“It’s taken me this long to hitch a ride out from Beverly Hills,” Queenie said. “There ain’t no buses. I had no idea it was so far and hardly any motorcars come this way. And it’s bleeding cold too. Then the sodding gate wouldn’t open and I thought it was stuck and I was trying to push it when these two great gorillas came out and grabbed me. I told them who I was but they seemed not to understand me.”

“That’s because they are Mexican and you speak with a Cockney accent,” I said. I wanted to smile but I was determined not to. For once I was going to play the indignant employer. “So what exactly are you doing here?”

“Well, I should think that was ruddy obvious,” Queenie said. “I’ve come back to you. I decided I’d rather work for you for no money than the old cow who was paying me well.”

“You got the sack, you mean? You set fire to her dress or broke her perfume bottle?”

“I bloody well didn’t,” she said. “If you want to know I was doing quite well, apart from melting her undies when I ironed them. How was I to know about a stuff called rayon and what happens when you iron it? But the old cow had no idea how to treat servants. She wanted me to clean her toilets. ‘I can’t do that,’ I said. ‘I’m a lady’s maid.’ And do you know what she said then? She said, ‘I’m not paying servants to have them sit around doing nothing. I don’t need someone to dress me but I do need clean toilets. In America we work for our living.’ So I told her that I was used to working for quality and no amount of money was worth being treated like dirt and I walked out. I went back to our bungalow at the hotel and they said you’d come up here. So here I am.”

“You want to come back to work for me?” I said. “Isn’t that rather presumptuous? Didn’t it occur to you that I might have found a new maid?”

“Gorn,” she said with a grin. “Where would you find a proper maid here? If they thought I was worth snapping up and paying in Beverly Hills there can’t be too many maids around.”

I thought this was an insightful comment. “Well, I suppose you’ll have to stay now, Queenie,” I said, “because you would not be allowed to leave. There has been a murder and this policeman has just started his investigation.”

“Blimey,” she said. “You don’t half get yourself involved in a lot of murders.”

The sheriff was looking at me with interest.

“What does she mean?” he asked.