Gloria’s voice reached me across the office and through the door. “If you’d just like to take a seat, Inspector, Mr. Kleinman will be back in about ten minutes. If you see that Miss Brannigan, would you tell her that? She was looking for him a few minutes ago, but she’s obviously found something more interesting to do than wait. Can I get you some tea?”

“No thanks, Miss. The constable and me are awash with tea. We’ll keep an eye out for Miss Brannigan, though.” There was no mistaking that voice. It grated like an emery board on my nails. Cliff Jackson was sitting on the other side of the door, in the room I’d illegally entered not quarter of an hour before.

I looked around the room I’d registered subconsciously was a bathroom. That old villain Lord Elgin would have had it away on his toes with the whole room. Walls, floor and even the ceiling were marble. Not that cold, white marble with the gray veins. This was soft, pinky, with dark red veins running through it like a drinker’s nose. The bath looked as if it had been hollowed out of a single lump of the stuff, with monstrous gold dolphins for taps. You could never be sure you’d got it really clean, that was for sure.

Luckily for me, there was another door on the far side. I slipped off my heels and tiptoed across the room. That was where my luck ran out. The door wouldn’t budge. I crouched down, applying my eye to the crack. Situation hopeless. It was bolted on the far side. That left me two alternatives. Either I could sit it out and hope that no one would be caught short. Or I could brazen it out. If I was going to do that, better sooner rather than later. It would be a lot easier to talk my way out of it before Kevin arrived and started asking awkward questions about what I was doing in his office.

I tiptoed back to the loo and put my shoes back on. Then, very noisily, I stood up, flushed the loo and clattered loudly over to the sink, where I committed an arrestable offense with the dolphin till I got a loud gush of water out of it. Then I made great play of fiddling with the door lock before I emerged.

I managed to stop short in the doorway with every appearance of surprise. “Inspector Jackson!” I exclaimed as his head swivelled round to face me. Those tinted glasses of his were really sinister when the light was behind him.

“And what exactly are you doing here, Miss Brannigan?” he demanded, a note of weary irritation in his voice.

“Pretty much the same as you, by the looks of it. Waiting for Kevin. I heard he’d be back soon.” Well, it was true, sort of.