter rang to say: do not worry, he has probably gone out to have a good think. Do not worry about it, he will be fine. She had planned to come over that evening. She made a decision definitely to come over. She arrived -- I am not quite sure what time she arrived, half five, six o'clock, I think. She went out. She said: I will go and walk up and meet Dad. She walked up one of the normal footpaths he would have taken -- in fact it was the footpath he would have taken. She came back about half an hour or so later.

MRS KELLY: This must have been about 6.30 perhaps by now. I am not sure of the times. I was in a terrible state myself by this time trying not to think awful things and trying to take each moment as it came.

MRS KELLY: Something like that.

MRS KELLY: Then the phone rings and it is Sian, one of our other daughters. She immediately says: I am coming over. So she and her partner Richard set out by car from their home near Fordingbridge to drive the distance. They then spent the rest of the evening driving up and down lanes, looking at churches, bus shelters, and so on, looking for her father.

MRS KELLY: After 11 I believe.

MRS KELLY: They had not seen him. Obviously it was very dark by then.

MRS KELLY: Well, we had delayed calling the police because we thought we might make matters worse if David had returned when we started to search. I felt he was already in a difficult enough situation. So we put off calling the police until about 20 to 12 at night.

MRS KELLY: I think it was Sian, I am not sure. It may have been Rachel.

MRS KELLY: They turn up. Three of them come with a missing persons form to fill in. I explained the situation that David had been in and it seemed immediately to go up to Chief Constable level.

MRS KELLY: Yes. Within 15 minutes they were there.

MRS KELLY: Yes.

MRS KELLY: Yes, it is referred up and the search begins. The Thames Valley helicopter had gone off duty by that time so they had to wait for the Benson helicopter to come across.

MRS KELLY: That is right.

MRS KELLY: Indeed it was, and tracker dogs too, I believe.

MRS KELLY: Yes, it came and the police switched on their blue light on their vehicles so it could pinpoint the position of our house, the starting point for David's walk.

MRS KELLY: It must have been about 1 o'clock. I am not sure.

MRS KELLY: Certainly the three were there. I think they may have been joined by a couple more by this stage.

MRS KELLY: Yes, all night, all night. Then a vehicle arrived with a large communication mast on it and parked in the road and then during the early hours another mast, 45-foot mast was put up in our garden.

MRS KELLY: Yes, indeed. And a dog was put through our house. At 20 to 5 the following morning I was sitting on the lawn in my dressing gown while the dog went through the house.

MRS KELLY: Trying to establish that he was not there.

MRS KELLY: Not initially, no. It was during the morning of the Friday, I think, the 18th by now, that the police came to inform us of David's death.

MRS KELLY: We were not shown the knife; we were shown a photocopy of I presume the knife which we recognised as a knife he had had for many years and kept in his drawer.

MRS KELLY: From childhood I believe. I think probably from the Boy Scouts.

MRS KELLY: Indeed.

MRS KELLY: I do. I take co-proxamol for my arthritis.

MRS KELLY: I had assumed that. I keep a small store in a kitchen drawer and the rest in my bedside table.

MRS KELLY: No, except that he was totally devoted to his job. It was rather muddling in the sense that he seemed to work between lots of different places, but that suited his style in a way, he liked to interact between lots of different people. But, no, there is nothing else.

MRS KELLY: Absolutely not. We did not row. If we had a disagreement, we agreed to disagree. There was absolutely no row whatsoever. I was in no physical state anyway and neither was David. There was absolutely no row.

MRS KELLY: I was devastated. That was totally the opposite. He was a very modest, shy, retiring guy. I once saw him at a meeting with the United Nations Association and his body language was very sort of stiff. He was always very courteous, very laid back if you like, but he kept to his brief. He did not boast at all and he was very factual and that is what he felt his job was. That is what he tried always to be, to be factual.

MRS KELLY: Yes. Lord Hutton, on behalf of my family I would like to thank you and your counsel for the dignified way in which you are carrying out this Inquiry into my husband's death. We would also like to acknowledge the support our family have received from so many people all over the country and elsewhere and, finally, may I take this opportunity to ask the media to continue to respect my family's privacy. We are a very private family. Thank you.

MRS KELLY: Thank you, my Lord.

MRS PAPE: My name is Sarah Amanda Pape. I am a consultant plastic surgeon.

MRS PAPE: I am his sister.

MRS PAPE: In the last year I have spent two weekends with him and his family. We would talk on the telephone at least once a month.

MRS PAPE: Work in very general ways, where he was; my work quite a lot. We would talk about family, in particular we always talked about what the girls were doing, what his daughters were doing.

MRS PAPE: Never. Never. I mean, for instance, the work that he did in Russia we discussed within the last year, and this is something that happened a decade or more ago; and the circumstances of that were I saw an obituary in The Telegraph and it was of a Russian microbiologist who had defected and the next time we spoke on the phone I said to him: well, did you know this chap? And he said: I not only knew, him I spent weeks in a hotel debriefing him when he defected. Now, nobody in my part of the family knew anything about that at the time. He just did not discuss it with us.

MRS PAPE: Well the debriefing was in this country. He then, subsequent to that spent a lot of time in Russia.

MRS PAPE: Yes, I did.

MRS PAPE: We never ever discussed politics. I have no idea what party he ever voted for or indeed whether he ever voted.

MRS PAPE: Not directly from him. Janice his wife told Mum and she told me in a rather roundabout way. We were intrigued because he never did discuss this with us and the two of us looked up some articles on the Baha'i faith to have a better understanding. But he never discussed it. He never brought up the subject and I most certainly would not have brought up the subject with him.

MRS PAPE: He was a very quiet person who interacted very well on a one-to-one basis. If you were in the room with him having a conversation, he would focus on you and concentrate on what you were saying; and he often showed an enormous amount of insight into what you were saying, as though he had the ability to see beyond what you were actually saying. He was a very astute person.

MRS PAPE: Yes, at the end of May 2002 my husband and I stayed with them over one weekend.

MRS PAPE: Well, we discussed lots of things. Can I just refer to some notes that I made to remind myself about something?

MRS PAPE: We discussed various things; but one thing that came up during that weekend was that he had quite a prolonged and protracted, I think battle was the word he used with his employers about the grading he should be working under and the salary that went with it. He told me that his main concern about this was that he had actually just discovered that unlike universities, he was not going to be retiring at 65 but at 60. He had not realised that retirement was quite so soon and it had occurred to him if he was not earning his full salary in his last few years that that would affect his pension. So we discussed this; and I was surprised to find that he earned considerably less than I did, though I considered that his work was in many ways of far more value than some of the things that I did and certainly his uniqueness I would have thought would have led to him being on a higher salary than that. But he also told me either that weekend or maybe it was in a telephone conversation soon afterwards that those issues were actually resolved and that he was satisfied with the outcome -- I would not say that he was happy with the outcome, but he felt that after a long fight he had at least achieved something.

