‘I didn’t tell him I had anything to do with it.’ Lowrie grinned briefly. ‘Too much of a coward. Ian has a lousy temper. I’m not sure what Nell said to him.’

‘Did you see her on her own after that?’

There was a pause. Perez wondered if Lowrie was preparing to lie. ‘Once,’ he said at last. ‘Ian was working away and I went to her house. She seemed better. She thanked me for giving her the confidence to leave the hospital. I asked how Ian had taken it and she said he’d realized she wasn’t ill, just sad. And she’d decided not to get so hung up on the baby thing. Maybe it’s just nature telling me I’d be a crap mother. I’ve got a wonderful man and that should be enough.’

‘Did you believe it would be enough for her?’ Perez asked.

‘I think I did. She seemed calmer, better than she’d been for ages.’

‘Did she talk to you about her ghost project?’

There was a long pause and Perez expected another confidence. ‘No,’ Lowrie said. ‘She didn’t talk about her work at all.’

‘It seems odd that she didn’t ask you about the project before she headed north for the party. We know she researched the background to Peerie Lizzie. She’ll have known that the nursemaid in the story was a relative of yours.’

Lowrie continued his walk. ‘Maybe she realized that Caroline and I were too wrapped up in the wedding to have given any time to her. Sensitivity wasn’t exactly Eleanor’s strong point, but she’d have seen we’d be too busy to help with a TV show.’

Perez thought about that. The Eleanor who’d been described to him was self-centred and passionate about her work. He couldn’t believe that she’d turned away from a useful source of information just because Lowrie was planning his wedding. It wouldn’t have taken more than a quick phone call after all.

‘Did she ask to meet you at all in the last few weeks? More recently than when you met her for that drink?’

‘Not to discuss her work!’

‘But to discuss anything?’ They’d come to a piece of driftwood. It was huge and twisted, white as bone. The trunk of a tree, sculpted by the water. Perez sat on it, forcing Lowrie to stop too.

‘The six of us had dinner together about a month ago, to make final arrangements for the wedding in Kent and to talk about their trip north. You’d have thought they were trekking to the South Pole, the fuss they all made about it.’ He sat beside Perez. ‘What are all these questions about, Jimmy?’

‘Eleanor met a man sometime before you were married. We’re trying to trace him. It might not be important, of course, but it’s a loose end.’