Lindsay frowned. “She wasn’t going to change the murder method in the book, was she?”

“Not as far as I’m aware. From what she said to me, it was the characters she planned to work on, not the plot or the structure.”

“Was there anything in particular that she mentioned?”

Catriona stubbed out her cigarette. “Nothing specific,” she said.

“Have you got a copy of the manuscript?”

Catriona sighed heavily. “Unfortunately not. Penny took it away with her. She said she wanted me to come to the rewrite with as fresh an eye as possible, not to be able to compare it with what had gone before. She was always quite fussy about retrieving first drafts. Almost neurotic.”

“She was a perfectionist,” Lindsay said sadly, stricken by the memory of her friend. “She hated the idea of anyone revealing her early drafts to the world after she’d gone. I remember her talking about it one night.”

“I don’t even have a current synopsis,” Catriona said, sounding more cross than sad. “If Meredith should come across the manuscript of Heart of Glass, or the computer disk it’s on, I’d really appreciate it if she could pass it on to me.”

“Why?” Lindsay asked, suspecting she already knew the answer.

“The 300 pages I saw were publishable quality,” Catriona answered, confirming Lindsay’s guess. “If they came with a synopsis, her editor could probably cobble together an ending in an appropriate style.”

“Oh, great, just what Penny would have loved,” Lindsay said sarcastically. “A load of cobblers.”

“I think I have more right to be the judge of that,” Catriona said stiffly. “If Penny had doubted my judgement, she would hardly have granted me so much power as her literary executor. Penny wanted to show the world that she was more than just a writer of teenage fiction. What I’ve seen of Heart of Glass demonstrated a formidable talent, and she deserves to have that credited to her reputation. That’s what she really wanted, Ms. Gordon. She wanted it so badly she could taste it.”

Lindsay looked away, realizing that Penny had wanted it so badly she had even been prepared to jeopardise Meredith’s career just to generate more publicity. That indicated a raw ambition Lindsay had never recognised in Penny before. She could understand her desire for acknowledgement; what she couldn’t relate to was her willingness to sacrifice her emotional happiness and security for the fickleness of reputation. “Yeah, well,” was all she said.

“I’m not really the person you should be talking to about this,” Catriona added casually as she lit another cigarette. “Penny spent a lot more time with her editor than she did with me this trip.”

“And her editor is?”

“Belinda Burton. Baz to her babies. Baz would have had a much clearer idea of where she was up to and where she was going. They were very close. It was a large part of the reason behind Penny’s success. The relationship between an editor and a writer is crucial. Different people work in different ways. When you link an editor and writer whose minds run along the same tracks and who like to work at the same level of detail, you’ve got a match made in heaven. A mismatch and everybody’s life is an absolute bloody misery. It’s part of my job to marry up writers with appropriate editors. Baz and Penny fit like a matching plug and socket,” Catriona said expansively.