Nick went out with Hazel the next morning to spend the day with her, to talk about her mum and give her a chance to grieve properly. She hadn’t even had that yet. ‘I almost wish she had a bit more of her mother in her,’ he had said to me. ‘Frost inside. Instead, she’s like you. A warm Victoria sponge.’

‘Do I take that as a compliment?’

‘Probably best to.’ I tried to look stern but found myself unable to do so.

Just before ten o’clock, as I was sweeping the hallway, I answered a knock at the door to find a young policeman in uniform. There was a cardboard box at his feet. ‘Is’ – he checked a slip of paper in his hand – ‘Dr Cawson here?’ he asked.

‘No, he’s out. I’m Mrs Cawson.’

‘Are you? Well, I’m handing something over. Some items, taken from … Mrs Cawson, you say?’

‘Yes.’

‘Second wife?’

I became instantly self-conscious. ‘Yes.’

‘Right. I see. These were taken from the house of … another Mrs Cawson.’ He looked at me with … with what? Pity? Disdain? I couldn’t tell. He must have thought that I was the next one on some conveyer belt of wives. Or maybe he was Catholic, a relic from the old era, and disapproved of remarriage at all. It was hard to tell. ‘It’s the stuff we took away for fingerprints ’n’ that. Couldn’t find any.’

‘I’ll see that he gets them.’

The possessions had mostly been taken from her bedroom and bathroom. I supposed it was anything that might have been touched by whoever had been there. Her identity card was on top and underneath it a few items of clothing, a glittering red lace mask of the type ladies once wore at society balls, tied on with ribbon of the same shade, a red gown made of silk – the one she had worn on the poster for The Lucky Lady, I thought – a pair of ashtrays, a long-player recording of one of Lorelei’s plays in a paper sleeve, an ivory-inlaid cigarette lighter and a bottle of her perfume. A few cheap romance novels made my eyebrows lift – she led such a glamorous life, there was surely little reason to live another one vicariously through the pages of a shilling-book.