‘What’s all this about?’ Marc asked. No ‘How do!’ today. He was wearing a hoody from his own television show, with the words ‘Lovely Grub’ stitched across the chest. He hadn’t had time to shave and the stubble did him no favours, emphasising his poor skin, his jowls. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Let’s talk in the kitchen,’ Hawthorne suggested.

‘I’ve made some tea,’ Judith Matheson said. Of course she had. She was the sort of woman who would always make tea no matter what the crisis. Lose your leg in a hideous industrial accident and she’d be there with a nice cup of Earl Grey.

The Mathesons followed us into the kitchen, then left us together: Hawthorne and me and our two witnesses.

‘So what’s going on?’ Marc demanded. ‘Has someone died?’

‘Charles le Mesurier has been killed,’ Hawthorne told him.

I could see all sorts of things going through Marc’s head as he digested the news. ‘Well, I’ll be . . . ! You’re not serious?’

‘Are you saying he’s been murdered?’ Kathryn cut in. She was sitting next to her employer and out of the two of them she seemed the more relaxed. Perhaps she had got out of bed earlier, but she looked showered and refreshed, her hair neatly combed, dressed in a tracksuit, her eyes quite calm behind the oversized glasses.

‘That’s exactly what I’m saying.’

‘Well, I’ll go to the foot of the stairs!’ Now that he’d been given a bit of time to consider what had happened, Marc Bellamy couldn’t hide a smirk. ‘How did they do it?’

‘He was stabbed.’

‘Serves the bugger right. I shouldn’t say it. But he was a nasty piece of work . . . all that sneering and sniping. No-one’s going to miss him now that he’s gone.’

Kathryn looked at him in surprise – not because of what he had said but because he had said it at all. ‘Why are we here?’ she asked. ‘You can’t think I had anything to do with this. I never even met him until I came here.’ Another thought occurred to her. ‘And if you don’t mind my asking, what exactly has it got to do with you anyway? You’re just here as part of the festival, the same as us.’

‘You don’t need to talk to me if you don’t want to, Ms Harris,’ Hawthorne replied, gently menacing. ‘I’m just trying to work out where everyone was and at what time and it seems to me that you and Mr Bellamy here are best placed to tell me that. You were looking after the guests. It was part of your job to keep an eye on them.’