FORMER civil servant Clive Holgate took the witness stand yesterday to describe his bizarre marriage to a Wan Chai hostess who vanished three years ago.
The buildings surveyor said he only discovered his wife had purchased a flat with another man when he began rifling through her private papers in the hope of finding a clue to her whereabouts.
Pauline Holgate, 40, vanished in January 1992.
The 53-year-old government surveyor told the District Court he had not known his wife had a lover, or that they had bought a $500,000 property together.
He only learned of his rival's existence when he stumbled across a document linking his wife to a Westerner named Nicholas Demuth.
'I was going through various personal items of my wife to see who I could get in touch with to see what had happened to her,' Holgate said.
The papers concerned the purchase of a flat, the court heard.
