“Did Greg tell you what he intended to do with the information you’d given him?” George asked. “Was he planning to go to the police?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “Nothing like that.” She looked at him, a little embarrassed. “He said it would be a nice little earner. The import business was getting a bit risky, he said. He’d have to start taking more care. The new line might be more profitable. He seemed pleased with me. Soon afterwards he moved into the flat full-time.”

“Did Greg tell you anything about this weekend in Cornwall?” George asked. “It might help me find out who killed him.”

“He was looking forward to it,” she said. “ He told me it would be a real laugh. ‘A boat full of people who either hate me or owe me money, or both, all having to be polite,’ he said.” She looked awkwardly at George again. “ That makes him sound horrible,” she said, “but really he wasn’t. He was so clever at describing people. He would have come home at the end of the week and told me stories about them, so I would have laughed and laughed.”

“Did he tell you any stories about them before he went?” George asked.

She shook her head.

“Did he tell you who was going to be there?”

“No, he didn’t tell me anything else about it at all. But I knew he was looking forward to it.”

George imagined Greg’s planning the weekend with a sort of gleeful mischief. Who else, he wondered, was Greg blackmailing? Who hated him and why? He tried to remember the night and day on the Jessie Ellen. There was tension, but all the details had disappeared in the elation after the petrel.

“Did Mr. Barnes know that Greg was blackmailing Duncan James about the conservation report?” George asked.

“I didn’t say anything about blackmail!” She felt she had betrayed Greg with her confidence.

“But that’s what he meant,” George said seriously. “Isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose so.”

Greg had made her happy, so she had persuaded herself he was beyond morality, manipulating people for his own amusement. And to entertain her.

“Did Mr. Barnes know what was going on?” George asked.

“No. Of course not. He’s a dangerous man. He wouldn’t allow anything to threaten his business.”

“But Greg was threatening it,” George said. “Duncan James might have decided that he couldn’t take any more pressure and gone to the authorities.”

“I don’t know if Greg ever thought about that,” she said.

“What would Barnes have done if he’d found out?”

“I don’t know,” she said again.