For a moment, it seemed to her that the older woman’s eyes flickered in what she would have sworn was genuine pain, and the younger girl began to feel guilty for being so brusque.

‘No, he had not,’ Millicent said, and for once her voice had the ring of stark truth.

‘Had you any reason to suppose he might?’ Trudy tried again, her voice gentler now, as she sensed that, beneath the theatrics being played out in front of her, she might have touched on a real vulnerability in her witness. After all, this woman had lost a man she loved, and Trudy knew that she mustn’t lose sight of that.

Millicent Vander managed to smile. ‘I certainly expected no such thing,’ she said firmly.

‘What can you tell us about the woman who was at your party that nobody seemed to know?’ Trudy went on to describe Phyllis Raynor, but here again, Millicent wouldn’t be drawn.

‘I have no idea who she was,’ the older woman said with a sophisticated smile. ‘But you don’t like to make a fuss, do you? She didn’t stay long. I did wonder if she had the wrong address. Or perhaps one of my naughty male friends had brought her as his plus-one and didn’t like to own up to it. Men can be so silly sometimes, can’t they?’ she said, opening those big green eyes of hers innocently.

And with that, Trudy and Clement had to be content.

*

They left the house, if not with a flea in their ear, then certainly feeling a little chagrined and put out. ‘She made me feel like I was being a right brute,’ Trudy said ruefully. ‘And a boor. And naïve and who knows what else.’

‘Yes, she is rather good at that, isn’t she?’ Clement agreed mildly. ‘Playing the misunderstood, mistreated poor little woman.’

‘She was head over heels in love with our victim though, I’m sure of it.’

‘I agree,’ Clement concurred. ‘But she’ll never admit it in a month of Sundays.’

‘It gives her a motive though, doesn’t it? The woman scorned, and all that,’ Trudy mused out loud. ‘If she found out that he’d been having an affair with Phyllis Raynor, the lovely gate-crasher?’

‘Yes. And it also occurs to me that she’s got to be our number-one suspect when it comes to being the one most likely to have delivered the sleeping dose to our victim if it was a spur-of-the-moment thing.’ He paused by the entrance to the gate as Trudy looked questioningly at him. ‘Think about it,’ he encouraged. ‘If our killer acted on impulse, then she’s really the only who who’d have access to the murder weapon, isn’t she? Who takes their sleeping pills to a party? No one, that’s who. But a hostess in her own home …’