Vincent stared at the young girl, utterly fascinated. Her mop of fair ginger curls, the freckled open face flushed with excitement and big wide eyes all made her appear to be more of a child than a grown woman. Her hands, flapping around in the air as she spoke, had nails painted a bright crimson to match her lipstick. (Which did very little, Vincent thought, for her colouring.) She seemed totally oblivious to the sensation she was creating. Surely, this was all so much pie-in-the-sky though?

Clement, for his part, was wondering if the young woman was perhaps drunk, or worse. But after observing her closely, he decided that she was probably no more than overexcited, and of a highly strung disposition – and maybe not the most intelligent of youngsters.

‘Perhaps you could just tell us, from the beginning, what it is that you know, Miss Arles,’ Clement said, trying by his flat tone and calm demeanour to try and rein her in a bit. ‘You say you were with Mr Parker on the night he died? You were at the party at Mrs Vander’s house?’ This, at least, had been confirmed by her appearance on the guest list.

‘Oh yes – it was heavenly. Mrs Vander is such a fashion icon, isn’t she? You can see where Juliet gets it. That house! Yummy – like something from a magazine. And there was so much champagne there – I mean, real champagne – and the food was—’

‘Yes, yes,’ Clement cut in hastily. ‘I take it the twins invited you?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘So you knew them socially?’

‘Oh no. Well, not until they needed my help because of that awful man trying to rob them of their inheritance and all that,’ Patsy said eagerly.

‘Er … by that man, you mean Mr Parker?’ Clement said, resigning himself to the fact that this wasn’t going to be easy. Just keeping his witness to the point was going to take most of his – admittedly limited – patience.

‘That’s right. He was dead set on marrying Mrs Vander and spending all her money,’ she responded earnestly. ‘Juliet told me so. He was so infra dig it was sickening.’

Clement could hear Juliet Vander’s voice in that last sentence, and wasn’t surprised. By now it was becoming abundantly clear that Juliet had taken advantage of this girl’s hero-worship to inveigle her into some sort of scheme or other. The question was – what had that scheme been? And did it include collusion in murder?

‘I see. Seems he was a gold-digger,’ Clement said. ‘And Juliet and Jasper took you into their confidence?’