Suddenly, she gave another harsh bark of laughter. ‘And then, just when I thought all that was behind me, I went to a party and there he was. Just right there, right in front of me. When I first saw him, I froze. Just as well I was sitting down with a drink in my hand, I can tell you,’ she added bitterly.

‘It must have been awful for you,’ Trudy murmured, meaning it. ‘Suddenly finding yourself in the same room as the man who’d played a part in your daughter’s death.’

Katherine’s eyes flickered. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said, her voice more slurred now, but still perfectly understandable. ‘You’re thinking that his part in Amy Jean’s destruction was so small. That I was the more guilty one …’

Trudy, in fact, hadn’t been thinking anything of the sort, but she didn’t correct the other woman. She could plainly see that Katherine Morton was so steeped in guilt and self-loathing that it would be pointless to try and comfort her. Besides, what could she possibly say?

‘And you’re right, of course,’ the artist swept on wearily. ‘I was to blame. But at least I am suffering for it,’ she added defiantly, almost proudly. ‘And so is her father, in his own way, I suppose,’ she conceded grudgingly. ‘But as I watched that man, laughing and drinking, I could see that he hadn’t suffered for even a moment. And when he began to dance with that rich widow he was soon to marry, I realised that his life was only going to get better and better.’

Slowly, she leaned forward in her chair and placed her drink, with just a little difficulty, squarely back in the middle of the table. She fixed her gaze intensely on Trudy, who stiffened slightly under the onslaught. The artist’s face was now ravaged by some emotion so strong it made Trudy want to cringe back in her own chair to avoid being contaminated by it.

Of course, she didn’t move a muscle.

‘I could see it all, you see, Constable,’ she said softly. ‘He was going to enjoy all the many years that he still had left, helping to spend Millie Vander’s money, dining at the Ritz, going on holidays in the south of France, enjoying everything that this world had to offer. Whilst Amy Jean, my Amy Jean, was lying in the ground, in the dark, with all those years she should have spent doing the same sort of things now lost to her, forever. And do you know …’

At this, Katherine’s voice lowered and she leaned forward even further in her chair. Around her, the two men in the room instinctively leaned forward too, ears straining, both utterly fascinated and repelled but desperate to hear what she was going to say next.