"No, he didn't, as a matter of fact. It was like I was explaining to this nice young man here the first time this evening…"

Hoey sat back in his chair. Minogue waited out her ramble.

"Nearly two years you did the housekeeping for him?"

"That's right."

She dabbed at the corner of an eye, heaved a sigh and went on in a lower voice.

"It's hard and you being old and having nobody. You lose interest, I think. Even if you have your hobbies and a bit of reading. You need the contact. But he didn't, not much anyway. Or not as much as we're used to here. Mr Combs was interested in the place here, though; he was often flummoxed by some things here, I remember. Him asking me about the politics and the way the country is run. He'd smile and shake his head when I told him. I think he liked it here."

Minogue waited out her derailed train of thought. As though roused from sleep, she started and looked glassily from Minogue to Hoey.

"Here I am rambling along. Maybe it's not what you want to hear."

"You're doing grand," Minogue whispered. "But look, can you go back in your mind to recalling any visitors. Anybody he talked about?"

She cast her eyes to the ceiling and held her gaze there.

"I know you asked me that before, this young man with you. Try as I can, isn't it odd? He didn't seem to need people, like individual people. He liked to know about people in general, he said. Human nature. I remember him saying to me once… it stuck in my mind. He liked it here, you know. 'A pity I didn't come here when I was a lot younger' says he to me once. For all I know he kept up his friends back in England with his letter-writing and so on."

"Any phone calls that you remember as being peculiar?"

"No. No. An old-style type of a man, always writing letters and educating himself. That's what I thought of him. A cultured gentleman, I always said to Joseph."