‘Trombone, alto sax and trumpet,’ Fairbanks said. ‘Can’t play any of them, though I can bang out a few tunes on the piano.’ She then leaned in to her boss and whispered. ‘I’d expected him to be a bit younger.’

‘Me too. He’s more like a teacher than a friend.’

Singer appeared, and once they were all seated, the interview began. Singer said that he first met Beatrice Ulbricht in France when she was a promising sixteen-year-old and he was playing in the orchestra that accompanied her. ‘We had a relationship back then,’ he said. ‘There’s no point trying to hide that. But since then we’ve really just been friends.’

The remark sat steaming between them, very much like Gillard’s raincoat in front of the fire.

‘You said that you picked her up from the wedding reception, which is five miles away, but then left her to get the bus back last thing at night on a Sunday,’ Lynne said. ‘That’s not very kind, is it?’

‘Well, you’ve got things the wrong way round. We had an argument, and she stormed out. I was going to give her a lift, but she said not to bother.’ His eyebrows were high and arched, as if in permanent surprise.

‘What was the argument about?’

He exhaled, his mouth spread wide in discomfort. ‘Well, there was a misunderstanding, let’s say that. I thought she was planning to stay here and go back in the morning.’

‘And she thought you were trying to seduce her?’ Gillard asked.

Singer recoiled, as if the idea was repugnant. ‘It really wasn’t like that.’

‘Wasn’t it?’ Fairbanks asked, with a sceptical smile.

‘Look. I knew the wedding organiser, and he rang me to try to get him out of a hole. The previous quartet he had booked cancelled at short notice because of illness. He only had a few days to find another, and asked me to help because of my Royal College links, so I rang Beatrice. The rest of Beatrice’s group are frankly not quite in the same league as the Stanislavsky Ensemble who had cancelled, but beggars can’t be choosers. The Lysander Quartet were happy to play an undemanding ninety-minute set for a few hundred pounds plus travelling expenses and a free meal. I offered overnight accommodation if any of them needed it. Purely to keep their costs down. It’s perfectly normal for these low-key events. And Beatrice accepted, initially.’

‘I see,’ said Lynne, giving him a level stare.

‘You can choose what to believe, but it is true. Anyway, once we’d had supper she seemed to change her mind. I was baffled, and a little offended.’

Gillard said: ‘We’ll need to take a cheek swab of your DNA to eliminate you from our enquiries.’

‘That’s perfectly all right,’ he sighed. ‘I’d expected it.’

The sample taken, the two detectives left. They had arranged to meet Eric Sargent, the wedding organiser, to verify the details that Singer had given them. Gillard drove to the end of the road and found the bus stop. He’d seen worse. It was a fairly typical rural bus shelter, a pitched wooden roof over a rudimentary brick enclosure, a single rusting metal bench within. Getting out to inspect it more closely, there was no legible information about the services or their frequency. A damaged Perspex display, scratched and defaced with marker pen, held the tattered remnants of what might have been a timetable. He crouched down and shone a torch over the flagstones. Chewing gum, cigarette ends, silver paper and cellophane cigarette wrapping. Nothing unexpected.