“The press is here already,” Hunter said. “ In the house. One of Mrs. Parry’s nephews is the editor of the Otterbridge Express.”

“I know,” Ramsay said. He was already feeling depressed. “Tell me who else is here.”

“Laidlaw’s wife, Stella, and their daughter, Carolyn, and his brother and his family. They’re all in here.”

Hunter led him through the hall to the warm square room where the family had waited the night before for Alice’s return. As soon as he saw them all, Ramsay knew that these were Diana’s sort of people and the thought triggered a profound unease and an excitement. They could easily have been friends of Diana’s, invited to her dinner parties, sharing evenings at the theatre, meals in dimly lit foreign restaurants. He recognised the style. Although the women wore jeans and hand-knitted sweaters, their wardrobes were probably full of clothes that Diana might have chosen to wear. It had always surprised him that Diana would admit quite happily to having found a bargain in a charity shop or at a jumble sale—“ a real silk shirt and only five pounds”—but refuse to go near the cut-price chain stores in the high street where his mother always shopped. It always seemed to him a strange sort of snobbishness, though Diana always said he had no taste and could not possibly understand. Throughout the interview with the Laidlaws he felt that, with Diana’s arrogance, they were saying the same thing. You’re different from us, they implied. You’re from a different background. How can you possibly understand?

Yet he felt from the beginning that because they were Diana’s sort of people, he did understand them. It was his secret weapon, that understanding. They would always underestimate him.

He stood just inside the door and looked around the room. James Laidlaw sat on a worn leather Chesterfield reading an old copy of the Times. He recognised Ramsay and stood up.

“Inspector,” he said smoothly, “ I’m glad it’s you. It’s always easier to work with a person one knows.”

Ramsay nodded but said nothing. There seemed to have been no collective support or sympathy, no communication between them even. Max Laidlaw was sprawled on the floor. He was tall like his brother but younger, good-looking in a dark Celtic way. He seemed too inexperienced, Ramsay thought, to be a doctor. It was hard to imagine him taking responsibility. He was too careless of other people, too self-absorbed. He took no notice of Ramsay.