‘No. I don’t think so. He was in the room, but he was keeping his distance. He was in the corner and there were quite a few people between us.’

‘Did you see either of them go to the Snuggery?’

‘That was that building at the bottom of the garden – Mr le Mesurier told me about it. He said it was his “private space”, whatever that means, and he was obviously very proud of it. But no. I actually left quite early. I had a nice chat with Anthony and I also met some other people, but the truth is that I’m not exactly a party animal. I’m a vegetarian, so all those pies and sausage rolls did nothing for me, and I’m not really drinking alcohol at the moment either. Anyway, I was expecting an important call at the hotel.’

‘Do you know what time you left?’ Hawthorne was testing her. He already knew the answer to that.

‘As a matter of fact, I can tell you exactly. I asked Kathryn in the hallway – you know, Marc Bellamy’s assistant. It was nine twenty-five. That gave me half an hour to get back, which was much more than I needed, and fortunately the minibus was leaving straight away. The driver was standing by the door. He had a beard. I can’t really remember anything else about him.’

‘Were you alone?’

‘There were six or seven other people on the bus, but I’m afraid I can’t tell you who they were. It was quite dark and I didn’t talk to any of them.’

‘What was the call about?’

Anne was becoming increasingly perplexed. ‘You don’t think I had anything to do with what happened, do you?’ she asked. ‘I didn’t like Mr le Mesurier. I’ll admit to that. But I had absolutely no reason to do him harm.’

‘Just getting all the facts.’ Hawthorne smiled in my direction. ‘Tony here may write about all this one day.’

‘Well, I hope he’ll change my name.’ She was clearly reluctant to tell him what he wanted but could see that she had no choice. ‘My agent was calling me from Los Angeles.’

‘On a Saturday?’