“Women like Kinvara Chiswell, whose entire self-worth is predicated on the status and success of marriage, are naturally shattered when everything goes wrong. I think all those horses of hers were an outlet, a substitute and—oh yes,” said Della, “I’ve just remembered—the very last thing she said to me that day was that in addition to everything else, she now had to go home to put down a beloved mare.”

Della felt for the broad, soft head of Gwynn, who was lying beside her chair.

“I felt very sorry for her, there. Animals have been an enormous consolation to me in my life. One can hardly overstate the comfort they give, sometimes.”

The hand that caressed the dog still sported a wedding ring, Strike noticed, along with a heavy amethyst ring that matched her housecoat. Somebody, he supposed Geraint, must have told her that it was the same color and again, he felt an unwelcome pang of pity.

“Did Kinvara tell you how or when she’d found out that her husband had been unfaithful?”

“No, no, she simply gave way to an almost incoherent outpouring of rage and grief, like a small child. Kept saying, ‘I loved him and he never loved me, it was all a lie.’ I’ve never heard such a raw explosion of grief, even at a funeral or a deathbed. I never spoke to her again except for hello. She acted as though she had no memory of what had passed between us.”

Della took another sip of wine.

“Can we return to Mallik?” Strike asked.

“Yes, of course,” she said at once.

“The morning that Jasper Chiswell died—the thirteenth—you were here, at home?”

There was a lengthy silence.

“Why are you asking me that?” Della said, in a changed tone.

“Because I’d like to corroborate a story I’ve heard,” said Strike.

“You’re mean, that Aamir was here with me, that morning?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, that’s quite true. I’d slipped downstairs and sprained my wrist. I called Aamir and he came over. He wanted me to go to casualty, but there was no need. I could still move all my fingers. I simply needed some help managing breakfast and so on.”

“You called Mallik?”

“What?” she said.

It was the age-old, transparent “what?” of the person who is afraid they’ve made a mistake. Strike guessed that some very rapid thinking was going on behind the dark glasses.

“You called Aamir?”

“Why? What does he say happened?”

“He says your husband went in person to fetch him from his house.”

“Oh,” said Della and then, “of course, yes, I forgot.”

“Did you?” asked Strike gently. “Or are you backing up their story?”

“I forgot,” Della repeated firmly. “When I said I ‘called’ him I wasn’t talking about the telephone. I meant that I called ‘on’ him. Via Geraint.”

“But if Geraint was here when you slipped, couldn’t he have helped you with your breakfast?”

“I think Geraint wanted Aamir to help persuade me to go to casualty.”

“Right. So it was Geraint’s idea to go to Aamir, rather than yours?”

“I can’t remember now,” she said, but then, contradicting herself, “I’d fallen rather heavily. Geraint has a bad back, naturally he wanted help and I thought of Aamir, and then the pair of them nagged me to go to A&E, but there was no need. It was a simple sprain.”

The light was now fading beyond the net curtains. Della’s black lenses reflected the neon red of the dying sun above the rooftops.

“I’m extremely worried about Aamir,” she said again, in a strained voice.

“A couple more questions and I’m done,” Strike replied. “Jasper Chiswell hinted in front of a roomful of people that he knew something disreputable about Mallik. What can you tell me anything about that?”

“Yes, well, it was that conversation,” said Della quietly, “that first made Aamir think about resigning. I could feel him pulling away from me after it happened. And then you finished the job, didn’t you? You went to his house, to taunt him further.”

“There was no taunting, Mrs. Winn—”

“Liwat, Mr. Strike, did you never learn what that meant all the time you were in the Middle East?”

“Yeah, I know what it means,” said Strike matter-of-factly. “Sodomy. Chiswell seemed to be threatening Aamir with exposure—”

“Aamir wouldn’t suffer from exposure of the truth, I assure you!” said Della fiercely. “Not that it matters a jot, but he doesn’t happen to be gay!”

The Brahms symphony continued on what, to Strike, was its gloomy and intermittently sinister course, horns and violins competing to jar the nerves.

“You want the truth?” said Della loudly. “Aamir objected to being groped and harassed, felt up by a senior civil servant, whose inappropriate touching of young men passing through his office is an open secret, even a joke! And when a comprehensive-educated Muslim boy loses his cool and smacks a senior civil servant, which of the two do you imagine finds themselves smeared and stigmatized? Which of them, do you think, becomes the subject of derogatory rumors, and is forced out of a job?”

“I’m guessing,” said Strike, “not Sir Christopher Barrowclough-Burns.”

“How did you know whom I was talking about?” said Della sharply.

“Still in the post, is he?” asked Strike, ignoring the question.

“Of course he is! Everybody knows about his harmless little ways, but nobody wants to go on the record. I’ve been trying to get something done about Barrowclough-Burns for years. When I heard Aamir had left the diversity program in murky circumstances, I made it my business to find him. He was in a pitiable state when I first made contact with him, absolutely pitiable. Quite apart from the derailing of what should have been a stellar career, there was a malicious cousin who’d heard some gossip and spread the rumor that Aamir had been fired for homosexual activity at work.

“Well, Aamir’s father isn’t the sort of man to look kindly on a gay son. Aamir had been resisting his parents’ pressure to marry a girl they thought suitable. There was a terrible row and a complete breach. This brilliant young man lost everything, family, home and job, in the space of a couple of weeks.”

“So you stepped in?”

“Geraint and I had an empty property around the corner. Both our mothers used to live there. Neither Geraint nor I have siblings. It had become too difficult to manage our mothers’ care from London, so we brought them up from Wales and housed them together, around the corner. Geraint’s mother died two years ago, mine this, so the house was empty. We didn’t need the rent. It seemed only sensible to let Aamir stay there.”

“And this was nothing but disinterested kindness?” Strike said. “You weren’t thinking of how useful he might be to you, when you gave him a job and a house?”

“What d’you mean, ‘useful’? He’s a very intelligent young man, any office would be—”

“Your husband was pressuring Aamir to get incriminating information on Jasper Chiswell from the Foreign Office, Mrs. Winn. Photographs. He was pressuring Aamir to go to Sir Christopher for pictures.”