Hobbes looked around. ‘You’re not exactly busy?’

‘We’ve had two customers in already today, proper ones, and both bought something.’ He turned to the young woman. ‘Thank you, Samantha, you can take a break now. I’ll look after things here.’ Soon, the two men were alone. ‘Are you an art lover, Inspector?’

‘Not the visual arts, no. More poetry, and the novel.’

‘I showed no interest in painting when I was young, none at all. I know you’ve seen my mother’s home. All those ornaments, the chintz, the bric-a-brac?’

‘Yes.’

‘That was my milieu. It was quite stifling. But at the age of eighteen I had, to use an old-fashioned word, an epiphany.’

Kepple was in his forties, a well-dressed man in a designer suit and tie. He had taken his looks from the grandfather’s side of the family: handsome in a Gregory Peck sort of way. His haircut had probably cost more than Hobbes earned in a week, and his body was trim, his skin polished and ever so slightly tanned. Strangely, a touch of Cockney was in his voice: probably an affectation that went with the job.

The two men walked among the sculptures.

‘Lana Devine is one of the new breed of artists. Have you heard of postmodernism?’

Hobbes shook his head.

‘You will. Eventually.’

‘Is that a put-down? Because—’

‘Of course not.’

‘Because you should be aware that I really don’t care.’

‘I already know that. From the way you treated my mother.’

‘You think I caused her to take a pair of scissors to her own flesh?’

‘Well, something prompted it.’

‘How about guilt?’

Kepple peered at him over the top of a five-foot-tall multicoloured guinea pig. A slight frown took over his face, but it lasted for a second only, to be replaced with the man’s best professional smile.

Hobbes said, ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Mr Kepple. Or losses, I should say.’

‘Thank you. Yes, it’s been a difficult couple of weeks.’

‘What can you tell me about Nicholas?’

‘Uncle Nick? He was a disappointed man.’

‘He expected to do more in life?’

‘Let’s say he had aspirations. To write his own plays, poems, even make films. A lot of them funded, of course, by his father, who poured money into his son’s ambitions, more fool him. Oh, yes, Nicholas had an artistic bent, but would you like to hear our family’s dirty little secret, Inspector?’

‘I’m sure there’s more than one.’

‘Nicholas made quite a few films of … shall we say a “continental” nature?’

‘Dirty movies?’

In answer, a sardonic grin played on Kepple’s lips.

Hobbes asked, ‘Did he use the name Nick Greaves as a pseudonym?’

‘Yes. Yes, he did. My, you are doing well!’

‘One extra vowel. Was that enough to escape his father’s influence?’

‘I suppose there’s nothing worse than being the child of a great artist, for stifling the creative genius. But, sadly, the new name brought him little success, outside the top-shelf market. And even there …’