I travelled to Worcestershire last week to the funeral of an old friend whose sudden death, together with that of his partner, came as a huge shock to all who knew him and provoked, such were its circumstances, widespread publicity.

Alan Green, a retired accountant aged 75, was found dead in the swimming pool of his home at Wichenford, near Malvern, on July 3, alongside 59-year-old Martin Winfield, his companion of three years with whom he was to have entered a civil partnership on August 1.

Police are not treating the matter as suspicious. The local coroner’s service has said that a cause of death has yet to be ascertained in both cases but will be revealed at the inquest into their deaths.

The general belief is that one of the men got into trouble in the water, resulting in a rescue attempt by the other which proved fatal to both. Martin, who was brought up in the Wallingford area, was unable to swim.

The bodies were found by Martin’s three children when he failed to turn up to his job as a Droitwich plastics factory for what would have been his last day of work before flying off to Alan’s holiday home on the Greek island of Naxos.

The order of service for Alan’s funeral referred to his having passed away on July 1, which was the hottest day of the year so far and, in many places, the hottest day on record, with the thermometer up to 98F. Could a sudden plunge by one of the men into cold, deep water in such sweltering heat have played a part in the tragedy?

Rosemarie and I learned of the accident during the following weekend in an email headed “very sad news”. It came from a friend who for 25 years has looked after Alan’s Greek property and has also, during the same time, played some part in maintaining the garden of ours.

She had been waiting at Naxos airport for the couple to arrive. Her first thought, when they failed to appear, was that something had gone wrong with their rather complicated flight arrangements. These were scheduled to take them from England to Crete, then back to Athens for the Island-hopper to Naxos.

“Typical Alan!” someone said to me at the funeral, aware that a bargain fare lay behind this odd itinerary. It wasn’t that Alan was mean – far from it – but, like many an accountant, he had an eye for a bargain.

Generosity with his time and money was a recurring theme throughout his funeral service which filled the Wichenford church and an overspill marquee behind it. The priest said the theatre group he helped found had raised some £400,000 for charity over the years.

He was involved in the Christmas panto in nearby Stourport from 1967 when he played Buttons. By the time Rosemarie and I got to know him in the late 1980s, he and his then partner Colin Hughes (who died in 2009) were alternating between directing and playing the dame.

We met the men at an Easter party in Naxos at a time when both our houses were under construction, and recognised kindred spirits at once. Many wine-drenched meals occurred in the years following.

Alan had a keen eye for the idiosyncrasies of the island scene, particularly where transport was concerned. “Beware red trucks carrying potatoes,” he warned when these started to appear, erratically driven, on roads that had hitherto carried only donkeys and tractors.

“Rich Athenians” and their antics – as constantly being pointed out by a Greek friend – were a familiar theme for his witty observations.

He could be serious, too. When the Samina went down off Paros, with a loss of 80 lives, he and Colin had been waiting to board it for the short onward journey to Naxos. Alan spoke contemptuously of the pathetic response of the priests present, averting their gaze from the traumatised survivors.

He and Colin were in the habit of using Paros on the journey home. On one occasion, with flightless Naxos deprived of its ferries by savage seas, they bribed a fisherman to take them on the hazardous crossing.

They were obliged to hide from the waves in the hold, where the odours of a recent catch penetrated every fibre of their clothes.