The inspector nodded. He turned to face the neighbour. ‘Mrs Travis?’

‘Yes?’

‘When you were cleaning, and tidying things away, did you find anything unusual?’

‘I didn’t really look around that much.’

‘Anything at all?’

Again, she hesitated. ‘Does pornography count? Dirty magazines? Oh, I don’t quite know what to call them! Anyway, it made me quite sick, finding them like that.’

Hobbes and Latimer exchanged another glance.

‘But of course I never mentioned it to Leonard. After all, he was a man alone.’

She looked at the two police officers nervously, and added, by way of an excuse, or an explanation, ‘They were very old. From the sixties, or the fifties, even.’

Hobbes nodded. ‘I see. Anything else?’

‘No, that’s all.’

‘You didn’t take anything from the house?’

Caroline’s eyes opened in shock. ‘What? No, of course not! How – how dare you?’

Latimer moved in to calm her. ‘That’s all right. Don’t—’

‘Well, he shouldn’t say things like that. He shouldn’t!’

Hobbes stood there, looking at Caroline Travis, saying nothing. He couldn’t decide if her indignation was real or a cover.

‘You said before that there was more than one dress of this kind.’ He pointed to the dress on the floor. ‘Could you tell me where the others are?’

‘They’re in the back bedroom on the top floor, the one on the right. In the wardrobe.’

‘Thank you. That will be all.’

Caroline Travis looked at him for a few moments, her eyes dark with hurt. Then she turned and left the room.

Latimer waited until she heard the front door close. ‘So you think she was taking things?’

‘Yes, but I don’t know why I think it. She’s certainly holding something back.’

‘It’s her perfume.’

‘What?’

‘Caroline Travis was wearing perfume.’

‘I noticed.’

Latimer tilted her head and smiled. ‘And?’

The light went on in Hobbes’s eyes. ‘Oh, it’s the same kind.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Midnight in Paris.’

‘There’s your trigger.’

‘Yes, yes. Maybe she took a bottle for herself. Damn it. How could I miss that?’

‘Getting old.’

Hobbes smiled at her. ‘Not quite yet.’

Meg Latimer was both his bane and his blessing: the one person on the team he could readily talk to, even if she was always undercutting his thoughts. Today she looked as untidy as ever, her dark hair uncombed and unruly, the ‘hedge-backwards effect’, she called it. She was rarely without a cigarette, as now, and her face creased a little, her eyes narrowed, as she saw him studying her. She gave him that fuck-you-too look in return. ‘I need to clean my lungs of the smell of this place. Too much loneliness.’ Hobbes nodded, not wanting the argument. He could never tell if she rated him, or whether she was playing a game. If so, she played it well. And, quite often, from their differing opinions a new idea would emerge.

‘So then, Guv …’

‘So. Indeed.’

‘What the hell do we do?’

‘There’s nothing here, Meg – no crime, no dead body.’