By the time she’d dried it all, put everything away in its place and made herself a cup of sweet tea, the doorbell was ringing. Quickly removing the apron, but still wearing a pair of fluffy slippers, she bounded towards the door and opened it with a warm smile.

Palmer and Barrett looked hot in their suits as they waited, the sun beating down on them. It was unusually warm for the time of year in England.

‘Come in,’ she welcomed them, her brown eyes smiling through her trendy, purple-rimmed glasses, ‘go through.’

The officers did as they were told and made their way through the hall and into the dining room, which was off the kitchen. Palmer took particular notice of the jolly wallpaper, which was silver with large pink flowers.

‘Tea, coffee?’ she asked. ‘Cake?’

To her disappointment both men declined.

‘We’d like to talk to you about the night of the book club last week.’ Barrett stood formally, with his hands behind his back.

‘Oh, do sit down.’ Maggie wanted them to relax, the formality was making her nervous. To her relief both men accepted the invitation. Through the net curtain, the sun poured into the room, casting a bright light over everything.

‘What do you need to know?’ Maggie also took a seat, crossing one leg over the other and making herself comfortable. Barrett noticed her slippers and smiled to himself.

‘We’d like to know what happened at the meeting, if there is anything significant that you think we should know.’

‘Well, there was a bit of a falling out, but I wasn’t there for that.’ Palmer noted that Maggie looked mildly disappointed. ‘But I heard about it from Marion when I arrived. Toni stormed off just after I got there with Amy—’

‘Is that Amy Martin you are referring too?’ Barrett interrupted.

‘Yes. She’s a real good friend of mine. We often make our way to whoever’s house it is together. Anyway, Kim left, and Toni, and then Pauline. It wasn’t much of a book club that night. Not sure we did any talking about the book we’d been reading,’ she snorted.

‘What was your relationship like with Toni Jones?’ Palmer asked.

‘We were civil.’ Maggie looked slightly uncomfortable. ‘She wasn’t my favourite person, but I would never have wished any harm on her.’

It seemed to the detectives that this was a running theme with a number of the people they had questioned.

‘She could be quite funny, sometimes, when she wasn’t being a cow.’

Barrett could tell she was about to launch into a long monologue, so he quickly cut in, ‘And what about Janet Cox? When was the last time you saw her alive?’

Maggie was only just getting used to the idea that Janet was dead too, having only heard an hour ago.