‘Anyway, that was when one murder became two murders,’ Hawthorne went on. ‘And let’s see how the rest of the evening plays out.

‘At nine twenty-five, Anne leaves the party. She has a fake conversation with Kathryn which establishes the exact time and also makes it clear that she leaves long before the murder takes place. She does the same thing with the minibus driver, Tom McKinley. She tells him that she’s in a hurry to get back to the hotel. She’s nervous. But that’s ridiculous! The hotel’s only ten minutes away and she’s got thirty-five minutes to get there. She wants him to remember her. She knows that we’ll talk to him.’

‘She said he was standing by the door,’ I said.

‘Yes – but not the door of the minibus. McKinley told you he met her coming out of the house . . . so it must have been the front door, which gives her a bit more room for manoeuvre. It was too dark to see who was actually on the bus. So all she did was nip out, wait a moment and then slip back into the house again. If anyone had seen her, she could just say that she’d forgotten something. But there were still a hundred people at the party. Who was going to notice one person moving in a crowd?’

It was true. I’d been in the hallway myself at that time. But I’d had my head buried in Marc Bellamy’s cookbook and then I’d been talking to Maïssa Lamar. I hadn’t seen her.

‘Anne Cleary has two people who will swear she’s left the house,’ Hawthorne went on. ‘She tracks back through the kitchen and straight out along the edge of the garden and across to the Snuggery. She knows that Charles le Mesurier is going to be coming there because he’s already arranged a meeting with Kathryn and she’s agreed.’

‘But I spoke to her!’ I said. ‘I went into the kitchen. She was almost in tears.’

‘I think what you saw was an act, Tony. In fact, she couldn’t have been happier. Le Mesurier had played right into her hands.