MRS PAPE: Yes, this is really in the context not with his regrading but with his actual position and his responsibilities at work. We had a conversation, it was actually earlier this year; and he was talking about his involvement with journalists and the media. My bosses are quite sensitive about us talking to the media and I expressed my surprise and said that I did not realise that, you know, he was allowed to speak so freely to the press, and I may have expressed my concern in a sort of "are you allowed to?" kind of way. He reassured me completely and he said: it is my job. It is part of my job. It is what I am expected to do. It is all above board. Everybody knows I do it. You know this is one of the things I am paid to do. He certainly said it in a way that fully assured me that this was all legitimate.

MRS PAPE: Almost certainly this was the weekend of his daughter's wedding, which would be the weekend of 22nd/23rd February this year, 2003.

MRS PAPE: I asked to bring this document up, amongst others, because it was on the website I think from 11th August, it was presented as one of the pieces of evidence for that day; and I was reading it through and I thought that it was confirming what we had discussed, that here was a letter he had written some time before, querying his career grading and his salary. He had attached, if you like, a small CV and it included his contact with the media, featured contributions and unattributable briefings. When I read that, I thought, you know, it was all above board. It was all legitimate because there it is in a document some two years old.

MRS PAPE: Yes, that is -- sorry --

MRS PAPE: Yes, is this the handwritten one?

MRS PAPE: I think that dates from 2000.

MRS PAPE: I am not sure whose handwriting it is, but again it refers to media contact. I think this is the first page of the document. It is headed "Annual Review DIRA". The penultimate sentence is: "He has also provided press and TV interviews. Dr Kelly is stated to be the expert of choice."

MRS PAPE: That is right. This is actually a more recent document. This is signed off, I think, on 12th April this year. So this occurs after the conversation that we had; and again I found this document on the Hutton Inquiry website but I do not think it was referred to in this context on that day. And certainly again on the first page, "Statement of your roles and responsibilities", the third item is: "Communicating Iraq issues to the media and institutions." This form I believe was signed off by his line manager Dr Bryan Wells. On page 4 of that document, MoD/3/17, the last comment, "Managers' comments": "David has lectured widely on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction issues, is much sought for attendance at international conferences and as appropriate has provided media briefings."

MRS PAPE: No, just that I felt in many ways my brother is being portrayed as some kind of a mole who was leaking information and I think it is just worth emphasising that it was a very integral part of his job to be briefing the media.

MRS PAPE: Yes.

MRS PAPE: We had telephone conversations frequently, at least once a month, usually at his instigation. In years gone by it would have been me phoning him, but more recently, with him being away so much, if I rang I would not get to speak to him so he would more often ring me when he was at home, usually over a weekend because that was a time when we could both be expected to be at home.

MRS PAPE: The usual sort of family news, interchange of information between sort of my side of the family and his side. But one of the things we talked about a lot, and I think he may have talked about this with me more than with other members of the family, was the fact that he really did not want to retire at 60. He had taken that really as quite surprising news. He really thought he was going to work until he was 65 and was quite dismayed at the thought that come 60 he would be mowing his lawn every day.

MRS PAPE: One was his feeling that there was still an awful lot of work to be done in Iraq in uncovering the weapons of mass destruction that he was absolutely convinced were buried in the sand in the desert in some way or concealed in some way. He very much had the feeling he had not completed the job that he went out to do as a UN weapons inspector.

MRS PAPE: Yes, he did, frequently.

MRS PAPE: Desperately wanted to do. He desperately wanted to go back to Iraq and to finish the job which he had started and which he felt he was in the best place to do. I think he felt he carried an awful lot of thoughts and information in his mind that were not written down, so for him to direct other people to go would be much more difficult than just to go back and check all the places he had always had his suspicions about. He never felt that they had been totally honest with them when he had done his inspections.

MRS PAPE: The Iraqis, yes. He thought they were masters at hiding things but he had some pretty good ideas where he would go if he was given free rein to do so.

MRS PAPE: That would have been the weekend of Ellen's wedding.

MRS PAPE: 22nd February was the day of the wedding. We travelled down, my husband and I, the day before. We had a meal with the family and with Jeremy, that is Ellen's husband's, family. Then there was the wedding on the Saturday. We stayed over both Friday and Saturday nights in a hotel just a few hundred yards from their house. So we spent all day Saturday with them, and we stayed until about mid-afternoon on Sunday. Janice provided lunch at the house and a big crowd of us went back to the house as well that day.

MRS PAPE: He was in absolutely tremendous form, as most men would be at their daughter's wedding. He was proud of his daughter. He was relaxed, he was cheerful. He was entertaining. He gave a wonderful speech at the reception. He was in as good shape as I had ever seen him.

MRS PAPE: That was the occasion when we spoke about his media contacts and then he reassured me that was just part of his job, that that was not anything I was to worry about. He also did not give me much detail, but he did say that he hoped that he might be allowed to stay on after 60, that the MoD would not insist on him retiring if there was still work that he could do. And we also talked about -- well, I had said to him, I think: is there anything else that you could do? You have so much information, are there any other jobs that you could do to fill in another five years or so? He did say that he had been invited to consider working in the United States, though I cannot remember any detail about what sort of work that would have been. I suspect he did not tell me.

MRS PAPE: No, none at all. He was kind of concerned that he might, through his own lack of interest in chasing finances, that he might have left himself short by not insisting on regular reviews of his grading. But he did not imply that would in any way financially embarrass him, just that he realised you cannot keep putting these things off for ever.

MRS PAPE: Hmm, hmm.

MRS PAPE: On the Sunday evening he said he was flying to New York. That usually meant he was doing United Nations business. He flew out on the evening flight on the Sunday which would have meant he would have arrived in the States on Monday morning.

MRS PAPE: I do not but he certainly did not mention he was going to be flying almost straight back to visit Geneva, which is what I understand David Broucher said in his evidence, that I think on the Wednesday or Thursday they had a meeting in Geneva. That was certainly not mentioned and I would be rather surprised if he turned around quite so quickly.

MRS PAPE: No, I do not listen to the Today Programme and so I was not aware of anything at that stage.

