‘Oh. Right. Well, we’ll look into it. Anything else?’

‘Yes. I’d like to go upstairs.’

‘She’s not there.’

‘No. But her phone is.’

We went back up to the bedroom we had visited only that morning. Everything was very clean and dust-free. Mrs Carlisle had made the bed, puffing up the pillows, arranging silk cushions and placing a small white teddy bear holding a sachet of dried lavender in the middle of it all. I had thought the room, with its elaborate furniture and excessive ornamentation, very much a reflection of its occupant. Without her, it felt empty and strange.

Sure enough, there was a pink iPhone on the dressing table. Torode picked it up. ‘I assume this is hers,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know how you’re going to break into it without a passcode.’

‘I’ve got someone in London who may be able to help,’ Hawthorne muttered. But even as he spoke, he was rifling through the address book that Mrs Carlisle had mentioned. It had been on the bedside table, an expensive thing with gold-edged pages and a padded cover with a Liberty pattern. He turned to the back and smiled. ‘No surprises here,’ he said. ‘Credit cards, computers, mobiles, the lot. Seems that “Mrs Lem” liked to keep all her passwords in one place.’

‘Very foolish of her,’ Torode said. ‘Anyone could have found it.’

‘I just did.’ Hawthorne took the iPhone from the police officer and entered the code to unlock it. He quickly scrolled through the most recent text messages, reading them intently. When he looked up, he was uneasy. ‘You should see this,’ he said.

Torode and I moved closer as Hawthorne held out the screen and showed us a chain of communication between Helen le Mesurier and an unknown correspondent, the panels alternating white and blue. This is how it read:

What happened last night?

I saw you leave with Charles. Into the sunggery. WTF?

I don’t know what you’re talking about.

I SAW YOU!!!!

Who did you tell?

I didn’t tell anyone why are you even asking me that?

We may have problems. We need to talk. Can I come over?

IDK. I’ve got police all over the f*ing house. This is crazy.

Can you come to me?

OK. When?

2.30pm

OK. OTW. CUL8R.

‘What does that mean? “CUL8R”?’ Torode asked.

‘See you later,’ Hawthorne said.

‘Well, it should be easy enough to find out who she was talking to.’

Hawthorne shook his head. ‘Not necessarily. There’s no name or phone number showing at the top of the screen. Whoever texted her could have been using a burner phone. Or there are plenty of websites he could have logged into to make himself anonymous – Bollywood Motion, SeaSms.com and so on. It depends how careful he was being.’