‘There was a lot of wickedness going on that night, Anne,’ Hawthorne agreed. ‘That wasn’t the worst of it.’

The three of us fell silent. Anne picked up her pen. ‘You shouldn’t have come all this way to give it back to me,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Shall we go down to the kitchen and have some lunch?’

‘There’s something else I wanted to ask you,’ Hawthorne said.

‘You know, really, Mr Hawthorne . . . I’m not sure I’ve got anything to add.’

‘It’s just that I like to have everything nice and tidy and if Tony here is going to write about this, he needs to know it all too. It’s about the girl at the door.’

‘I don’t know anything about her.’

‘You asked her the time.’

‘Yes.’ Anne was beginning to sound exasperated.

‘Why did you do that?’

‘I already told you. I had an important phone call.’

‘I know. You had to be back at the hotel at ten. But that doesn’t make any sense to me. I’d understand it if you had to leave at a certain time, if you asked someone the time and then hurried to get back to the hotel. But you were already on your way out when you asked. So there was no need to. If you didn’t know what time it was, you wouldn’t have been leaving.’

‘I don’t know what you’re getting at, Mr Hawthorne. My agent in Los Angeles had told me she was going to ring . . .’

‘Although in the end she didn’t.’

‘I wasn’t to know that. I checked my watch and then I double-checked at the door. I also asked the bus driver when the bus was going to leave.’

‘It’s almost as if you wanted everyone to know what time you left the house.’

‘It may seem that way to you, but nothing could have been further from my mind.’ I had no idea where this was going and Anne was beginning to look uncomfortable. She shifted in her chair. ‘It’s almost as if you’re accusing me of killing Mr le Mesurier myself,’ she said. ‘But that’s ridiculous. I hadn’t even met him until last Friday.’

‘You’re absolutely right, Anne. You had no reason at all to kill Charles le Mesurier.’

‘Exactly.’

The clock on the mantelpiece pinged as the minute hand passed the twelve. It was an ugly thing, bronze and white marble with an angel holding a spear in one hand and leaning against the casing with the other. Every hour it would draw attention to itself. It was now one o’clock.

‘Except, perhaps, the death of your son.’ Hawthorne paused. ‘I was there when Elizabeth Lovell talked about him at the cinema.’

Anne scowled. ‘That woman was hateful. And everything about her was fake. You just said so yourself.’