MRS PAPE: I know that I eventually became aware of it, but I suspect this was several weeks after it first came out in the media. Again, I do not read The Mail on Sunday and nobody brought it to my attention. So I certainly was not aware, initially, that there was this story going about.

MRS PAPE: Probably around the middle of June.

MRS PAPE: No. I did not speak to my brother from the Sunday after the wedding until later on in July. As I said, mostly he initiated telephone calls. I did speak to both Rachel and Ellen, his daughters, during that time, because we were trying to arrange for them all to come and stay at my house; and they mentioned that he was away a lot. So I did not see any point in me ringing him because the chances were I was not going to reach him anyway. So I just waited for the phone call that I assumed would happen when he had time to talk.

MRS PAPE: I may have been aware of it. I certainly had become aware, as I say, between maybe the middle of June and July that there was a story that involved an apparent leakage of information to the press, to do with the September dossier; and I remember saying to my husband: I hope that that source is not the person that we know. But it was more along the lines of if a friend told me they were driving to London tomorrow and I heard there had been an accident on the M1, I might think: well I hope they were not involved. I really did not have any idea that it would be him. I happen to know one person who knew about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I did not have any more reason to suppose it was him than that.

MRS PAPE: I was. I was at work that day, working in my office, and my mobile phone rang and my husband had just picked up the newspaper and he rang me to say -- I believe that was the day that his name was in the press and he rang me to say that it was there and that I should be aware of this. I would not normally read the newspaper until I got home in the evening.

MRS PAPE: I actually went on the Internet to the Daily Telegraph website so that I could read the article -- actually I think I went to the shop in the hospital but there was not a Telegraph left so I went and found it on the Internet so that I could read it.

MRS PAPE: I did. I tried to ring him that evening when I got home. I think I phoned once or twice. The house phone did not have an answer machine on it so I could not leave a message. I did know that he would know, if he was in the house, that I was ringing because their telephone displays the number that is ringing. And I presumed that either he knew it was me and was not going to answer the phone or that he was not there.

MRS PAPE: I did not. I had lost his mobile phone. I replaced my own mobile and that was the only place the number was recorded and the number never got transferred to my new phone.

MRS PAPE: I did try e-mailing him. I believe it was on the Friday. I e-mailed to an address his wife had given me but the e-mail bounced back later that day as "address not recognised".

MRS PAPE: On the Thursday evening I telephoned Rachel and left a message on her answer machine asking her to ring me and let me know how her dad was. I also rang Ellen, although I realised after I had left the message that it was actually an old telephone number, it was not her current number.

MRS PAPE: There was no contact on the Thursday or through the day on the Friday.

MRS PAPE: I went to work as normal. As I say, I did e-mail Janice but the e-mail came back later in the day. I thought: well, he will ring me. I was pretty sure he would ring me. Indeed he did ring me some time after 9 pm on the Friday.

MRS PAPE: As always, he never said who it was phoning. He actually had a very distinctive voice. He just said: "Hello Sarah". He did not even say "it's me". He explained -- I think he said: "I presume you have heard the news", to which I of course said yes. And he explained that the MoD press office had given him a sort of five minute warning to leave the house because the press were on their way. He said it had actually taken then 10 minutes to pack but they had then left and gone to stay with friends.

MRS PAPE: No he did not. I assumed he was ringing on his mobile phone and I thought if I look on the caller display, I will be able to pick up his mobile phone number which I had lost and would have it back. When I looked at the caller display, I realised it was actually a land line and an STD code I did not recognise. We have a small book that gives all the STD codes in it and I looked it up and realised it was a number in Mevagissey. I suddenly realised then that Janice had friends who had a holiday cottage in Mevagissey and I thought that is very logical, that is where they have gone. That would have been a very sensible place to go to hide from the press for a few days. So I was actually quite reassured. He said Janice was with him. I felt he was in the best place at that time.

MRS PAPE: No. Apart from saying that the press office had informed him the press were on their way, no, we had no other conversation about the Ministry of Defence as such. He explained he would have to appear before the Foreign Affairs Committee on the Tuesday; and he also said he would be appearing before an Intelligence Committee on the same day. He explained that the Foreign Affairs Committee would be a public hearing and that it would be televised or would be likely to be televised but that the other Committee meeting would be held in private and that there would not be a public report because that Committee only reported to the Prime Minister.

MRS PAPE: Not to me, no.

MRS PAPE: I reassured him that he had my full support. I told him that I had been in touch with Mum and with my brother and sister and that we were all 100 per cent -- I think I may have even have said 110 per cent behind him and that everybody sent their love.

MRS PAPE: He sounded a little tired but other than that he sounded his normal self.

MRS PAPE: I do not remember speaking to him over the weekend. I know Janice this morning said she thought I had phoned over the weekend. I do not remember another conversation over that weekend. I may have spoken to Rachel but I do not remember speaking to my brother again.

MRS PAPE: No, I do not recall any conversation between the one on the Friday evening -- that conversation ended when he promised to ring me on the Tuesday evening after he had been in front of the Committee.

MRS PAPE: Not as it was happening, no. I was on call that week and I was very busy. I did manage to get to my office at about 5 o'clock and I switched the radio on. I just heard the headlines, nothing more than that. I did not even hear the report that followed. I just heard the headlines on the radio.

MRS PAPE: He was mentioned in the headlines. I cannot remember in exactly what terms. I felt that it sounded as though he was not being rubbished, that he was not being sort of held to be a guilty party. So I thought that was more positive than it might have been.

MRS PAPE: Yes. As normal I rang my husband on the mobile phone as I was leaving. Because I was on call, you never know when you are going to get away. So I rang to say I was just about to get into the car to drive home. He told me that Rachel my niece had phoned and that my brother was staying with her and that I should call him as soon as I got home.

MRS PAPE: Yes, I did ring. There was a bit of confusion initially because when I checked the number Rachel had called from it was actually my brother's home number. So I rang that number initially but there was no reply, and then my husband explained no, that that was where Rachel had rung from but in fact my brother was at her house. So I rang him straight away. I remember it was almost as soon as I came in the door. I had not even taken my jacket off or changed my shoes, which I would normally do when I got home.

MRS PAPE: He picked up the telephone on about the second ring and he said "David Kelly", which I did think was a little strange to say in someone else's house, but that was the way he would answer the telephone normally.

