After a while, she got to her feet with a sigh and went back through to the hall to listen to her messages. She switched the machine to playback and rewound the tape. The voices came through. “This is Bill Grenville at the Sunday Tribune. Can you do the eleven o’clock shift for me on Saturday? Ring and let me know as soon as possible.” Bleep. “Lindsay, Mary here. Fancy a pint tonight to get the royal dust out of your throat? I’ll be in the bar about nine.” Bleep. “This is Cordelia Brown. I’m catching the six o’clock shuttle. Meet me at Glasgow Airport about quarter to seven. If you’re not there, I’ll wait in the bar.”

“Hellfire!” Lindsay exclaimed. “It’s five past six now. What the bloody hell is she up to?” There was no time to shower, but it took only five minutes to change from her working uniform of skirt, shirt, and jacket into a pair of jeans, a thick cotton shirt, and a clean sweatshirt, and to give her face a quick scrub. Then she was running down the three flights of stairs, shrugging into a sheepskin jacket and into her car again. She had deliberately not allowed herself to wonder what was bringing Cordelia to Glasgow for fear that hope would betray her. To keep her mind off the subject, she turned the car radio on to hear the tail-end of the news. She drove fast down the expressway and over the Kingston Bridge, trying to convince herself that the day’s financial report was truly fascinating. Then, in the middle of the news headlines, she had her second shock of the hour, a shock so acute it caused her to take her foot clean off the accelerator momentarily, to the consternation of the driver behind her, who flashed his lights as he swerved convulsively into the outside lane.

Lindsay could hardly believe that she had heard correctly. But the newsreader’s words were branded on her brain: “Police investigating the brutal murder of cellist Lorna Smith-Couper at a girls’ boarding school at the weekend have today made an arrest. Patricia Gregory Callaghan, aged 32, a housemistress at the school, has been charged with murder and will appear before High Peak magistrates tomorrow morning.” Now she understood why Cordelia had jumped on the first plane to Glasgow. Lindsay threw the car round the bend in the airport approach road and parked illegally outside the main entrance, grateful for the royal visit sticker which still adorned her windscreen.