‘She was only doing it for the camera,’ Hawthorne said. ‘Didn’t you see it for yourself? Helen le Mesurier was carrying the champagne, but the glasses were already laid out on the table. There was nothing spontaneous about what happened in the Snuggery, no moment of madness. She’d planned it all. And when they came in, Colin turned left, but she turned right. Why? Because she knew she had to be in the shot!’

‘But that’s disgusting,’ Torode said. ‘Le Mesurier used his own wife . . .’

‘They had an open marriage. Sex was no big deal. I wouldn’t be surprised if Charles didn’t get off watching this. Each one was as bad as the other.’

The three of us stood facing each other in the empty room.

‘So where is Abbott now?’ Torode asked.

‘That’s the question,’ Hawthorne said. ‘Let’s take a look around.’

We went back into the hall and then upstairs. The house had three bedrooms. Two of them hadn’t been used for a long time. They weren’t just unoccupied, they felt musty and redundant, permanently empty. The master bedroom was cosier, with a king-sized bed and half a dozen pillows that must have mocked Derek Abbott every time he went up there, alone. A bathroom led off it. He had a lot of expensive toiletries.

There was no sign of the man himself and although I noticed a hatch leading up to the attic, Hawthorne wasn’t inclined to search there. I supposed it was unlikely that Abbott was intending to hide away in the house until this was all over. I wondered if he had actually gone on the run. Was it possible that he was simply shopping in St Anne?

Hawthorne stopped. Something had occurred to him. ‘Downstairs,’ he said.

We followed our steps back into the hall. Hawthorne went straight over to the hexagonal table that stood in the centre. I saw now that there was a postcard propped up against the vase of flowers. It showed a view of Gannet Rock, the towering sea stacks and plunging cliffs on the far western side of the island that I had visited on my first day. Why should it mean anything to him? Then I remembered the other postcards and the rollerball pen I had seen on the desk.

Hawthorne turned the card over. There was a handwritten message on the other side.

I can’t go back to prison. I’m not doing that. I can’t.

He showed the card to Torode. ‘Do you know where this is?’ he asked.

‘Les Etacs. Yes. I know.’

‘I think we should go there.’