“I wouldn’t know,” the old man said. “I didn’t look.”

“Did you see Mrs. Parry into the house?” Ramsay asked.

“Nah! You can’t see the house for the trees. I’d seen her to her gate. I thought I’d done my duty.” He glared at the landlord. “ I’d spent an evening in here,” he said. “I was perishing cold.”

“Yes,” Ramsay said. “I see.”

He finished his drink, then went out into the street. He was almost at the church when he heard the sound of footsteps rattling on the frosty pavement. When he turned round, he saw Maggie running towards him, the tails of her scarf flying out behind her. When she reached him, she was breathless and her eyes were streaming with the cold.

“I wanted to talk to you,” she said, “ about Charlie Elliot.”

He felt a moment of satisfaction when he realised that his approach in the pub had been the right one. If he had started asking questions in front of the customers, she would have said nothing.

“Come on,” he said. “We’ll walk back to my car. It’ll be a bit warmer in there. Then I can drive you home.”

“You’ll be asking questions in the village,” she said. “I know you have to do that. You’ll hear about it anyway. You might as well have the truth. It’s nothing to do with Alice Parry’s death.”

He said nothing. It was impossible to know what was relevant to the investigation at this stage.

“They said that I led him on,” she cried suddenly, “ that he lost his career in the army because of me. But it’s not true. When I told him I was leaving David, I didn’t expect him to be so silly.”

Why do they talk to me like this? Ramsay thought. I have no real right to know.

“David was your husband?” he asked.

“Yes, and when I left him, I had to come back here. There was nowhere else to go. I couldn’t stay in the house. David’s a keeper on the Rutherford estate and it was a tied cottage.”

“I don’t quite understand,” he said, “where Charlie Elliot comes in.”

They turned into the churchyard, and the long grass was stiff with frost.

“Charlie and I grew up together,” she said. “We were in the same class at school, got the bus together everyday. I liked him. He was a good friend. Then, when we were sixteen, he started taking me out. Into Otterbridge to the pictures, to youth-club dances. I thought it was just a bit of fun. Other girls had boyfriends. I had Charlie.”

“But he took it more seriously?”

“Yes,” she said. “ On my eighteenth birthday when we were both still in school, he asked me to marry him.”