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head and shoulders was strangely one of relief.
    The face that I saw, in a way so familiar but in a way so unfamiliar, was that of a woman in early middle age with short blonde hair. What mischief there had been in the smile in life had been replaced by a singular serenity. Sergeant Fairfax, looking over my shoulder, drew my attention to the fact that the hair had been recently dyed – the colouring was unnaturally even, but there was no trace of dark roots showing. The hair also seemed to have been cut only a few days before. Make-up had been carefully applied – eye shadow, bright red lipstick. The red jacket, the top of which was showing above the stiff green sheet, looked new in spite of some muddy stains. If this was suicide, then she had wanted to be a smart corpse.
    ‘We immediately assumed that it was your wife,’ said the young policeman who had accompanied me there. ‘But we do need you to confirm the identification.’
    ‘I see,’ I said.
    ‘So, you are able to identify the body, sir?’
    Just for a moment – but only for a moment – I was tempted to say, ‘Officer, I have never seen this woman before in my life,’ if only to see the look of consternation that I knew it would cause. But I am not the sort of person who plays cheap tricks. That was always Geraldine’s forte.
    ‘I understand that it’s been some time …’ he began, apparently as much to fill in time as anything. In this place there seemed to be a great deal of time to fill.
    ‘I would know my wife anywhere, officer,’ I said quickly and firmly.
    ‘You’ve no doubt about that?’
    ‘None at all.’
    The young constable breathed a sigh of relief. ‘We are very grateful to you for identifying the body, sir. I realize that you and she have been divorced for some time. We might have asked her sister, but she does live some way away and it would have been …’
    ‘Very distressing for her?’
    ‘Exactly, sir. Very distressing.’
    ‘That was thoughtful of you. Where was the body found?’
    ‘Up on Cissbury Ring.’
    ‘Cissbury?’
    ‘That’s quite close to you, isn’t it, sir?’
    ‘Fifteen minutes’ walk – maybe twenty.’
    He looked at me a little oddly. I saw his point. The action was getting closer and closer to home.
    ‘She was found late this afternoon. A man walking his dog,’ the policeman added. Now that he had a firm identification, the real work of the evening seemed to be over and he was becoming quite chatty. ‘She was hidden amongst gorse bushes in one of the old flint pits. Strangled. ’ He laid particular emphasis upon this last word.
    Fairfax tutted that I had not spotted the slight bruising round the throat.
    ‘Strangled,’ I repeated. ‘And …’
    ‘No, just strangled really. Your wife’s body was found fully clothed – quite expensively clothed, to the extent that I am able to judge, Italian anyway. But no handbag, purse, wallet, driving licence, jewellery. Just the one shoe so far – high-heeled, also Italian, also red. In view of the missing items, for the moment we have to assume robbery was the motive.’
    Or perhaps somebody wanted to remove the things that would identify her, I thought.
    ‘The murderer took everything then?’ I asked.
    ‘We did find one thing nearby, though it’s not clear whether it belonged to your wife,’ said the policeman. ‘A rather soggy paperback called Professional Misconduct – a romantic novel by—’
    ‘Amanda Collins,’ I said.
    ‘Well, fancy your knowing that,’ he said, much impressed.
    ‘You will find that its hero, Mr Colin Cream, is eventually exonerated by the GDC and marries the loyal and faithful dental nurse. I only know because I wrote it. Amanda Collins is just a pen-name.’ I smiled modestly.
    This however did not impress him. My actually being Amanda Collins clearly devalued, in his eyes, my earlier achievement of knowing who wrote Professional Misconduct. Fortunately I have long since learned to manage without praise and