Then she turned back to face him and he saw she was crying, her body heaving with frightened, silent sobs. “I’m so worried about him,” she said. “ I think something dreadful has happened to him. It’s not like him to stay out all night without telling me.”

Ramsay stood awkwardly, not sure what to do, how to comfort her. He would have liked to put his arm around her but was frightened the gesture would be misinterpreted. She seemed so desperate for affection.

“Shall I make some tea?” he said. “Then you can tell me all about it. Or perhaps you’d prefer me to leave you alone. I could come back later with a policewoman.”

“No,” she said. Her eyes were raw from crying and he realised she must have been sobbing all night. “ Don’t go! Don’t leave me alone! I’ll make the tea.”

“There’ve been no accidents, you know,” he said, trying to reassure her. “ Nothing serious. I would have heard about anything like that.”

“Oh, well,” she said, trying to smile. “I’m just being silly. He’ll come back, I expect, when he’s stopped being angry. It was my fault for asking all those questions. When you’re on your own, you imagine all sorts of dreadful things.”

“Yes,” he said. “I suppose you do. What questions were you asking?”

“It was about Alice,” she said. “She and Max had a private conversation on the night of her death. I wanted to know what it was about.”

“And he wouldn’t tell you?”

She shook her head. “ It upset him. He said it showed I didn’t trust him. He accused me of thinking he killed her. But it wasn’t that.”

“Can you tell me what you thought the conversation between Alice and your husband was about? I don’t want to upset you, and I’ll treat it as confidential unless it’s important, but it might help me find out who did kill her.”

“It wasn’t Max,” she said, the hysteria returning. “He wouldn’t have done a thing like that.”

“Tell me now,” Ramsay said firmly. “Why do you think Mrs. Parry wanted to talk to Max?”

“I think she’d found out that Max was having an affair,” Judy said quickly. She was blushing.

“And was he? Having an affair?”

“I think so. I didn’t want to believe it at first. I found a letter in his jacket pocket once. It was beautiful, very tender, very loving, very lyrical. I’ve never written anything like that to him. I suppose I’ve always taken our relationship for granted. He told me it was from a patient, an elderly, neurotic patient who was infatuated with him. All of the doctors in the practise had received love letters at one time or another from her, he said. Now it was his turn.”

“And you believed him?”

“Because I wanted to.”

“Was the letter signed?”