‘I’ll try anything. I don’t like unfinished cases, particularly murder ones.’

Accompanied by Inspector Judd, they went to Lord Berrow’s home. When Berrow heard that a detective superintendent from Scotland Yard had called, he could almost feel his heart shrivel into a tiny knot of panic.

‘Very well. I will see this person,’ he told his butler loftily. ‘Put him in the library. Has he come alone?’

‘There is a police inspector with him and a Captain Cathcart.’

Berrow wondered whether to make a run for it out of the back door or bluster it out. Bluster won.

He entered the library with a breezy ‘What ho! One of my servants been stealing the silver?’

‘I have neglected to ask you, my lord, what you were doing on the evening that Miss Tremaine was murdered.’

Relief flooded Lord Berrow’s corpulent body. ‘Get out of here. You are insolent. Do you know who I am?’

‘Answer the question,’ said Harry in a level voice.

Berrow stared at him for a long moment. He was sure it was Cathcart who was behind the taking of that dreadful photograph.

To Kerridge’s amazement, Berrow said mildly, ‘Sorry. But you caught me on the hop. Let me see. It’s a while back. I was at The Club. You can ask the other members. I stayed there until two in the morning. Went home, went to bed. That’s it.’

‘You do not have any connection with criminals, do you?’ asked Kerridge, thinking that if Berrow had hired an assassin, it didn’t really matter what sort of alibi he had.

‘My dear fellow, I do not know such types. I consort with the highest in the land, including our King.’

Kerridge fixed a flat-eyed gaze on him. Berrow shifted uneasily, not knowing that Kerridge was dreaming of him being shot by a firing squad at the people’s revolution, master-minded by himself. He could see this fat lord trembling as he shouted, ‘Fire!’ Then he realized to his consternation that he had shouted aloud.

‘What fire? Where?’ Berrow looked wildly around. ‘I don’t have electricity.’ People in homes lit by electricity often sat with cushions at the ready to throw at the skirting as the occasional over-powerful surge of electricity caused it to burst into flames.

‘My apologies. I was thinking of something else.’

They questioned him further, Berrow growing more and more relaxed when he realized there was to be no mention of that photograph.’

But when they had left, he phoned Cyril to tell him of the visit. ‘I can’t take any more frights like this morning,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to get that negative.’

‘He might keep it at his office. I’ve heard there’s only a secretary there.’

‘We’ll watch his office.’

‘He might see us. I’ll send a servant to let us know. We’ll wait in a coffee shop nearby.’

Ailsa Bridge, Harry’s secretary, was not her usual placid self because she had run out of gin. While she knew her employer kept drinks in his inner office, she dismissed the idea. That would he stealing. But she began to make mistakes in her typing. She looked longingly at the door of the inner office, where the bottles in the cupboard seemed to be singing a siren song to her.