MRS PAPE: Yes. Bearing in mind I have heard nothing except the headlines on the radio, I largely listened to what he had to say about the day. So I asked him how it had gone and he explained actually in extraordinary detail what had happened that day. He explained that he had been led to think that the Intelligence Committee meeting would be the first one and I understood him to say that was going to be held in the Cabinet Office. So they went, I believe, to Downing Street for that meeting. He said that they were obviously expected because coffee was provided; and they sort of sat down to wait and then somebody came and said: no, no, this meeting has been cancelled until tomorrow. You have to go to Parliament for the Foreign Affairs Committee. Initially they said a car would be provided but then there was a bomb alert, I believe, in Whitehall and so they were not able to -- the car was not able to meet them. So he described his journey, it was up to Trafalgar Square and down Pall Mall on foot in a hurry because he was going to be late. So he arrived in a fairly flustered state, hot -- I believe it was a hot day that day, and not as calm as he would have hoped because of this trek that they had had to do at speed down to the House of Commons.

MRS PAPE: He said that it was extremely hot; that many people took their jackets off but he did not want to because he was sweating so much. He was a man who would often stay in a jacket in a formal situation like that. I have seen him lecture at scientific meetings and he would normally keep his jacket on. He said that it was very noisy because there were fans, not air conditioning but just room fans and that he found it quite difficult to hear some of the questions and he was asked more than once to speak up because he could not be heard.

MRS PAPE: I asked him about the questions. He said he really could not remember an awful lot about many of the questions; but there were one or two questions in particular that he did recall. One -- and bearing in mind I do not know what has been said, I am very much just listening and not really understanding everything he is saying at this stage. He said that one of the questions that really threw him was about a conversation he was supposed to have had with Susan Watts; and he really could not understand where the quotes were coming from that were supposed to have been made by him. At that stage, I did not understand what he meant by that. But I did listen to some of the transcripts later --

MRS PAPE: On the television. I did later on -- within the next few days I did look at that on the Parliament website, the uncorrected transcript of that day was released; and I looked through that wondering what it was that he had found extraordinary about it. I did actually find something that I felt, knowing my brother, I understood how it did not fit into the context.

MRS PAPE: It is question 22, which was asked him by Mr Chidgey.

MRS PAPE: I will just find it myself because I think it is quite important to actually see the exact words.

MRS PAPE: Yes. Mr Chidgey says: "I just want to move on to the section of our inquiry dealing with contacts with Andrew Gilligan and journalists, but before we talk about Andrew Gilligan can I just confirm that you have also met Susan Watts?" My brother replies: "I have met her on one occasion." Mr Chidgey then quotes, at some length, a quote that he believes my brother made.

MRS PAPE: My brother replies: "First of all, I do not recognise those comments, I have to say. The meeting I had with her was on November 5 last year [that would have been 2002] and I remember that precisely because I gave a presentation in the Foreign Office on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. I cannot believe that on that occasion I made that statement." He is obviously remembering a face to face meeting, I think the only face to face meeting he had with Susan Watts. Knowing my brother, I can imagine he would have focused very much on a picture in his mind on the situation. It was at the end of a seminar, they were introduced I believe by Patrick Lamb and he remembered meeting her; and he cannot believe that those words are words he is supposed to have said on that day. And of course nobody specifically tells him where the quotes came from. Then the next question, question 24, Mr Chidgey does say: "That is very helpful. Can I just be clear on this: I understand that those notes refer to meetings that took place shortly before the Newsnight broadcasts that would have been on 2 and 4 June." My brother replies: "I have only met Susan Watts on one occasion, which was not on a one-to-one basis, it was at the end of a public presentation." I know from conversations that we have had in the past that he very much used the word to mean what it meant. He was a scientist, first and foremost, but he and I, over the years, have done a lot of scientific writing and we have had discussions about how you have to use the word as it was meant to be used and that sometimes you agonise for days over getting just the right word to convey something; and I remember a discussion about writing material and handing it to your supervisor to read through and being very upset when they changed certain key words that you had agonised over. I believe that when he is thinking about meetings he is thinking about face to face meetings; so although Mr Chidgey is trying to push him towards thinking that this happened more recently, there was not a more recent face to face meeting, so he really does not recall it. I understand that the quotations came from the recorded telephone conversation --

MRS PAPE: -- which of course he did not know was being recorded. Susan Watts said that in her evidence. So I just believe he has not triggered that conversation in his memory. So he really feels that this is not him that is being quoted, or certainly not at that time.

MRS PAPE: He was just perplexed and he did not have an explanation. He just said he could not understand how that could have been him.

MRS PAPE: Yes. Of course, I had not got any of this detail in front of me. I just recall that was one element of the conversation we had.

MRS PAPE: Yes, one of the things I had picked up on the headline news was that the conclusion was that he probably was not -- I think the expression then was used "the main source". My brother did say: I cannot see how I can be the single source. Again he did not explain in any detail, so I can only say what I have noticed myself that seemed to be discrepancies between the story that was broadcast and published by Andrew Gilligan and my brother's recollection as stated in various documents that have been on the website.

MRS PAPE: Yes.

MRS PAPE: Mr Pope says: "Did you begin your conversation with Mr Gilligan by discussing the poor state of Britain's railways?" My brother replies: "No". Apparently this is a quote from the Mail on Sunday article that said he started off by moaning about the railways. I note Mr Gilligan did state in his evidence I believe both to the FAC and to this Inquiry that it was Mr Gilligan who was delayed by the trains. My brother was already in London on that day; and I believe that is the sort of small talk that he really would not take much account of. He was not very good at small talk, and I simply think that he did not recall any conversation about the railways, certainly not a significant enough one to put in a newspaper article. I think that was the sort of thing that made him think: well, this was not me. We did not talk about railways.

MRS PAPE: Well, we did. That was initiated by me because again I am working blind, I do not know what has been said that afternoon. I said: well, if it is not you, who else might it be? He said that he did not know. I told him about something I had read in the Sunday Telegraph that Sunday which I think was 13th July; and I said, you know: is it even possible that this could be somebody much higher up than you who has been giving information to the press? And he was a bit noncommittal on that. I told him what I recollected from that article, which was that a BBC reporter had been seen leaving Jack Straw's office and that some time later that evening there was a report on the BBC News which quoted a source at the very top of the Government; and I said: you do not think it is Jack Straw who has been leaking the stories? He said: well, that is a very interesting thought, I suppose it is possible but I really do not know, or words to that effect.

MRS PAPE: We had, on a couple of occasions. My brother had rung me in 2002 -- it would have been in September 2002 -- to say: if you are watching the news tomorrow evening you might just spot me because I am accompanying Jack Straw to a committee. I did not know which one then but I believe it was the Foreign Affairs Committee. And I did watch the news and I did glimpse a rear view of him sitting beside Jack Straw. I think we had also talked about him when Jack Straw was first appointed as Foreign Secretary; and my brother had said: well it is interesting because we were contemporaries at Leeds University. He said: well, he will not remember me because I was not a political animal, I did not move in the same circles, but I remember him from my time as a student.

