Now I wonder what she passed through in her transition from homeless-ness in a foreign country (though with £2,000) to marriage to a rich man, a beautiful house, a glamorous appearance. Who was the Lavinia she had implied she’d worked for, whose PA she had been? And what was this college she mentioned? How had she done it? Had she ever seen Jonny again or, come to that, Wim? I wondered too if she had ever seriously thought she might get money she had never lost out of an insurance company to which she had never paid a premium. Why had she worried and harried her parents about a sum of money she knew her father had never had? Solely for the better concealment of the money? I learned the answers to none of these questions.

The police came. They looked at the room and asked where Liv was. We had to tell them we didn’t know, that she had gone without warning. After they had left we did our best to wash the walls and get the blood off the mattress but unsuccessfully. Beryl, who never gave notice of her coming but popped in when the fancy took her, arrived in the early afternoon.

We told her what had happened. We couldn’t think of a substitute story. She would of course pass it all on to the Clarks, the Asian couple and, possibly, to Max and Caroline Bodmer. Not much harm would be done as it would all be in the papers anyway.

“He’s the one that’s in The King and I, isn’t he?”

“He looks like the one that’s in The King and I. ”

“There’s too much of this sleeping with all and sundry,” she said, unusually severe. “More trouble’s caused in this world by that than wars. Look at the Professor.”

She scrubbed the walls and took the rugs away, saying that she’d wash them herself at home. But when she had sniffed the sheets in the bag, she agreed that putting them out with the rubbish was the only thing.

“Been worse if it had been his neck,” she said.

Would it? We went to the hospital to see Wim that evening.