"Oh!" she said faintly when she saw me. "I thought it was Ferdinand."

I'd hoped she would. I said, "Where would you best like to go?"

Oh. "She was irresolute. She looked back up the stairs and saw the cleaner watching interestedly from the landing. If she didn't come out with me, she'd be stuck with explaining.

"Come on," I said persuasively. "The car's warm."

It sounded a silly thing to say, but I suppose she listened to the intention, not the words. She continued across the hall and came with me out of the front door, closing it behind US.

"Gervase won't like this," she said.

"Why should he know?"

"She'll find a way of telling him." She gestured back to the house, to the cleaner. "She likes to make trouble. It brightens up her life."

"Why do you keep her?"

She shrugged. "I hate housework. If I sack her, I'd have to do It. Gervase thinks she's thorough, and he pays her. He said he wouldn't pay anyone else."

She spoke matter-of-factly, but I was startled by the picture of domestic tyranny. We got into the car and I drove out of the town and towards the village of Bray, and twice more on the way she said, "Gervase won't like this." We stopped at a small roadside restaurant and she chose homemade soup and moussaka, several times looking over her shoulder as if her husband would materialise and pounce. I ordered a carafe of red wine. Not for her, she protested, but when it came she drank it almost absentmindedly. She had removed the coat and gloves to reveal a well-worn grey skirt topped by a blue sweater with a cream shirt underneath. She wore a string of pearls. Her dark hair was held back at one side by a tortoise shell slide, and there was no lipstick on her pale mouth. The sort of appearance, I supposed, that Gervase demanded.

When the soup came, she said, "Ferdinand phoned last night and told Gervase that Malcolm had made a new will, according to you."

"Yes, he made one," I agreed. "He showed it to me."

"Gervase didn't tell me," she said. "He phoned Alicia and told her, and I listened. That's what usually happens. He doesn't tell me things, he tells his mother."

"How do you get on with Alicia?" I asked.

She very carefully drank the soup already in her spoon. She spoke as if picking her way through a minefield.

"My mother-in-law," she said intensely, "has caused more trouble than anyone since Eve. I can't talk about her. Drink your soup."

I had the impression that if she once started talking about Alicia, she would never stop. I wondered how to start her, but when I tentatively asked what she meant about trouble, she shook her head vehemently.

"Not here," she said.

I left it. She talked about her children, which she could do without strain, looking almost animated, which saw us through to the moussaka.

"What do you do on your trips to London?" I asked casually.

She looked amazed, then said, "Oh yes, that wretched Mr West. Gervase was furious with him. Then Gervase was annoyed with me also, and wanted to know where I'd been. I'd been wandering around, that's all." She ate her moussaka methodically. "Ferdinand told Gervase and Gervase told Alicia something about a tree stump. What was that all about?"

I explained about the cordite. She nodded. "Gervase told Alicia he'd had a good laugh when old Fred was knocked flat."

She seemed undisturbed by the thought of explosives. We finished the lunch, I paid the bill, and we set off on the short road back to Maidenhead. A little way along there, I stopped the car in a lay-by and switched off the engine.

She didn't ask why we'd stopped. After a pause she said, "Alicia is ruining our marriage, I suppose you know that?"

I murmured an assent.

"I'd known Gervase for only four months when we got married. I didn't realise… She's twisted him from birth, hasn't she? With her awful lies and spite. She sets him against you all the time. Gervase says terrible things about you sometimes… I mean, violent… I hate it. I try to tell him not to, but he doesn't listen to me, he listens to her. She says you sneer at him, you think you're much superior, because you're legitimate. I know you don't. Gervase believes her though. She tells him over and over that Malcolm threw them out and never loved them. She's wicked. And look what she's done to Serena. Gervase says she was a bright girl, but Alicia wouldn't let her stay on at school, Alicia wanted her to be a little girl, not to grow up. And Serena hates all men, and it's Alicia's fault. The only men Serena will let touch her are Ferdinand and Gervase. It's such a waste. Alicia got rid of Ferdinand's first wife, did you know? Went on and on at her until she couldn't stand it and left. I don't know how Debs puts up with her. It's driving me insane, you know, her drip, drip, drip. She's the worst enemy you'll ever have. If it was you that had been murdered, she would have done it."

"She wasn't always like that," I said, as she paused. "When she lived at Quantum, she treated me the same as Ferdinand and Gervase."

"Then it must have started when Malcolm kept you there on your own, and as she's got older it's got worse. She's much worse now than she was when we got married, and she was bad enough then. She hated Coochie, you know, and Coochie was nice, wasn't she? I was sorry when Coochie died. But Coochie banned all the family from staying in the house except you, and I should think that's when Alicia turned against you. Or let it all out. I bet it was there inside all the time. Like Gervase keeps things in and lets them out violently… so does Serena, and Ferdinand too… they're all like that. I wish Alicia would die. I can understand people wanting to kill. I would like to kill Alicia." She stopped abruptly, the raw truth quivering in her voice. "Drive me home," she said. "I shouldn't have said that."

I didn't immediately restart the engine. I said, "Is it Alicia that's causing Gervase to drink?"

"Oh!" Ursula gulped, the flow of anger ending, the misery flooding back. "It's just… everything. I can see he's unhappy, but he won't let me help him, he won't talk to me, he just talks to her, and she makes it worse."

I sighed and set off towards Grant Street. Alicia hadn't quite reached sixty: the worst of the witches could outlive them all.

"I shouldn't have told you all this," Ursula said, when I stopped at the door. "Gervase won't like it."

"Gervase won't know what you've said."

She fished a handkerchief out of her handbag and blew her nose. "Thank you for the lunch. Did your mother tell you we've had lunch a few times in London, she and I? She gives me good advice. I can't tell Gervase, he'd be furious."

I nodded. "Joyce told me you were friends."

"She's awfully catty about Alicia. It cheers me up no end." She gave me a wan smile and got out of the car. She waved as she opened her front door: I waved back and drove away, and covered the few miles to Cookham.

I thought it might be interesting to see what Norman West had made of Alicia, and I searched through the notes until I came to her. West had written:

Mrs Alicia Pembroke (59) refused to speak to me at all on my first visit and was ungracious and edgy on my second.

Mrs Alicia lives at 25 Lions Court, London Road, Windsor, a block of flats. She still maintains she can't remember what she was doing on the Friday or the Tuesday: she was pottering about, she says. "One day is much like another." I think she's being obstructive for the sake of it.

Mrs A. drives a big silver/ grey Fiat. Clean, no damage. Mrs A. antagonistic to me personally because of my following her in Mrs Joyce's divorce case, although in the end she benefited. Twenty- eight years ago! She remembers every detail of that time. Can't remember last Tuesday…

I asked her if she had ever engaged me to work for her. She said no. (?)