Flicking through, I found that they were not all classic romances either – a couple were American ‘pulp’ that mined the seamier side of life in the United States. The cover of one showed two girls with long hair tussling on the floor of a women’s prison, their skirts riding up to expose their thighs. Another was set in the Roman Empire, although The Lusts of Rome looked little like the history books I had read at school. Tucked in the corner was a stack of letters, with all the envelopes torn open. I couldn’t help but pull out their contents. A few bills; some fan mail forwarded by her acting agent; and a thick card with a gilded edge. It was an invitation, the rippled-edge, copperplate-script type that had once been for elegant weddings before they were denounced as bourgeois frippery.

You are cordially invited to join the party at Mansford Hall, Fetcham, Surrey. Masques from eight until midnight. Tuesday, the 25th of November 1952.

That was four days away. Those, and a telephone number at the bottom, were all the printed words, but there was more – a strange postscript scrawled at the bottom in near-illegible handwriting, as if the writer were in the grip of pain:

Nick knows you’re selling him out

Nick. Seeing his name there felt like a blow. The card had arrived in an envelope postmarked the day before Lorelei’s death, so whatever was between them hadn’t completely ended until her death after all. ‘Selling him out’? What did that mean? I searched through the rest of the box, pulling out lipsticks, silk scarves and pill-boxes; yet nothing else made mention of this gathering. Without thinking, I picked up the telephone. Nick’s surgery was on our exchange so I dialled straight through.

‘The consulting rooms of Nicholas Cawson, Charles O’Shea speaking.’

‘Hello, Charles, it’s Jane Cawson.’

‘Mrs Cawson,’ he said.

‘Is …’ But what would I say to Nick? Would I demand to know about the note and what it referred to? It was something to do with their black-market business.

The line hissed.

No, I should wait and calmly work out what to do. And one thing was certain: she was dead now, so it was truly over.

‘Mrs Cawson?’

‘Yes.’

‘Your husband isn’t here.’

‘No?’

‘No, he is out with his daughter.’

‘Oh, yes, yes, of course. I’ll speak to him later. Goodbye.’

I hung up and looked at the invitation again. There was something about it that was magnetic too. I had never been invited to one of these events; they existed for me only in the pages of Jane Austen or Baroness Orczy.