“‘The legal eagle’s eager beaver: easier than I thought to get her to break the rules! 7.2.’ Is that the one you mean?” Claire asked bleakly. Her small, neat features looked pinched and she seemed to hunch into herself.

Lindsay nodded. She was beginning to feel sympathy for Claire. She knew how much she’d have hated it if their positions had been reversed and she’d been hearing this about Cordelia. She wished there was a less embarrassing way of dealing with Alison’s diary, but forced herself to press on. “If you look farther down, you’ll see another half-dozen entries over the next couple of months. The last one, made a couple of days before her death, says, ‘Spent all afternoon doing very traditional things with champagne. She’s less fun than I expected. Still a bit of mileage, though. 6.8.’ That must have been the afternoon before you overheard the phone call. It certainly undercuts the prosecution’s argument that Alison was desperate to hang on to Jackie.” Catching Claire’s look of distaste, she added, “I’m sorry if this is very painful. But I think it might hold the key.”

Claire nodded sadly. “I understand that.” She took a deep breath and visibly pulled herself together, flicking her hair away from her face. “I just find the whole thing deeply sick. Most people grow out of that sort of silly childishness by their early teens. Alison Maxwell must have been really screwed up. But I still can’t forgive the way she screwed up other people to make herself feel better. Now, Lindsay, what do you make of these other entries? And why have you picked them out in particular?”

“I’ve disregarded the bulk of the entries because they relate to affairs that ended at Alison’s instigation when she had grown tired of the individual. Once she had decided it was the end of the line, that was it, you see. No recriminations, no exposure, just goodnight Vienna. And I’ve set aside for now any of the ones where she was clearly not happy with the outcome but where she seems to have taken no action. I’ve marked ones where she appears to have done something to cause damage to the person who upset her. Those people might reasonably be deemed to have some kind of grudge. I’ve also left ones that were still current at the time of her death.”

Claire nodded, completely restored to her brisk, cool legal persona. “Fine. Can we go through these now?” Cordelia, obviously feeling left out of the conversation, got to her feet and refilled everyone’s glasses with chilled Chardonnay.