MRS PAPE: He did, and again remembering that I have not watched anything or heard very much at this stage. He said that he had had some fairly searching questions from "a man on my left". I presume from having seen the video tapes that he was talking about Mr Mackinlay. He did not say it in any great detail and he kind of gave me the impression that he understood what this man's line of questioning was about, as though he was deliberately trying to rattle him but he had sort of worked out in advance that that was just a technique he was using. He did not seem to be distressed by that line of questioning, although when I watched it myself later on, I thought: well if you were not distressed by that, I think I would have been.

MRS PAPE: Well, again, I reiterated that I was fully and completely supporting him; I think I used the terms: "whatever the outcome". I knew then he still had to appear before the Intelligence Committee the next day. I again said that Mum and my brother and sister were fully supportive of him; and I was concerned about the press intrusion that meant that he was not able to return to his own home; and I invited him more than once to come and stay with me if that would help. Where I live is fairly remote. It is half a mile to the nearest road. We could have kept the press thoroughly at bay. I certainly made him fully aware if he needed somewhere to escape he could come to me.

MRS PAPE: No, he did not. I do not think he would have told me had he been. He would not have wanted to worry me.

MRS PAPE: Well, he did make a comment that at the time I did not question him about but afterwards struck me as being a little odd. He said, when I offered my support and the rest of the family's support, he said that he had been overwhelmed by the number of people who had phoned him, friends and colleagues, who had phoned to give their support. He said: some of them are talking about setting up a fighting fund. It was only afterwards that I thought, what a strange thing to have said. When I thought about it, I presumed if he needed legal assistance in an industrial tribunal or if he was going to be sued under the Official Secrets Act or something, that might have been what he meant. I did not question him and it was only afterwards I thought it was a slightly odd thing to say. Equally, it made me think he was in fighting mode, that he would fight to protect his reputation and his employment.

MRS PAPE: Tired, but otherwise it really was a very normal conversation. Believe me, I have lain awake many nights since, going over in my mind whether I missed anything significant. In my line of work I do deal with people who may have suicidal thoughts and I ought to be able to spot those, even on a telephone conversation. But I have gone over and over in my mind the two conversations we had and he certainly did not betray to me any impression that he was anything other than tired. He certainly did not convey to me that he was feeling depressed; and absolutely nothing that would have alerted me to the fact that he might have been considering suicide.

MRS PAPE: Yes, I had had some concerns at work just the previous week, and I think I rather selfishly put it: well, if it is any consolation we all have a few problems at the minute. I explained to him in rather general terms what had happened. He was very sympathetic and he asked me a number of questions about what I had said, which made me think he was concentrating on what I was saying, that he was concerned for me, and that he understood what I was going through as well. He certainly did not appear to be sort of distracted and preoccupied with his own thoughts to the exclusion of my concerns.

MRS PAPE: No. The only thing was that the final sort of passing part of the conversation was that I made him promise me, absolutely promise me that he would ring me the next day because if he did not I would worry.

MRS PAPE: And he said yes, he would ring me the next day, which would have been the Wednesday, to report back on how he was after the Intelligence Committee meeting.

MRS PAPE: It is always difficult to time a conversation, but compared with the Friday conversation it was a much lengthier conversation. I would say 15 to 20 minutes, maybe even longer than that.

MRS PAPE: Yes. Then, through that evening, I watched it almost certainly on Sky News, possibly on one of the other 24 news channels.

MRS PAPE: I thought that he performed really quite well, given the circumstances. I thought that he kept his cool. He had this problem that they were asking him to speak up a number of times. That was just how he was. He was quietly spoken. I have heard him lecture on at least two occasions and I can remember on one occasion in a bigger room that he had to be asked to speak up. It was something we had discussed because I often have the same problem myself. I think I am shouting but the people at the back certainly cannot hear me. So I did not think that that was unusual. I thought he seemed exasperated at times. There was a question that was asked and he replied. Then there was a follow-on question and he sort of sighed and looked down and said "I did not say that" or "that is not what I said" as though he was exasperated that people were not listening or were trying to misconstrue what he said or put words in his mouth or whatever. I thought he looked rather a forlorn figure sitting there on his own, compared with when I had seen him previously supporting Jack Straw where they sat in a line, side by side. But I did not really notice anything else in his behaviour that would have alarmed me.

MRS PAPE: No, he did not ring me. As I say, in fact, I was on call that week and I was extremely busy and it was after midnight before I got home. I was concerned that he was going to ring and that I would not be there and I had made him promise to ring and I was upset that I was going to miss him, and I rang home some time during that -- my own home -- during that evening to explain that I was delayed and to explain to my brother if he rang that I was delayed. When I got in my husband was still up and he said: no, he had not phoned and he had checked the caller display in case he had phoned when he had been out walking the dog but there had not been a missed call or anything. I was not too concerned because I was more relieved he had not rung and found me not there. I just presumed that he would ring me the next evening.

MRS PAPE: Yes.

MRS PAPE: No. I was in more promptly that evening. He did not ring. I know there were no missed calls again that night. I was rather more concerned that he had not rung, but I was very tired having had a disturbed night the night before. I thought he was probably also feeling tired; and I thought he would perhaps ring me over the weekend by which time I would not be on call and that might be a more appropriate time to have a longer conversation. I was a little anxious that he had not rung. I thought perhaps he had just forgotten he had promised to ring me.

MRS PAPE: I took a telephone call around 6.30 on the Friday morning. It did not surprise me too much. I was on call. It is not unusual for people to ring me at that time in the morning to tell me of patients that might have been admitted overnight. In fact it was my niece Sian who rang. She told me that my brother was missing, that he had gone for a walk the previous day and had not returned. I immediately assumed that he had fallen ill, maybe had a heart attack or broken his ankle or something. That was my first thought, was that there would be a simple explanation, he would be found safe and well. I certainly did not for a moment think that there might be a more sinister explanation for his absence.

