Rosemary Henshaw looked more comfortable, more approachable than when Ramsay had last seen her. She still wore makeup, but she was not so shiny or impenetrable as she had been that Sunday night. She was dressed in a pale green jogging suit that was stretched across her stomach. Ramsay thought he had disturbed her in the middle of her lunch. When she opened the door, she was brushing crumbs from the front of her sweatshirt.

“Yes?” she said. Then: “ You’re the policeman, aren’t you. You were here the other night.”

Ramsay smiled at her. “You were kind enough to tell me to drop in if I thought you could help,” he said.

Hunter isn’t the only one who can turn on the charm, he thought. But Hunter’s so much better at it than I am.

“Of course,” she said. She seemed pleased to have the company. “Come into the kitchen. I was just having a sandwich. Perhaps you’d like something.”

“You’re not expecting your husband?” Ramsay said.

She giggled as if the questions were a proposition. “He’s always busy,” she said. “He’s working on different developments all over the country. I never know where he’s working, but he lets me know if he’s going to be back early and he’s said nothing today.”

She took him through the house, which was as glossy and dust-free as her face, to the kitchen, which seemed full of electrical gadgets. There was a portable television on a work top and an earnest young woman with a shrill Scottish accent gave consumer advice. Rosemary Henshaw switched it off.

“What would you like to eat?” she asked. “ I could pop something from the freezer into the microwave. It wouldn’t take a minute. Or a sandwich. I could do you a sandwich.”

Ramsay said that a sandwich would be very nice. She sliced a stottie deftly and began to fill it with ham and tomato.

“What time did your husband go out this morning?” Ramsay asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, giggling again. “ He was gone when I got up. I’m dreadful in the mornings. He sees himself out.”

“What about Tuesday morning?” Ramsay asked. “ Did he go out early then?”

“Why?” she asked, suddenly suspicious. “What’s this all about?”

Ramsay answered the question though he knew she must already know why he was asking. She was no fool.

“Charlie Elliot was murdered on Tuesday morning, very early,” Ramsay said. “ You must have heard that.”

“I heard he was dead,” she said. “I didn’t ask for any details. I don’t want to know.”

“He was stabbed,” Ramsay said. “Just like Alice Parry.”

“I don’t understand what’s going on,” she cried. “ Everyone said he killed the old lady.”

“Well,” Ramsay said. “ Now he’s dead.”

There was a silence and then she turned to him.