A woman accused of murdering her husband made a "bizarre" telephone call to his boss asking for money, a court heard.

Advertising salesman Julian Webb died from a cocktail of aspirin and anti-depressants, allegedly fed to him in a curry by his wife Dena Thompson at their home in Douglas Close, Yapton, in 1994.

She is accused of killing her husband because she feared her double life as a bigamist wife and a fraudster who stole £23,000 from the Woolwich Building Society, was about to be revealed.

Thompson phoned Paul Robins, her husband's line manager at the West Sussex Gazette, in the week before his death to say he had contracted food poisoning and would not be coming to work.

The court heard that the morning after Mr Webb's death, Thompson went to see Mr Robins at the newspaper offices in Arundel to inform him that her husband had died. She then telephoned him later that day about her husband's finances.

Mr Robins told the Old Bailey: "I was first in and I could see someone on the doorstep waiting at about 8 o'clock in the morning.

"It was Dena standing there with her father. I remember as I walked down thinking something was odd because there was a lady in her dressing gown on the doorstep.

"I was pretending not to notice her and went to open the door and she said: 'Are you Paul, it's Dena?'. She just came straight out with: 'Julian died last night'."

Mr Robins said he felt "disbelief, surprise, shock" at the news.

They went into an office.

"She said something about that she had been lying in bed with him, had heard some snoring-type noises and they stopped and he was dead.

"She said she had tried to help resuscitate him, but it didn't seem to work, so she called an ambulance.

"She seemed very neutral, she didn't seem very happy, she didn't seem very sad.

"She said he'd refused to see a doctor because he was scared of the doctor, which was strange because earlier on she said she'd bring a doctor's certificate in.

"I remember her phoning later that day. I remember feeling that it was a bizarre conversation in the context of how soon it had happened.

"It centred around money and the pension side of things and getting a cash advance because of the account being in Julian's name."

Under cross-examination, however, Mr Robins admitted he may have been mistaken in thinking Thompson had told him that she had obtained a doctor's certificate and that she was in bed when he died.

Pressed by defence counsel Joanne Greenberg, QC, he also admitted she had been distraught when he first saw her and that it was later that she appeared to become 'neutral.'

Thompson denies murder and maintains that her husband had become depressed and took the overdose after a period of heavy drinking and consumption of steroids.

But David Clare, from the Flintstone Centre gym in Littlehampton which Mr Webb attended three times a week, told the court: "He was dead against anabolic steroids.

"He said he didn't believe in it. Nutrition and hard work got the best results."

The trial continues.