MRS PAPE: Yes. I did half wonder whether he might have, for some reason, set off to come and visit me. We had had this conversation, I had said: if it all gets too much you just come to me. But when I heard he did not have his car keys and his car was still there and did not seem to have taken any money, I thought it was less likely that would happen. Because I was on call and because we had been extraordinarily busy that week, I really felt I had to go to work although I did not want to go to work, I would rather have stayed at home by the phone in case there was any news. But there were patients that really I had to go and deal with so I went into work that morning. Between operations I went back to my office and checked to see whether there were messages on my mobile phone and I picked up a message from Janice, my sister-in-law, shortly before 10 o'clock and the message that she left was to say that there was going to be a press release and that I might hear something about my brother having disappeared, but I knew that already so I was not too concerned. I returned to my office between the next two operations, which would have been some time after 10 o'clock, and there was a message from my husband asking me to ring home. I initially thought he was just going to give me the same information, that the press would by now know. In fact when I rang him he told me that the police had found my brother's body and that it looked as though he had committed suicide. I decided that I was not going to be able to stay at work, so I decided that I should come home at that point.

MRS PAPE: Can I just check some notes that I made?

MRS PAPE: (Pause). Yes. The only other thing that we have not covered, although I know other people have mentioned it, was my brother's attitude to the second Gulf War. Certainly I myself, and my husband, and I know from conversations my younger brother, we were not convinced of the need for war now. We could not understand: why now? Why not last year? Why not next year? Why now? And in discussions that we have had since my brother died we have realised that each of us changed our minds before the war itself actually happened and that we attributed our change in mind to individual conversations that we had with my brother. I actually thought he would agree with me that there was no new indication for war. I knew that he felt that the sanctions had hurt the Iraqi people very hard but had not made that much difference to Iraq's ability to produce weapons of mass destruction, and I was very surprised when he was absolutely and utterly convinced that there was almost certainly no solution, other than a regime change, which was unlikely to happen peacefully, and regrettably would require military action to enforce it. He explained it in detail that I probably did not understand at the time, in a very convincing way, and made me realise that the war was not only inevitable but that it was entirely justified in the light of what the Iraqi regime could produce in the future. I know my husband, when we were talking about this, said that he had said to my brother: oh, but surely if they just relax a bit and give Saddam Hussein enough rope, he will hang himself. My brother said: that is absolutely what we cannot do because if you had any idea of the consequence of what he might do if we take our eye off the situation, it would affect many many people, civilians quite likely, and it would just be unacceptable to allow that to happen. I know in conversations he had with my younger brother who visited at the end of January that he likewise was changed from being a complete sceptic about the war into somebody who understood the reasons for it. He did not reveal any secret information to us. I do not remember any vast detail but he was utterly convincing in the fact that we had to deal with this situation; we could not allow the situation to go on and then to be wise after the event.

MRS PAPE: They were, yes, because my last conversation with him was at the wedding in February. The war began in March. I suspect it was not at that weekend. I think this was a telephone conversation I had earlier. My husband believes it is a telephone conversation he had had -- my brother had rung once and I was not in and they had spoken for a few minutes. But he had absolutely no doubt at all that unless there was a complete change of heart in Iraq or a change of regime, that they would have to be forcibly disarmed of their potential to produce weapons of mass destruction.

MRS PAPE: Thank you.

MS KELLY: Yes I can.

MS KELLY: If I may.

MS KELLY: Yes, I can.

MS KELLY: Yes, my name is Rachel Anharad Kelly.

MS KELLY: I work for the RSPB.

MS KELLY: Yes. The diary was in my father's study --

MS KELLY: It mentions specifically a meeting with David Broucher on 18th February 2002, and the interesting thing with my father's diaries is he tended to write entries in them after the event and this would have been a meeting that he actually had because it is in his diary.

MS KELLY: Yes, US mission.

MS KELLY: Yes, the day before.

MS KELLY: Yes, that is correct, on the 20th.

MS KELLY: It is a year earlier than the date that David Broucher gave as being this year, the conversation he had with my father.

MS KELLY: Yes, that is what made me look at it. I actually thought that was the case.

MS KELLY: Yes.

MS KELLY: He tended to put in a few things in advance. He actually loved sporting fixtures, he was a keen fan of rugby and the athletics, so they were put in in advance, but otherwise with work commitments he tended to put them in after the event, and I recognise two entries there, one in May where he went out to Kuwait and he actually came back earlier than planned and the two flight numbers on his outward bound trip and return trip are correctly entered.

MS KELLY: That particular trip Dad was going out to Kuwait and he was intending to visit Qatar and Baghdad I believe and he should have been out there for longer than that actually indicates. He actually had to return the next day. He was deported from Kuwait. That entry there shows he did write in the correct date he travelled back and shows he entered it after the event.

MS KELLY: Because they are accurate, yes.

MS KELLY: Yes, there was another one in July. My father initially was booked in if you like to do both Committees on the same day, 15th July.

MS KELLY: He actually entered the two meetings separately. He entered the Foreign Affairs Committee on the Tuesday, which was correct, and he had the Intelligence and Security Committee entered on the Wednesday. As we know, it changed on that Tuesday, so it is quite clear to me there is not one entry crossed out at 12 o'clock on the Tuesday. It is written on the Wednesday. So Dad would have entered that probably on the Thursday morning or perhaps on the Wednesday night when he returned home.

MS KELLY: No, and in fact it does not record any trip to Geneva either. The only trip I have noticed is the February trip the previous year.

MS KELLY: Yes, I think (inaudible).

MS KELLY: He actually shared a taxi with Ellen and her husband to the airport on the way to their honeymoon and he went off I believe to New York the very next day.

MS KELLY: Yes.

MS KELLY: Yes, a little. We would spend a lot of time together, we were very close, and he would tell me where he was off to, where his trips were planned, and when we went for walks I would just get little bits about what he was up to and where he was. Not a lot in detail perhaps.

MS KELLY: He was in his element. He had a wonderful day. He really thoroughly enjoyed it. He was very proud and he was actually quite moved and we had just a fantastic family occasion on that day.

MS KELLY: Yes, we often talked about his retirement. He was looking forward to retiring. Earlier this year, at the very beginning of the year, he was -- just before and after the war and perhaps until mid May he was thinking of retiring and working for an extra year because he recognised that there was a lot happening to do with Iraq, he thought he might be needed, and he was actually planning on staying an extra year until he was 61 so that he could be available if needed for things happening in Iraq.

MS KELLY: In May he was actually quite happy. It was his birthday on 14th May and I had gone over to see him as normal, we had gone for our usual walk. There was a foal that we were walking down to visit very regularly, we had been the day before, and Dad was really thrilled that he had been one of the first to see it.

MS KELLY: Yes, I did. I always used to go on a Saturday for lunch with Mum and Dad, and Dad and I would generally go for a walk afterwards. That was a regular walk that we would go for.

