“Someone did tell the police what James was doing,” she said. “Joe West, the county councillor. Do you remember him? But you were too busy investigating the allegations of fraud James was making in the Express to take any notice.”

Ramsay thought. He remembered Joe West, though he had not dealt with the investigation personally, and he could recall no connection in the case with the Express. It was something about fraudulent expense claims for his council work. And he had had his house painted, Ramsay remembered, by council workmen using materials paid for by Northumberland County. In the end they had decided not to prosecute. How many other councillors, after all, could claim total honesty if there was a major investigation? Joe West had resigned and they had considered the matter at an end.

“What happened to him?” Ramsay asked.

“He’s great,” she said. “Really amazing. It’s the best thing that ever happened to him. He’s running a project for the homeless in Newcastle down by the river. But he hates James Laidlaw. He’ll talk to you and you should go to see the centre.”

It wasn’t only the wealthy businessmen and powerful councillors in the area who had been blackmailed by Laidlaw, Ramsay thought. It must have become almost a habit. He had made the same threat to Tom Kerr about his brawl in the street with Charlie Elliot. Ramsay remembered his conversation with the choirmaster in the dimly lit room earlier that evening.

“I could never have gone into the church again,” Tom Kerr had cried. “Not with a story like that splashed all over the paper. How could people have any respect for me?”

“So what did you do?” Ramsay had asked.

“What do you think I did? I paid him and I’ve been paying him ever since.”

Ramsay drew his thoughts back to the office and to the woman who sat with him.

“Now, Mary,” he said. “What has all this to do with Alice Parry?”

“Don’t you know?” she cried, immensely pleased because she thought she still had the power to surprise him.

“Do you mean you really haven’t guessed?”

He did not answer directly. He had never enjoyed lying.

“It’s your story,” he said again. I want you to tell it, I want to know what Alice Parry said to you on the afternoon of her death.”

“Oh, that,” she said. “That’s almost irrelevant.”

“All the same,” he said. “ For completeness. Out of interest. I want to know.”

“We talked about Max,” she said. “We were having an affair.”

“Yes,” he said gently. He did not want to hurt her. He paused. “Did you realise Stella Laidlaw was blackmailing him about it?”

She looked up sharply. “ No,” she said. “I hadn’t realised even that she knew about us. She must have guessed. Blackmail must run in the family.”