‘This was my route back into the house. I also went upstairs. I needed to know the exact location of the office so that Emil and I could easily find it. We would return at three o’clock. Le Mesurier and his wife would be sound asleep. We would take the information that we needed and we would leave.’

‘But that’s not how things worked out,’ Hawthorne said.

‘It was a nightmare,’ Emil muttered in a low voice.

‘It was exactly that. We returned to the beach at three o’clock the next morning and climbed back up to the Snuggery. Of course, the intention was only to pass through, to continue through the garden and into the kitchen, using the door that I had prepared. But instead, when we entered the Snuggery – we locked the door behind us – we were confronted by a scene of the worst horror. Le Mesurier was sitting in a chair. He had been tied down. There was a knife coming out of his throat. It was evident that he had been dead for many hours.’

‘But you didn’t raise the alarm,’ Hawthorne said. There was something in his voice that sounded almost like admiration. ‘You didn’t even hesitate. You weren’t going to let something trivial like a violent murder get in your way.’

The two investigators glanced at each other uncomfortably. ‘Of course we considered every possibility,’ Maïssa admitted. ‘It was not an easy decision to make. But in the end we realised that, no matter what had occurred, we had been given an opportunity and it would be foolish not to exploit it. Le Mesurier had a mobile phone. We could see the outline quite clearly in his trouser pocket.’

‘So you took it out. And you used the fingerprint of his right hand to unlock it.’

She cast her eyes down. ‘You think we are disgusting.’

‘I don’t think of you at all, Ms Lamar. Just tell me this. You needed his print to open the phone. So did you cut the tape that was holding him down?’

‘No. We already noticed that one hand was free. We remarked on it. But we were aware that it was a crime scene. We disturbed nothing.’

‘That’s not quite true. You managed to step in his blood, leaving a footprint. You left another footprint on the beach. Whoever killed le Mesurier was actually a lot more careful than you.’

Maïssa ignored this. ‘We left as quickly as possible. We took the mobile and proceeded across the garden. We entered the house through the kitchen door and went upstairs. We used the passwords contained in the mobile to open the computer in le Mesurier’s office and Emil downloaded all his files, including his emails and accounts, to a memory stick. This took very little time. The house was silent. His wife was asleep. We made no sound.