I was silent a moment. If that wasn’t an accusation, it sounded very close to one.

‘Did you go into Mrs Clarke’s bedroom?’ she asked.

‘That’s what I was there for,’ I answered steadily. ‘I cleaned her room, as I always do, and her en suite bathroom. And her dressing room,’ I added. ‘I hung up some of her clothes.’

‘Did you clean the dressing table?’

‘Yes.’ Verbena’s dressing table was concealed behind a pair of soft-close doors, which opened up to reveal a fitted vanity unit surrounded by soft lighting and mirrors. It was like a shrine.

‘Do you remember seeing any jewellery on the dressing table?’ Fair asked.

I knew that most of Verbena’s jewellery, the valuable stuff, was kept in a small safe with a combination lock on it, in the bottom of one of her wardrobes. On the dressing table she kept a Chinese porcelain dish, into which she dropped her jewellery when she took it off at night, items that presumably she didn’t feel compelled to lock up straight away. I knew what was in it each week because I had to move the dish to polish the table underneath. On Tuesday, there had been a gold-coloured leaf brooch she often wore to secure scarves. Nothing else.

‘You didn’t see any earrings?’

‘Have earrings been taken?’

‘Some diamond drops, apparently.’ The constable handed me a photograph, obviously taken at some time for insurance purposes. The drops must have been three inches long, strings of diamonds set in a series of zig-zags. I’d certainly never seen them before.

‘Unusual,’ I commented.

‘Unique, apparently,’ the constable told me. ‘A present from her ex-husband, especially designed for her.’

I handed her back the photograph. ‘Shouldn’t they have been kept in the safe?’

‘Mrs Clarke left them on the dressing table overnight, intending to put them in next morning,’ the constable informed me. ‘When she found they weren’t there, she assumed she must have done it the previous evening, after all. She’d been out late at a party, it seems, and she wasn’t remembering the details too well. Anyway, she didn’t check until much later in the day.’

‘Well, I didn’t see them.’

The constable closed her notebook and thanked me, smiling. ‘That’s all we need to know,’ she said. ‘Sorry to have bothered you.’

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help.’ As she and her colleague got to her feet, I made to take the mug that Dark Hair was clutching.

‘No, no,’ she said. ‘I’ll take it to the kitchen.’ A few moments later her voice floated through to the living room. ‘Ah! You are interested in jewellery, then?’

I went into the kitchen, followed by her colleague. The constable was standing by the table, looking down at the black velvet on which the pinned brooches glittered accusingly. ‘Are all these yours?’ she asked.