“No,” she said. “ If you must know, I find it so damned hard to sleep I got up in the early hours and went for a drive. I thought the speed might relax me and help me sleep. It usually does.”

“But it didn’t work?”

“No,” she said. “ It didn’t work.”

“What time did you go out and when did you get back?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “And I don’t know where I went, either. I just drove.”

“Do you and your husband each have a car?” Ramsay asked.

She nodded.

“And you took your car?”

“Yes, of course. It was parked outside the house. James keeps his in the garage.”

“So you didn’t notice whether your husband’s car was there or not when you left the house?”

“Of course it was there. Why wouldn’t it be there? What would James be doing driving round in the middle of the night?”

“But you didn’t see it?” Ramsay asked.

“No,” she agreed. “ I didn’t see it.”

“Do you have any social contact with your husband’s colleagues?” Ramsay asked.

“As little as possible,” she said.

“You don’t get on with them?”

“Oh,” she said. “ I get on with them. I get on with most people. But when they’re all together they just talk about work and I find that tiresome. James is almost obsessive about the Express. I tell him he should delegate more and that he cares more about the bloody paper than he does about me, but it doesn’t make any difference. It still takes up all his time.”

“Does James discuss his staff with you?”

“He discusses everything with me,” she said angrily, but he doubted if she stopped thinking about herself long enough to listen.

“There’s a young reporter,” he said. “ Mary Raven. We’d like to talk to her, but she’s proving a little elusive. You have no idea where she might be?”

Stella smiled and seemed pleased with herself. There was little indication that she was jealous of the woman or that she resented her.

“No,” she said. “I don’t know where she is. She’s got something of a reputation, you know. She drinks a lot and I’m afraid she might be a bit promiscuous. James can be rather pompous and doesn’t like it. I tell him it does him good to have someone young in the place. It stops him getting boring.”

She looked at the clock again and this time Ramsay had no excuse to stay. He felt frustrated. He felt he had achieved nothing from the interview. He knew that Stella had been performing for him and that he could trust nothing she had said. At the door she stood with the same fixed smile on her face and waited until he had driven into the street. Then she shut the door behind her.