To distract myself again from Ben, I tried to think of something I could do to further what I increasingly saw as my ‘investigation’ into Ingrid Richards’ death.

It struck me that I could ring Walt, inform him what Alexandra had told me about his presence in Brunswick Square on the relevant evening. I didn’t have a phone number but recalled him proudly naming his company as ‘Walter Rainbird Computing Solutions’. I found the website, rather scruffily put together, I thought, for someone advertising his computer skills. A distinctly amateur look to it, far too many fonts being used in the display. There was a mobile number. I left a message, asking him to call me.

Then, reluctantly, I rang Edward Finch.

He had that look on his face that I’d seen before. The schoolboy who had broken the rules but felt rather proud of having broken the rules.

‘I’m afraid I’ve backslid,’ Edward said when he opened the front door.

‘Show me,’ I said, quite sharply. I don’t like people messing me around and, until I had proof to the contrary, that’s what Edward Finch seemed to be doing.

‘Ooh, Ellen,’ he said coyly, ‘you’re very masterful. Or should that be “mistressful”?’

In no mood for that kind of banter, I pushed past him towards the master bedroom. There was nothing lying on the bed or the floor. I opened the wardrobe.

Four new dresses were hanging there. All Marks & Spencer. Remarkably similar to some of the ones I had so scrupulously removed.

‘You bought these?’

He nodded sheepishly.

‘Why?’

Edward Finch had a speech prepared to answer that question. ‘I could say the reason I bought them was that I couldn’t manage without something that reminded me of Pauline. If you’d known the garments were here and asked me on the phone why I’d bought them, that’s what I would have said. But that’s not what I’ll say now you’re actually here.’

‘Why should it make any difference whether I’m on the phone or here?’ He was playing some game of his own and I was quickly losing patience with it.

‘Because I wanted you to come here,’ he said mysteriously.

‘Did you? And, incidentally, why wasn’t it you who rang me yesterday? Why did the call come from your friend Cara?’

‘I thought you’d be more likely to come if it came from Cara. She would make it sound as if I were in genuine need. That way you wouldn’t have been fighting your feelings.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Edward Finch now seemed to be moving into the outer reaches of sanity.

He then said, unbelievably, ‘You don’t have to pretend with me, Ellen.’

‘What?’

‘You know, from the first moment we met, there was something between us.’

It takes a lot to render me speechless, but that did it.

‘Don’t deny your feelings, Ellen. You love me and I love you.’

That I had not been prepared for. I mean, since I’ve been widowed, I’ve experienced a good few … what shall I call them? Well, to sanitize the reality, let’s say ‘romantic overtures’. I’ve fought off the predictable local gropers. And the male halves of couples who I reckoned Oliver and I knew as friends, but who reckoned I, as a widow, must be ‘gasping for it’. They’re, incidentally, not friends any more.