Scilla was lying asleep on the sofa with a rug over her legs and a half-full glass on a low table beside her. I picked up the glass and sniffed. Brandy. She usually drank gin and Campari. Brandy was for bad days only.

She opened her eyes. 'Alan! I'm so glad you're back. What time is it?'

'Half past nine,' I said.

'You must be starving,' she said, pushing off the rug. 'Why ever didn't you wake me? Dinner was ready hours ago.'

'I've only just got here, and Joan is cooking now, so relax,' I said.

We went in to eat. I sat in my usual place. Bill's chair, opposite Scilla, was empty. I made a mental note to move it back against the wall.

Half way through the steaks, Scilla said, breaking a long silence, 'Two policemen came to see me today.'

'Did they? About the inquest tomorrow?'

'No, it was about Bill.' She pushed her plate away.

'They asked me if he was in any trouble, like you did. They asked me the same questions in different ways for over half an hour. One of them suggested that if I was as fond of my husband as I said I was and on excellent terms with him, I ought to know if something was wrong in his life. They were rather nasty, really.'

She was not looking at me. She kept her eyes down, regarding her half-eaten, congealing steak, and there was a slight embarrassment in her manner, which was unusual.

'I can imagine,' I said, realizing what was the matter. 'They asked you, I suppose, to explain your relationship with me, and why I was still living in your house?'

She glanced up in surprise and evident relief. 'Yes, they did. I didn't know how to tell you. It seems so ordinary to me that you should be here, yet I couldn't seem to make them understand that.'

'I'll go tomorrow, Scilla,' I said. 'I'm not letting you in for any more gossip. If the police can think that you were cheating Bill with me, so can the village and the county. I've been exceedingly thoughtless, and I'm very very sorry.' For I, too, had found it quite natural to stay on in Bill's house after his death.

'You will certainly not leave tomorrow on my account, Alan,' said Scilla with more resolution that I would have given her credit for. 'I need you here. I shall do nothing but cry all the time if I don't have you to talk to, especially in the evenings. I can get through the days, with the children and the house to think about. But the nights-' And in her suddenly ravaged face I could read all the tearing, savage pain of a loss four days old.

'I don't care what anyone says,' she said through starting tears, 'I need you here. Please, please, don't go away.'

'I'll stay,' I said. 'Don't worry. I'll stay as long as you want me to. But you must promise to tell me when you are ready for me to go.'

She dried her eyes and raised a smile. 'When I begin to worry about my reputation, you mean? I promise.'

I had driven the better part of three hundred miles besides riding in two races, and I was tired. We went to our beds early, Scilla promising to take her sleeping pills.

But at two o'clock in the morning she opened my bedroom door. I woke at once. She came over and switched on my bedside light, and sat down on my bed.

She looked ridiculously young and defenceless. She was wearing a pale blue knee-length chiffon nightdress which flowed transparently about her slender body and fell like mist over the small round breasts.

I propped myself up on my elbow and ran my fingers through my hair.

'I can't sleep,' she said.

'Did you take the pills?' I asked.

But I could answer my own question. Her eyes looked drugged, and in her right mind she would not have come into my room so unrevealingly undressed.

'Yes, I took them. They've made me a bit groggy, but I'm still awake. I took an extra one.' Her voice was slurred and dopey. 'Will you talk for a bit?' she said. 'Then perhaps I'll feel more sleepy. When I'm on my own I just lie and think about Bill- Tell me more about Plumpton- You said you rode another horse- Tell me about it. Please-'

So I sat up in bed and wrapped my eiderdown round her shoulders, and told her about Kate's birthday present and Uncle George, thinking how often I had told Polly and Henry and William bedside stories to send them to sleep. But after a while I saw she was not listening, and presently the slow heavy tears were falling from her bent head on to her hands.

'You must think me a terrible fool to cry so much,' she said, 'but I just can't help it.' She lay down weakly beside me, her head on my pillow. She took hold of my hand and closed her eyes. I looked down at her sweet, pretty face with the tears trickling past her ears into her cloudy dark hair, and gently kissed her forehead. Her body shook with two heavy sobs. I lay down and slid my arm under her neck. She turned towards me and clung to me, holding me fiercely, sobbing slowly with her deep terrible grief.

And at last, gradually, the sleeping pills did their job. She relaxed, breathing audibly, her hand twisted into the jacket of my pyjamas. She was lying half on top of the bedclothes, and the February night was cold. I tugged the sheet and blankets gently from underneath her with my free hand and spread them over her, and pulled the eiderdown up over our shoulders. I switched off the light and lay in the dark, gently cradling her until her breath grew soft and she was soundly asleep.

I smiled to think of Inspector Lodge's face if he could have seen us. And I reflected that I should not have been content to be so passive a bedfellow had I held Kate in my arms instead.

During the night Scilla twisted uneasily several times, murmuring jumbled words that made no sense, seeming to be calmed each time by my hand stroking her hair. Towards morning she was quiet. I got up, wrapped her in the eiderdown and carried her to her own bed. I knew that if she woke in my room, with the drugs worn off, she would be unnecessarily ashamed and upset.

She was still sleeping peacefully when I left her.

A few hours later, after a hurried breakfast, I drove her to Maidenhead to attend the inquest. She slept most of the way and did not refer to what had happened in the night. I was not sure she even remembered.

Lodge must have been waiting for us, for he met us as soon as we went in. He was carrying a sheaf of papers, and looked businesslike and solid. I introduced him to Scilla, and his eyes sharpened appreciatively at the sight of her pale prettiness. But what he said was a surprise.

'I'd like to apologize,' he began, 'for the rather unpleasant suggestions which have been put to you and Mr York about each other.' He turned to me. 'We are now satisfied that you were in no way responsible for Major Davidson's death.'

'That's big of you,' I said lightly, but I was glad to hear it.

Lodge went on, 'You can say what you like to the Coroner about the wire, of course, but I'd better warn you that he won't be too enthusiastic. He hates anything fancy, and you've no evidence. Don't worry if you don't agree with his verdict – I think it's sure to be accidental death – because inquests can always be reopened, if need be.'

In view of this I was not disturbed when the coroner, a heavily moustached man of fifty, listened keenly enough to my account of Bill's fall, but dealt a little brusquely with my wire theory. Lodge testified that he had accompanied me to the racecourse to look for the wire I had reported, but that there had been none there.

The man who had been riding directly behind me when Bill fell was also called. He was an amateur rider who lived in Yorkshire, and he'd had to come a long way. He said, with an apologetic glance for me, that he had seen nothing suspicious at the fence, and that in his opinion it was a normal fall. Unexpected maybe, but not mysterious. He radiated common sense.