At this, Millie waved a self-deprecating gesture with her hand, as if sensing that her son’s manner was not winning him any friends. ‘I’m afraid he’s right about that you know – I’m not very well organised. But I think I can probably remember most of those who came. The immediate neighbours, of course, and the women from my bridge club, you know, along with the usual crowd. Oh, and Katherine Morton, such a coup getting her to come,’ Millie added, for a moment the pride of a society hostess shining through.

Trudy had a feeling she was supposed to know who Katherine Morton was, but she had no idea.

‘If you give me a little time, I’m sure I’ll be able to write out a list for you,’ Mille promised. ‘Jasper will help, won’t you, darling?’ She looked at her son appealingly. Yet something about the look that passed between them made Trudy feel uneasy. Although, on the face of it, Millie seemed to be asking for help, there was something else, something hovering just on the edge of her tone and in the look in her eyes that verged on something much harder and steel-like. Almost as if she was giving him orders.

And Trudy wondered, was this woman really as needy as she appeared to be?

‘Sure,’ Jasper said shortly, and the fact that he said nothing more, Trudy also found very interesting. He hadn’t struck her as the type to take hints from his mummy and keep quiet.

‘Was Mr Parker a local man?’ Trudy tried next. ‘Did he come from an Oxford family?’

‘Oh no,’ Millie said at once. ‘He came to study as a student, I think … or no, I have that wrong. I’m sure he told me once that he actually went to Cambridge, but he liked living in a university city so much, that when he graduated he relocated to Oxford. He was originally from Birmingham, I believe.’

‘Funny, he never had a Brummie accent,’ Jasper commented mildly. ‘But then, he probably worked very hard to get rid of it,’ he added snidely.

Trudy, who was wondering why, if their victim had studied in Cambridge and liked university towns so much, he simply hadn’t stayed in the city in the Fens, shot the man of the house a quick, questioning look. There had been no disguising the dislike in Jasper’s tone, and his mother shot him a stricken look.

‘Oh, Jasper, not now!’ she said. ‘I keep telling you! You might think it amusing and oh so modern to be mean about people, but I think it’s the height of ill-breeding.’

Jasper spread his hands in surrender.

‘What have you done to upset our lovely mother now, Jasp?’ a voice drawled behind him, and all four of them turned to watch as the latest entrant to the drama made her appearance.