"My name is Guthrie - Alexander Guthrie. I was a friend - a very old friend, of Mrs Lansquenet's. You, I think, are her niece, formerly Miss Susan Abernethie?"

"That's quite right."

"Then since we know who we are, I may come in?"

"Of course."

Mr Guthrie wiped his feet carefully on the mat, stepped inside, divested himself of his overcoat, laid it down with his hat on a small oak chest and followed Susan into the sitting-room

"This is a melancholy occasion," said Mr Guthrie, to whom melancholy did not seem to come naturally, his own inclination being to beam.

"Yes, a very melancholy occasion. I was in this part of the world and I felt the least I could do was to attend the inquest - and of course the funeral. Poor Cora - poor foolish Cora. I have known her, my dear Mrs Banks, since the early days of her marriage. A high-spirited girl - and she took art very seriously - took Pierre Lansquenet seriously, too - as an artist, I mean. All things considered he didn't make her too bad a husband. He strayed, if you know what I mean, yes, he strayed - but fortunately Cora took it as part of the artistic temperament. He was an artist and therefore immoral! In fact I'm not sure she didn't go further: he was immoral and therefore he must be an artist! No kind of sense in artistic matters, poor Cora - though in other ways, mind you, Cora had a lot of sense - yes, a surprising lot of sense."

"That's what everybody seems to say," said Susan. "I didn't really know her."

"No, no, cut herself off from her family because they didn't appreciate her precious Pierre. She was never a pretty girl - but she had something. She was good company! You never knew what she'd say next and you ever knew if her naiveté was genuine or whether she was doing it deliberately. She made us all laugh a good deal. The eternal child - that's what we always felt about her. And really the last time I saw her (I have seen her from time to time since Pierre died) she struck me as still behaving very much like a child."

Susan offered Mr Guthrie a cigarette, but the old gentleman shook his head.