I looked at her face, her beautiful ageing face. “And there’s been no one else?”

She smiled through her tears. “Oh, I’ve had offers. But I always compared them to Bob, and they came out wanting. So I stayed here, hoping …” She trailed off. “Oh, I don’t know what I was hoping.”

She lifted the tea towel and shook it out. She’d made such a mess of it with her fidgeting that it needed refolding. On it was an image of Joseph Stalin and his quote, When we hang the Capitalists, they will sell us the rope.

Mary followed my gaze. “A present from Phyllis, from Georgia. Not America. Caucasus, near Russia,” she added with a half-smile. “She wanted me to go with her that time, but I was happy here.” The smile became a full one, if still sad. “I’ve always been happy here.”

“Did Bob’s wife know about your relationship?” I asked hesitantly. It was hard not to think of the row and wonder if they were connected.

Mary shook her head. “No, she didn’t. Doesn’t. Bob didn’t want her to know. It wasn’t as if there was anything …” she flushed. “I mean most of the time it was only a friendship. But it meant a lot to me.”

I considered this. Most of the time? Bob and Mary were in their fifties and they’d known each other since college. What did “most of the time” mean, over a period of thirty years? Whatever their relationship, it seemed certain that Mary’s continued contact with the dead man had stopped her moving on and meeting someone else.

I paused. “Can I tell Molloy this, Mary? Or will you?”

She nodded. “Go ahead. I want to help find out what happened to him.” She mustered a weak smile. “But ask him to be discreet, will you?”

I saw myself out, leaving her to pull herself together for her guests. She still had the cycling group staying with her, including Bob’s grieving family, plus she was managing on her own since the Buncrana girl who worked for her hadn’t been able to get in because of the floods.

As I walked back up the hallway, the door to the sitting room opened, giving me a bit of a shock. Derek Jameson stood on the threshold, with his back to me, finishing up whatever he was saying to whoever remained in the room. I stopped and stood there uneasily, feeling that I couldn’t just walk out and close the front door while he was there. Eventually he turned, saw me, came the rest of the way out into the hall and closed the door behind him with a soft click.

I offered my condolences. He looked grey and shaken, his mouth set, with none of the spark and humor I’d seen outside Phyllis’s bookshop two days before.