It wasn’t hard to recognise the daughter of the house. As petite as her mother, she had the same attractive green eyes, but her hair was as black as that of her brother. She was quite astonishingly beautiful, and dressed in a long white nightgown and peignoir set. Trudy, in her wellingtons and heavy-weight uniform, immediately felt about as huge and unattractive as an elephant.

‘Oh, Juliet, it’s terrible. Terry is dead,’ Millie wailed. She said it fast, as if needing to warn her daughter of the situation before she could say anything that Millie didn’t want said in front of strangers.

Juliet didn’t look at her mother though, but rather looked straight at her brother. Again her expression was impossible for Trudy to fathom. Accusing? Questioning? Amused?

Trudy was getting annoyed at her inability to read these people. They seemed to have their own language, and she felt resentful about it. She knew she would have to keep a tight hold on her manner.

She glanced at Clement, who was watching the show silently, his eyes alert but calm.

Jasper shrugged slightly at his sister’s questioning, arched his brows and stretched out lazily on the sofa. He didn’t look particularly relaxed though, Trudy thought with some satisfaction.

‘Dead?’ Juliet said flatly. ‘Really?’

‘He crashed his car, in the dark and the snow,’ Millie said, her voice trembling now.

‘Finish your tea,’ Jasper said sharply, clearly brutally determined to cut off any approaching histrionics. Again, a strange lightning-quick unspoken conversation seemed to go on between mother and son, after which she lifted the teacup obediently and sipped from it.

‘We’re trying to find out more about Mr Parker.’ Trudy kept plugging stubbornly away. ‘His next of kin, for instance? Do you know of any family members that we need to contact?’

‘I don’t think his parents are living,’ Millie said forlornly. ‘He never spoke of brothers or sisters either, now that I think of it. I think he might have been raised by an aunt or something, but she’s probably old and dead by now,’ she added vaguely.

‘Poor orphan Terry,’ Jasper drawled.

‘Shut up,’ Juliet said to her brother, without any kind of heat. ‘Sorry, but we can’t help much, as you can see,’ she said to Trudy. Her green eyes swept over her appraisingly, rather like someone who has only just noticed another female presence besides her own. They lingered on Trudy’s pinned, lustrous dark hair for a moment, before dismissing her and moving on to Clement. The green eyes looked far more impressed with him, and Trudy could feel the back of her neck begin to burn in a mixture of humiliation and anger.

‘Is there anyone you can think of who might help us?’ she asked through gritted teeth.

‘Oh – of course, how silly of me. Geoffrey Thorpe! His business partner,’ Millie suddenly said. ‘Terry had his own business selling top-of-the-line sports cars.’