‘I know. But we’ll see her in the morning and ask her a few more questions.’ Wexford hesitated, then quoted softly, ‘“Out of good still to find means of evil.”’

‘What?’

‘That’s what she did, isn’t it? It was good for everyone but Hannah, you look as if it’s done you a power of good, but it was evil for Hannah. I’m off now, Mike, it’s been a long day. Don’t forget to put your car away. You won’t be making any emergency trips to hospital tonight.’

They were unable to puncture her self-possession. The languorous Klimt face was carefully painted this morning, and she was dressed as befitted the violinist or the actress or the author. She had been forewarned of their coming and the gardener image had been laid aside. Her long smooth hands looked as if they had never touched the earth or pulled up a weed.

Where had she been on the afternoon of Hannah Kingman’s death? Her thick shapely eyebrows went up. At home, indoors, painting. Alone?

‘Painters don’t work with an audience,’ she said rather insolently, and she leaned back, dropping her eyelids in that way of hers. She lit a cigarette and flicked her fingers at Burden for an ashtray as if he were a waiter.

Wexford said, ‘On Saturday, October 29th, Miss Last, I believe you had something wrong with your car?’

She nodded lazily.

In asking what was wrong with it, he thought he might catch her. He didn’t.

‘The glass in the offside front headlight was broken while the car was parked,’ she said, and although he thought how easily she could have broken that glass herself, he could hardly say so. In the same smooth voice she added, ‘Would you like to see the bill I had from the garage for repairing it?’

‘That won’t be necessary.’ She wouldn’t have offered to show it to him if she hadn’t possessed it. ‘You asked Mr Hood to call for you here at six, I understand.’

‘Yes. He’s not my idea of the best company in the world, but I’d promised him some apples for his mother and we had to pick them before it got dark.’

‘You gave him coffee but had no alcohol. You had no drinks on the way to Mr and Mrs Kingman’s flat. Weren’t you a little disconcerted at the idea of going out to dinner at a place where there wouldn’t even be a glass of wine?’

‘I was used to Mr Kingman’s ways.’ But not so used, thought Wexford, that you can tell me whether it was normal or abnormal for him to have rinsed those plates. Her mouth curled, betraying her a little. ‘It didn’t bother me, I’m not a slave to liquor.’

‘I should like to return to these shaggy caps. You picked them from here on October 28th and took them to Mr Kingman that evening. I think you said that?’

‘I did. I picked them from this garden.’

She enunciated the words precisely, her eyes wide open and gazing sincerely at him. The words, or perhaps her unusual straightforwardness, stirred in him the glimmer of an idea. But if she had said nothing more, that idea might have died as quickly as it had been born.