‘I know, Mrs Beresford,’ Miller said. ‘We’re pretty hot on parking tickets, but not so good on maniacs who walk the streets on wet nights murdering women.’

‘There’s no need to be rude, Sergeant,’ she said frostily.

‘Oh, but I’m not.’ Behind him Joanna Hartmann moved in anxiously, Frank Marlowe at her shoulder. Miller leaned down and said, ‘You see the difficulty about this kind of case is that the murderer could be anyone, Mrs Beresford. Your own husband – your brother even.’ He nodded around the room. ‘Any one of the men here.’ There was an expression of real alarm on her face, but he didn’t let go. ‘What about Mr Marlowe, for instance?’

He slipped an edge of authority into his voice and said to Marlowe, ‘Would you care to account for your movements between the hours of eight and nine last night, sir? I must warn you, of course, that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence.’

Mary Beresford gave a shocked gasp, Marlowe looked decidedly worried and at that precise moment the record on the stereogram came to an end.

Joanna Hartmann grabbed Miller’s arm. ‘Come and play the piano for us.’ She pulled him away and called brightly over her shoulder to Marlowe who stood there, a drink in each hand, mouth gaping. ‘He’s marvellous. You’ll swear it was Oscar Peterson.’

Miller was angry, damned angry, but not only at Mary Beresford. She couldn’t help being the woman she was, but he was tired of the sort of vicious attack on the police that met him every time he picked up a newspaper, tired of cheap remarks and jibes about police inefficiency from members of the public who didn’t seem to appreciate that every detective who could be spared had been working ninety to a hundred hours a week since the Rainlover had first killed, in an attempt to root him out. But how did you find one terrifyingly insane human being in a city of three-quarters of a million? A man with no record, who did not kill for gain, who did not even kill for sexual reasons. Someone who just killed out of some dark compulsion that even the psychiatrists hadn’t been able to help them with.

The piano was the best, a Bechstein grand, and he sat down, swallowed the double gin and tonic that Marlowe handed him and moved into a cool and complicated version of ‘The Lady is a Tramp’. One or two people came across to stand at the piano watching, because they knew talent when they heard it and playing a good jazz piano was Miller’s greatest love. He moved from one number into another. It was perhaps fifteen minutes later when he heard the door bell chime.

‘Probably Jack and Bruno,’ Joanna said to Marlowe. ‘I’ll get it.’