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things,” he said. “I can see you don’t approve, but the public has a right to be informed. Do you have any problem with that?”
    Isabel wanted to say that she did, but she decided not to engage with her visitor. Anything she said about intrusive journalism would make no difference to the way in which he saw his job. If he had moral qualms about speaking to the recently bereaved, she was sure that these would be kept very much in the background.
    “What do you want to know from me, Mr. McManus?” she asked, glancing at her watch. He would be offered no coffee, she had decided.
    “Right,” he said. “I would like to know what you saw, please. Just tell me everything.”
    “I saw very little,” said Isabel. “I saw him fall, and then, later on, I saw him being carried out on the stretcher. That’s all I saw.”
    McManus nodded. “Yes, yes. But tell me about it. What did he look like going down? Did you see his face?”
    Isabel looked down at her hands, which were folded on her lap. She had seen his face, and she had thought that he musthave seen her. His eyes had been wide, with what was either surprise or terror. She had seen his eyes.
    “Why would you want to know if I saw his face?” she asked.
    “That might tell us something. You know. Something about what he was feeling. About what happened.”
    She stared at him for a moment, struggling with her distaste for his insensitivity. “I didn’t see his face. I’m sorry.”
    “But you saw his head? Was he turned away from you, or facing you?”
    Isabel sighed. “Mr. McManus, it all happened very quickly, in a second or so. I don’t think I saw very much. Just a body falling from above, and then it was all over.”
    “But you must have noticed something about him,” McManus insisted. “You must have seen something. Bodies are made up of faces and arms and legs and all the rest. We see individual bits as well as the whole.”
    Isabel wondered whether she could ask him to leave, and decided that she would do so in a moment. But his line of questioning suddenly changed.
    “What happened afterwards?” he asked. “What did you do?”
    “I went downstairs,” she said. “There was a group of people in the foyer. Everybody was pretty shocked.”
    “And then you saw him being carried out?”
    “I did.”
    “And that’s when you saw his face?”
    “I suppose so. I saw him going out on the stretcher.”
    “Then what did you do? Did you do anything else?”
    “I went home,” said Isabel sharply. “I gave my statement to the police and then I went home.”
    McManus fiddled with his pencil. “And that was all you did?”
    “Yes,” said Isabel.
    McManus wrote something down in his notebook. “What did he look like on the stretcher?”
    Isabel felt her heart thumping within her. There was no need for her to put up with any more of this. He was a guest—of sorts—in her house and if she no longer wished to discuss the matter with him, then she had only to ask him to leave. She took a deep breath. “Mr. McManus,” she began, “I really do not think that there’s much point in going into these matters. I cannot see what bearing it has on any report which you will publish of the incident. A young man fell to his death. Surely that is enough. Do your readers need to know anything more about how he looked on the way down? What do they expect? That he was laughing as he fell? That he looked cheerful on the stretcher? And his parents—what do they expect of them? That they are devastated? Really, how remarkable!”
    McManus laughed. “Don’t tell me my job, Isabel.”
    “Ms. Dalhousie, actually.”
    “Oh yes, Ms. Dalhousie. Spinster of this parish.” He paused. “Surprising, that. You being an attractive woman, sexy if I may say so …”
    She glared at him, and he looked down at his notebook.
    “I have things to do,” she said, rising to her feet. “Would you mind?”
    McManus closed his notebook, but remained seated.
    “You’ve just given