He held open the door to let her out and they stood together on the pavement. It was market day and in Front Street stalls were still set out with rails of cheap clothing and trays of vegetables. Now, at lunchtime, the stall-holders were shouting their special offers to clear the goods that would not keep for another day and the pavement was littered with old cabbage leaves.

“Are you sure?” She smiled, easily, motherly, used to respect. “You must be very busy. I don’t want to put you out.”

“No,” he said. “I’d like to take you.”

He had reached a stage in the investigation when there were too many leads to follow, too much to do. He would welcome a break in the confusion, a breathing space. Besides, he wanted to find out more about Mary Raven.

He lifted her basket into the boot and opened the car door for her. She directed him out of the town towards a small modern estate with big houses and gardens full of trees. It was not sufficiently ostentatious, Ramsay thought, to have been built by Henshaw.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned where Mary was going in front of James,” Marjory said, suddenly guilty. “ She likes to keep her leads secret until the story’s finished. I think she’s afraid he’ll cramp her style.”

“Would he do that?”

“No,” she said. “ I shouldn’t think so. He just likes to keep a tight rein on the newspaper. He’s very proud of it.”

“Mary didn’t go home last night,” Ramsay said. “She didn’t say where she’d been staying, did she?”

“No,” Marjory said. “ She said she had a hangover. I didn’t like to tell James that. He disapproves of her drinking.”

“What sort of relationship do Mary and James have?” Ramsay asked.

“Oh,” Marjory said. “ Very prickly. They’re both rather strong-willed. But I think there’s an element of mutual respect, too. She’s a good reporter, you know. James would miss her if she left.”

She pointed to the entrance of a cul-de-sac, where two toddlers played on the pavement with dolls and prams.

“Could you drop me here?” she said. “ Thank you very much for the lift. It’s a long walk and there’s a lot to do this afternoon before the grandchildren come to tea.”

He felt jealous of her calm domesticity. He wanted to invite himself to tea, too. He knew there would be homemade cakes and chocolate biscuits. He was forty. Soon he would be old enough to have grandchildren of his own, but even when he and Diana were very close she had made it clear that children were out of the question. Perhaps she had been right. It would never have worked. Marjory climbed out of the car and declined his offer to carry her bags to the house. He acknowledged her thanks and drove smoothly away.