“She did plead guilty in the end. Which was good because I’m not sure I’d have wanted it to go to trial. I’d have had to take the stand and say, ‘Well, I suppose it’s like this, but what do I know? I’m a podcaster.’”

“Yeah.” Rachael made a deliberate clinky sound with her own wineglass. “There’s a reason I’ve never been called into the Old Bailey as an expert witness. So, now you’ve got up close and personal with some real-life murders, has it changed the way you feel about the show at all?”

Murder Most Actual was never the most scripted of podcasts; the audience liked the informal vibe that came from its being mostly improvised, but this was the first time in her recording career that Liza genuinely had no idea what she was going to say. “Not really. Does that make me awful?”

“Girl, there are loads of things that make you awful, but that ain’t one of them.”

Liza laughed. “Like, don’t get me wrong, it’s way scarier when you’re there. We’ve looked at some pretty awful crime scene photos in the past, and something I hope you listeners out there feel we’ve kept sight of is that every victim—and every killer—we’ve ever talked about is a real person with people who cared about them. But when you’re really there you can’t possibly lose sight of it. I think part of the reason I went so puzzle-box with the whole thing is that otherwise, the sheer terrible of it would have just overwhelmed me.”

Rachael made an encouraging go on sort of noise.

So, Liza went on. “The other thing I found weird is that—well—I guess I’ve always thought of crime as, I don’t know, complex but clean, if you get what I mean? Like, sure, there’s a lot of information and a ton of stuff to keep track of, but there’s right answers there if you look hard enough. Now I think maybe it’s simple but messy. Like I think Sir Richard probably killed his aunt. There’s pretty good evidence he did, but he swears he didn’t, and we’ll never actually know for sure. We just have to pick the answer that seems to make most sense to us. I suppose I used to see a crime as like a jigsaw puzzle. You keep putting the bits together, and finally, you get the picture.”

“And now?” asked Rachael.