I was almost beginning to feel sorry for Tamar myself. Then I remembered the display in the drawing room the previous morning, and how insincere I’d instinctively felt it to be. “Well,

“And if I’m being honest, I’d have to say I’m glad. If I’d heard one more sentimental conversation about ‘our roots’ I think I’d have screamed. But I didn’t kill her. You can’t get away from the fact that they made good music together. And I wouldn’t have taken that away from him. I know how much his work means to him.” Tamar stirred her coffee demurely. I nearly believed her. Then I remembered Micky’s hints and their implications. Someone had been shoving heroin at Moira, and it looked like Tamar. I decided to wait till I had more evidence to hit her with, rather than waste the talkative mood she was in today. It hadn’t escaped me that the reason for her co-operation might be nothing more than a desire to stay in Jett’s good books.

“I hate to be a bore, but I have to ask you what you were doing on the night Moira was killed,” I said. “I know you’ll have run through it already with the police, but I have to go through the motions.” I gave what was supposed to be a winning smile.

Tamar ran a hand through her tousled hair and pulled a face. “Bor-ring is right. OK. I’d been shopping in town all afternoon, then I met my sister Candida for a coffee in the Conservatory, you know, just off St. Anne’s Square. I got back around half past seven. I bumped into Jett and Moira in the hall on their way down to the studio. Jett said they’d be about half an hour, and I decided to cook dinner.

“I did steaks in brandy and cream sauce with new potatoes and mangetout, and Jett and I ate in the TV room. I drank most of a bottle of burgundy, Jett had his usual Smirnoff Blue Label and Diet Coke. We watched the new Harrison Ford movie on video, then I went upstairs and had a bath. Jett came up and joined me just after ten. We made love in my room, then he went off downstairs some time after eleven. He said he was going to do some work with Moira. I couldn’t sleep, so I read for a while then I started to watch the video. That’s when you walked in.”

It all came out a bit too pat. I used to have a boyfriend who continually confounded me by his ability to remember the most trivial remarks weeks later. So when he lied to me, his stories

I tried the tired old question. “So who do you think killed Moira?”