"No, nothing new."

He spoke without regret. His disenchantment with Moira, according to his acid second wife, my own mother Joyce, had begun as soon as he'd stopped missing Coochie; and as Joyce was as percipient as she was catty, I believed it.

"The police tried damned hard to prove I did it," Malcolm said.

"Yes, so I heard."

"Who from? Who's your grapevine?"

"All of them," I said.

"The three witches?"

I couldn't help smiling. He meant his three living ex-wives, Vivien, Joyce and Alicia.

"Yes, them. And all of the family."

He shrugged.

"They were all worried that you might have," I said.

"And were you worried?" he asked.

"I was glad you weren't arrested."

He grunted noncommittally. "I suppose you do know that most of your brothers and sisters, not to mention the witches, told the police you hated Moira?"

"They told me they'd told," I agreed. "But then, I did." " Lot of stinkers I've fathered," he said gloomily.

Malcolm's personal alibi for Moira's death had been as unassailable as my own, as he'd been in Paris for the day when someone had pushed Moira's retrousse little nose into a bag of potting compost and held it there until it was certain she would take no more geranium cuttings. I could have wished her a better death, but it had been quick, everyone said. The police still clung to the belief that Malcolm had arranged for an assassin, but even Joyce knew that that was nonsense. Malcolm was a creature of tempest and volatility, but he'd never been calculatingly cruel.

His lack of interest in the horses themselves didn't extend to anything else at the sales: inside the sale-ring he had been particularly attentive to the flickering electronic board which lit up with the amount as each bid was made, and lit up not only in English currency but in dollars, yen, francs, lire and Irish punts at the current exchange rates.