‘Yes. Exactly,’ Geoffrey said with a small smile. ‘I remember now – it was last summer – or the summer before. We had a garden party here at the house – Terry came, obviously, and my wife mentioned that she was having difficulty getting something specific she wanted. Can’t remember now what it was, something continental, I think … Anyway, Terry said something about how she’d get just what she wanted if the Pantiles were around the corner. As it happened, we’d shopped there not long after our honeymoon, when we were holidaying not far from the town, so we both knew where he meant.’

‘And he might have come from Tunbridge Wells?’ Trudy nodded, making a rapid note in her notebook.

‘Perhaps,’ Geoffrey said, with a shrug. ‘It’s a little odd, now that I come to think of it. The moment he mentioned it, Terry seemed to get flustered. Well, not flustered so much, but he gave a start, as if annoyed at himself for speaking without thinking, and then he quickly rushed on to say something else, as if he regretted it, and wanted to take our minds off it.’

‘He acted as if he’d made a slip,’ Clement clarified quietly.

‘Yes. You know, I rather think that’s exactly how he acted,’ Geoffrey admitted thoughtfully. Then his eyes glazed over. ‘Terry never did like to talk about himself and his past, now that I come to think of it. He always became evasive whenever talk turned more personal, about families and childhood memories and things like that. I wonder now …’

And so did Trudy. Why, she asked herself, would someone not like to talk about themselves and their families or the past? Usually you couldn’t stop someone – people loved talking about themselves as a rule. So why had Terry Parker been so reticent?

He didn’t have a police record; it was one of the first things she’d checked.

Although they talked a little more, nothing else of significance seemed to come out of it, and Trudy and Clement left ten minutes later.

One of the first things Trudy did on leaving the Thorpe residence was to get Clement to pull over at the next telephone box they found, and she used some of her pennies to place a call through to the local station in Royal Tunbridge Wells. There she spoke to the desk sergeant at the police station. Given that the bad weather conditions were rife everywhere, the sergeant took a note of her request for someone to search the records for any mention of their dead man, but warned her it might take them some time. This didn’t surprise her – she hardly expected her inquiry would be put at the top of their to-do list. If they were to make any progress with the case before Inspector Jennings pulled her off it, she mused wearily, it would be a belated Christmas miracle!