“Positively tear-stained, the poor child,” Phoebe said. “Really, that man, abandoning her like that without a word. I’m furious with him.”

“He couldn’t help being murdered,” Will protested.

“Nonsense. She was hopelessly bewildered and really desperate to talk to someone—”

“Oh, she was not,” Maisie said. “She tried to shut the door on me, and she was positive she couldn’t speak to us or anyone at first. But Phoebe got to her. Everyone adores Phoebe.”

“Darling, it was you,” Phoebe said. “You’ve a positive genius for understanding people, and making them understand. She trusted you.”

“But you utterly charmed her—”

“You both put the Spanish Inquisition in the shade,” Kim said. “Get on with it before Will explodes.”

Phoebe pulled a face at him. “Anyway, once she’d started talking, she blurted it all out. She’s very pretty indeed, but perhaps not awfully bright.”

“Thick as day-old porridge,” Maisie said. “She told us all about how he’d set her up in the villa. ‘He was so good to me,’ she kept saying. He came to her twice a week usually, but said she wasn’t to worry if he didn’t turn up for a while, and she was never to look for him or contact anyone about him, just to trust he’d come back when he was ready. He said it was to protect her because of him being married. And she believed him! Not just that, but she was proud of herself about it. Even when she read about the murder in the papers, with photographs of him under a different name, for heaven’s sake, she didn’t contact the police, or try to find out what would happen to her or anything! She just sat there! She kept saying he’d promised she’d always be looked after and she wasn’t to tell anyone about him, so she hadn’t. I’ve never seen anything so hopeless in my life.”

“We asked if he had a study or papers at her house and she said, yes, he used to work here,” Phoebe said. “I said my friend could help look at them—I’d already telephoned Kim, of course—and she refused point blank. Nobody was ever to look inside his study, and that was that.”

“Would you believe, she didn’t even know whose name the house was in, or if it would be hers!” Maisie bristled with outrage. “I asked if she was the beneficiary on his insurance, and you won’t believe this: she said his wife would get that. I said, why? And it turned out she didn’t know he was divorced! She was sure he was still married, because he’d told her he couldn’t get a divorce, and if he was free he’d have married her. Honestly, I could have shaken the girl.”