She said, “You’re here, of course, to talk about Rhoda Gradwyn. All I’ve been told is that you’re investigating what was described as a suspicious death, which I take to mean murder. If so, it’s deeply shocking, but I’m not sure there’s anything I can tell you which will help. She came to me twenty years ago, when I first split from the Dawkins-Bower agency and set up on my own, and she’s been with me ever since.”

Kate asked, “How well did you know her?”

“As a writer, I suppose very well. That means I could identify any piece of prose as being by her, knew how she liked to deal with her publishers and could anticipate what her response would be to any proposals I put forward. I respected her and liked her and was glad to have her on my list. We lunched together once every six months, usually to discuss literary concerns. Beyond that I can’t say I knew her.”

Kate said, “She’s been described to us as a very private person.”

“Yes, she was. Thinking about her—as, of course, I have been since I got the news—it seems that she was like someone burdened with a secret which she needed to keep and which inhibited her from intimacy. I knew her little better after twenty years than I did when she first came to me.”

Benton, who had been taking a lively interest in the furnishing of the office, particularly the photographs of writers ranged on one wall, said, “Isn’t that unusual between an agent and a writer? I’ve always imagined that the relationship must be particularly close to succeed.”

“Not necessarily. There has to be liking and trust, and a common agreement about what is important. People differ. Some of my authors have become close friends. A number need a very high degree of personal involvement. One can be required to be mother confessor, financial adviser, marriage counsellor, editor, literary executor, occasionally even child minder. Rhoda needed none of these services.”

Kate said, “And as far as you know, she had no enemies?”

“She was an investigative journalist. There were a number of people she may have offended. She never suggested to me that she ever felt in any physical danger from them. None, as far as I know, threatened physical harm. One or two threatened legal proceedings, but my advice to her then was that she say and do nothing, and, as I expected, no one had recourse to law. Rhoda wasn’t a woman to write anything which could be proved to be untrue or libellous.”

Kate said, “Not even an article in the Paternoster Review accusing Annabel Skelton of plagiarism?”