‘I didn’t know his name until Anthony told me, and it didn’t mean anything to me then.’ She paused a second time. ‘Funnily enough, Charles le Mesurier talked to me about him a short while later.’ The tea and coffee had arrived while we were talking and she took a sip. There were also four slices of toast with some jam and butter, but it didn’t feel right to eat in the middle of an interview so I left them sitting on the table in front of me. ‘I spoke to Mr le Mesurier for quite some time,’ she went on. ‘And I know I shouldn’t say this, but he didn’t strike me as a particularly nice man.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Well, he had everything, hadn’t he! Good looks, wealth, that house, a gorgeous wife. But he didn’t have anything nice to say about anyone.’ She turned to me. ‘I’m sorry to say this, but he went on quite a bit about your session and how much he disliked it. He said that the extract you read was too long and he didn’t think it was well written.’

‘Oh. Did he?’ Charles le Mesurier had been brutally murdered but I was still annoyed.

‘It wasn’t just you. It was everyone. He really disliked George Elkin, although they’d known each other since they were children. He thought the people living on the island were thick, particularly the ones opposed to the power line. And he resented how much money he’d spent on the festival. At least, that’s what he told me.’

‘What did he say about Derek Abbott?’

‘Well, that’s exactly what I mean. I actually asked him about Derek Abbott because I thought I knew him and he immediately told me that he’d been in prison and that he should never have trusted him. He said that Mr Abbott worked for him, helping him with his finances and advising him on some of his online publications, but that the two of them had fallen out. They’d had an argument . . . something to do with money. He didn’t have anything very nice to say about him. In fact, he told me he was about to fire him. Heaven knows why he thought I’d be interested.’ She thought for a moment, as if trying to come up with some way to excuse him. ‘I have a feeling he’d been drinking,’ she concluded. ‘He must have started some time before we arrived. Champagne.’

‘Did he tell you why Abbott had been in jail?’

Anne Cleary pursed her lips. ‘Oh yes. He said quite clearly that he was on the register of sexual offenders. He almost seemed amused. But it does beg the question as to why he would ever employ such a man in the first place!’

‘And did Abbott hear any of this?’