MS KELLY: Yes, they would be long walks if we had the time, or they might just be a shorter walk down to see how the foal was. Normally if my sister was around with her dog it would be for a longer walk then.

MS KELLY: Yes.

MS KELLY: The first I knew was Dad flew to Kuwait from Heathrow Airport and on departure he discovered his visa was incorrect but he was still allowed to board the plane. When he arrived into Kuwait he was refused entry and physically searched, I believe he was physically restrained -- they are not particularly dignified there -- and he was then kept overnight in a hotel and his phone was taken from him. He was then deported back to the UK. Dad phoned me at work to ask me to organise a taxi for him. I could see he sounded quite upset by it. When he got home I could just see he felt so let down and embarrassed by it because it was a key time for him to go out there and he was very keen to go out there, and he felt left out at a very important time for him.

MS KELLY: I saw him on the following Saturday the 24th. Mum was away and I had lunch as normal and we talked about work commitments and the garden.

MS KELLY: Yes, he was. He was obviously getting older, he recognised himself he was getting closer to 60, but he still seemed quite cheerful, looking forward to things later on in the year with myself, another family occasion that was coming up, and just generally seemed to be happy but busy but just sort of tired because he was working hard.

MS KELLY: Yes, he was away then in late May from the 26th to 29th I think in New York; and on the 31st May, it was Saturday again, I met up with him and went for another walk, a little bit further than we planned but we enjoyed the walk. Dad seemed very relaxed. We just thoroughly enjoyed spending the time together. It seemed all very usual.

MS KELLY: Yes, I was. We were actually both out of the country at the same time and I was aware that Dad was away.

MS KELLY: No, I spoke to him when he got back from his trip. Again, I went to see him on that Saturday after and he had got his photographs back by that time and he took great pleasure in showing me his photographs and showing me the conditions he had experienced out there. He did tell me quite a lot about how much Iraq had changed. Obviously he had not been out there since 1998 and although he had followed the progress of the war the actual reality of going to Iraq made quite an impact on him, and he was disappointed he did not see any actual real Iraqis, as he put it. He was very fond of the Iraqi people and he was actually -- all the personnel there had to stay on the airfield, I think, for security reasons.

MS KELLY: I saw him, I believe, on 14th June.

MS KELLY: I did not see him that long. Mum and I were out all day but I did dash home specifically to see Dad because it was Father's Day the next day and I wanted to see him and give him a small present. But he seemed fine, obviously full of plans for his next trip and where he was going.

MS KELLY: Yes, I knew a few names that he would speak to regularly, for example Nick Rufford, obviously Tom Mangold, I was aware of the work he had done with him. I had heard of Julie Flint.

MS KELLY: In general conversation really. Certainly Tom Mangold, as a family we were all aware of him. I was aware that when he had been out to (inaudible) he had lunch with Julie Flint --

MS KELLY: Yes, he would just mentioned it in passing. He often told me. I would actually book to go out myself and we would sometimes share where we had both been and restaurants we had been to, and he just commented he had been to lunch with this lady who I knew to be a journalist.

MS KELLY: No, not at all. He generally did not tell me that much in detail. The only article I do recall him mentioning, which was one that upset him slightly, was back in April. It was an article written by Nick Rufford and I was aware that Dad, because he is a civil servant, following September 11th all his interviews were non-attributable and Nick Rufford had actually named Dad in an article and Dad was really quite frustrated that he had done so.

MS KELLY: Not at all. He did not ever mention it to me, no.

MS KELLY: Yes.

MS KELLY: That is right.

MS KELLY: Not while he was in New York, no. I spoke to him when he got back and I visited him at home. It was about from this time that I became conscious of a difference in him. He seemed to really need me as a daughter. We would always talk and he would always ask me will I see you at the weekend. His words did not change but there was a need in him on an emotional level perhaps to see more of me. He would just ask me was he going to see me at the weekend, and I just very much helped him from this time.

MS KELLY: Yes, late June.

MS KELLY: Right.

MS KELLY: No, he did not. Mum told me after the event -- after Dad's death, in fact. I saw Dad very briefly on 28th June. I actually was working away so I could not go and visit him as normal. On my way home my car broke down and I phoned Dad to say help, and I was eventually towed to a garage in Southmore. I just popped in to see Mum and Dad. Normally Dad would drop off the keys to the garage the next day but on this occasion he said he could not do that on the Monday morning of the 30th because I think he might have had a meeting somewhere. So Mum agreed that she would kindly do it for me. I just remember being conscious that he did not quite seem himself. He seemed very quiet, quite concerned about me because I had had a difficult evening trying to get the car home, but he also just seemed quiet, and in the event he did actually take the keys to the garage for me, which I was a little bit surprised by just because I had assumed Mum was going to do it.

MS KELLY: No, I literally saw him for half an hour because it was quite late by the time I got home, it was sort of 9 or 9.30 and I had not eaten, so I was being picked up and I was dashing home to sort myself out at home, so I only saw him for about 20 minutes and we did not have our normal walk or anything like that.

MS KELLY: It was some time -- in actual fact the following week we did have a conversation about his holiday.

MS KELLY: It was not. I was working away from home and Dad phoned me on my mobile and we had a long conversation; and Dad just told me he was extremely tired and he did not seem himself at all really and I could only take what he was saying at face value. He did not tell me about what was happening at work at all but he just said he had not had any holiday since August the previous year when he had had a holiday with a friend who had come over from abroad, and it actually was quite a busy time for him anyway, but he said he felt so tired and I expressed my concern for his health and I said any job is just not worth losing your health for. What if he had a heart attack. Dad was actually very frank with me, which was quite unusual. I know if he had a sore throat or a cold he would talk to me about that but he said he felt it was very much his duty to work hard, be available. I just said: well, look, you really need to plan in some holiday time. He agreed but felt he was too busy and was needed in Iraq. He had a really strong sense of duty. We talked again about his retirement and he actually had changed his mind about staying on for a further year because he felt so tired, he just seemed exhausted. He was now seriously considering retiring the following May, which would be the earliest opportunity that he could.

MS KELLY: Yes, that is correct. Yes. Again there was an underlying need in his voice but I could only take things at face value and I did not understand the work situation he was in, which I since learned the next day he was facing the first interview he had with his employer.

MS KELLY: Not at all, no.

MS KELLY: No. No, he did not. He would not have shared that sort of thing with me.

MS KELLY: That was on the Thursday evening, 3rd July.

