“There’s a young reporter on the Express,” he said, “called Mary Raven. She spoke to Alice Parry on the afternoon of her death. It’s possible, don’t you think, that she might have confided in the old lady about her love affair with Mrs. Parry’s nephew. Especially if the affair was at an end, going badly. Then Mrs. Parry asked to speak to Max in private. Don’t you think she might have been telling him to sort himself out, to come to a decision one way or another, that he wasn’t being fair to either of you? All evening Mary Raven waited in the churchyard outside the Tower. Don’t you think she was waiting for her secret lover, hoping that he would leave his wife, and then there would be no need to keep him secret anymore?”

“I know Mary,” Judy said, almost to herself. “ She comes here sometimes. I like her.” Then she turned to Ramsay, her voice hoarse and shrill with distress. “ What are you saying?” she asked. “Are you saying that Max and Mary did murder Alice? To stop their secret coming out? That’s no reason. I wouldn’t have made a scene about the affair. We would have sorted something out. Tell me! What do you think happened?”

“I don’t know,” Ramsay said, aware that she needed the definite answer he was unable to give. “Perhaps nothing happened. Perhaps Max stayed in the Tower watching television and eventually Mary went away. We know she can’t have killed Mrs. Parry herself. She was at a party in Newcastle when the murder was committed. Did Max tell you anything about what happened that night when you’d gone to bed?”

“No,” she said. She looked sadly at Ramsay. “I’ve told you. He won’t tell me anything at all.”

She turned to the policeman, suddenly angry and upset. “ Max didn’t kill Alice,” she cried. “I know he wouldn’t do anything like that. But I’ll tell you something you should know. Do you know why Stella Laidlaw was taken into hospital, finally, after Carolyn was born? Because the health visitor turned up at the house one day and found her standing over the cot with a bread knife! If you ask James, he’ll have to tell you. Or her doctor. If you’re looking for a culprit, why don’t you talk to her?”

But later, when Ramsay tried to telephone James at the Express office, Marjory told him that James was out all day. She was so skilled at protecting her boss that he could not tell whether she was telling the truth or not.

Chapter Twenty-One