MS KELLY: I did. I saw him on the Saturday. Dad had kindly collected my car for me I think on the 4th actually and he arranged to meet me in Oxford and take me to my home. He was actually coming into Oxford himself to meet either a friend or colleague at one of the colleges. We then arranged to meet in Oxford afterwards and he would then take me home.

MS KELLY: I must admit it was the first day when I became extremely concerned about Dad. I met him afterwards and we first -- we had seen Bill Clinton walking around Oxford so we initially started to talk about him. On our way back he said he had actually quite a good meeting, he had thoroughly enjoyed walking round one of the university parks. He then just seemed to withdraw. He was very, very quiet. He seemed to be under immense pressure. All I could assume was that it was just something serious at work to do with Iraq. I did not for one minute imagine he was in the situation he was actually in. I just tried to distract him and talked about my life, my work. We went home and we had lunch. Again he was a little bit quiet. We then went for another walk and to begin with I think he was telling me about Bury St Edmunds, he had met someone who had been and was quite positive about it. He said it is a nice little town. And then we went for a walk. But on the way back -- Dad had been quite cheerful with me and quite normal and was interested in what I was up to. On the way back he then became quite quiet and I remember a few days earlier I had seen Alastair Campbell talking to Jon Snow on the Channel 4 News.

MS KELLY: Was it? It certainly would have been something like that. It would have been a few days earlier.

MS KELLY: I did. On our way back I asked him if the situation in the media about Alastair Campbell was affecting him and his reaction alarmed me greatly. It was not that he jumped, but I felt that -- he said "no" and he added "not really" and I felt that I had intruded and he was very quiet, very pale and he just seemed to have the world's pressures on his shoulders. He seemed under severe stress. I did not want to cause him distress so I again tried to distract him.

MS KELLY: And talked about other things. I remember when I got back home to Oxford, to David, I expressed my concern. I was just so alarmed by it and I went back home, and I almost felt I was being melodramatic. I was sitting on the sofa saying I am so concerned about Dad. I just really did not know what to do to help him other than just to be there for him if he needed me.

MS KELLY: David is my fiance, yes.

MS KELLY: Okay.

MS KELLY: Yes, I can fit in with you.

MS KELLY: I would be happy to continue if that is convenient, yes.

MS KELLY: Roger is a very close friend of the family. He has known my father since his university days.

MS KELLY: Okay, yes.

MS KELLY: We were going to go to Oxford and we had then gone home for lunch and we then had the walk. It was on our way home from the walk that I asked him about Alastair Campbell.

MS KELLY: No, I did not. I had other things happening on that day and I did not actually see him.

MS KELLY: The next time I spoke to him would have been -- actually I remember trying to speak to him on 7th July. I was with Ellen my sister and we were both keen to speak to him and I remember leaving it until 9.30 in the evening. He was not back so we were not able to speak to him. I probably would have spoken to him on the 8th but I cannot remember the conversation.

MS KELLY: No, I did not. I was probably conscious that he might have said he was off having meetings, but I did not know anything at all about those, no.

MS KELLY: I probably did. I generally spoke to Dad every day. We were very close and we always did speak if he was around, if he was in the country. I think that the next time I would have spoken to him would have been the Thursday. On the Wednesday Mum phoned to say when they were leaving for Cornwall.

MS KELLY: That is right, yes.

MS KELLY: She said they were leaving. They were travelling in the car, they had just left home. She sounded quite distressed. Dad was driving and she told me that Dad was to be named as the source.

MS KELLY: For Andrew Gilligan's story and the report.

MS KELLY: She sounded very upset, very distressed. More because I think it was more adrenalin, they had had to pack and put their things together in minutes and then they had had to leave because I think Nick Rufford had been and the MoD press office had called to say they really should leave because there were a lot of press on their way.

MS KELLY: I did not because he was driving.

MS KELLY: Yes, I did. I promised that I would look after their cats and their house for them whilst they were away. They did not think they would be away for that long, they very much hoped the media interest would subside quickly. They thought they might be away for a couple of days. I did actually speak to them several times on their way down to Weston-Super-Mare.

MS KELLY: Overnight, yes. I also alerted my sisters to the situation too.

MS KELLY: Yes, yes. On 10th July I spoke to them during the day at work. I spoke to Dad. I remember speaking to him. Dad was also absolutely exhausted. I believe he slept during the afternoon. I then would have spoken to them again in the evening when I was looking after their house.

MS KELLY: That was, yes, they had then arrived safely there.

MS KELLY: Yes, I did. I went back on the Friday after work. When I got there I knew there might be journalists there and I would have to run the gauntlet of those, but when I actually got there there was a journalist coming out of the yard, so I did not go in that gate, I went in the other gate. He accosted me as I opened the gate and I ignored him and went in and parked. He then stood in the gateway calling to me, asking me to help him. I am afraid I ignored him because I did not want to get involved with any journalists.

MS KELLY: I did. Graham Atkins, a friend from across the road who is the landlord of the pub, he came over to see me to say that the journalists had been around all day, there were quite a few of them, they were asking a lot of questions and generally they were a pain and he said they were actually harassing his staff on the way home from work, asking questions about Dad. So I filled him in in very general terms about the situation and just said that Mum and Dad would be away for a couple of days.

MS KELLY: I did, yes. I spoke with them on the Friday evening. I just mentioned the journalists, I did not give them details. I know Mum then phoned the pub just to find out the situation later on. Then the next day, on the Saturday, Dad phoned me quite early at 8.30 and he said that he had phoned Steve Ward who was the landlord of the pub at the other end of the village.

MS KELLY: That is the Hind's Head, that was Dad's local pub where he had friends and would go and play crib. Steve had basically been (inaudible) the media attention, media coverage and the journalist did not seem to have reached that end of the village.

MS KELLY: No, Steve did not know about it at all. Dad was actually suggesting he was going to come back on the Sunday and he might park his car there so that nobody would see his car at home and that he would then be able to get some things he needed. I said actually he could park his car at my house instead which is convenient for the station, he could catch the train there and he was very welcome to come and stay with me and I could pick up some things for him, which is what I did.

MS KELLY: Yes, and I knew he would be needing to be travelling into London by train.

MS KELLY: Yes, I did. I got him some clothes and also he asked for the infamous dossier and told me where to find it in his study.

MS KELLY: He literally described the colour of it and where I would find it.

MS KELLY: No, that was Dad's term. Just the infamous dossier.

MS KELLY: Yes, I did.

MS KELLY: I did go back and forth to my parents' home on the Saturday, just looking after the house and the cats and I did actually collect the clothes on that day, I think. I definitely did, yes. The next day I was working away so I would not have been able to do it on the Sunday.