‘I’ve just been asking your uncle about the morning before Lula died, John. About when he visited your mother’s flat,’ said Strike.

Bristow glanced at Landry.

‘I’m interested in what was said and done there,’ Strike continued, ‘because, according to the chauffeur who drove her back from her mother’s flat, Lula seemed distressed.’

‘Of course she was distressed,’ snapped Landry. ‘Her mother had cancer.’

‘The operation she’d just had was supposed to have cured her, wasn’t it?’

‘Yvette had just had a hysterectomy. She was in pain. I don’t doubt Lula was disturbed at seeing her mother in that condition.’

‘Did you talk much to Lula, when you saw her?’

A minuscule hesitation.

‘Just chit-chat.’

‘And you two, did you speak to each other?’

Bristow and Landry did not look at each other. A longer pause, of a few seconds, before Bristow said:

‘I was working in the home office. I heard Tony come in, heard him speaking to Mum and Lula.’

‘You didn’t look in to say hello?’ Strike asked Landry.

Landry considered him through slightly boiled-looking eyes, pale between the light lashes.

‘You know, nobody here is obliged to answer your questions, Mr Strike,’ said Landry.

‘Of course not,’ agreed Strike, and he made a small and incomprehensible note in his pad. Bristow was looking at his uncle. Landry seemed to reconsider.

‘I could see through the open door of the home study that John was hard at work, and I didn’t want to disturb him. I sat with Yvette in her room for a while, but she was groggy from the painkillers, so I left her with Lula. I knew,’ said Landry, with the faintest undertone of spite, ‘that there was nobody Yvette would prefer to Lula.’

‘Lula’s telephone records show that she called your mobile phone repeatedly after she left Lady Bristow’s flat, Mr Landry.’

Landry flushed.

‘Did you speak to her on the phone?’

‘No. I had my mobile switched to silent; I was late for the conference.’

‘They vibrate, though, don’t they?’

He wondered what it would take to make Landry leave. He was sure that the lawyer was close.

‘I glanced at my phone, saw it was Lula and decided it could wait,’ he said shortly.

‘You didn’t call her back?’

‘No.’

‘Didn’t she leave any kind of message, to tell you what she wanted to talk about?’

‘No.’

‘That seems odd, doesn’t it? You’d just seen her at her mother’s, and you say nothing very important passed between you; yet she spent much of the rest of the afternoon trying to contact you. Doesn’t that seem as though she might have had something urgent to say to you? Or that she wanted to continue a conversation you’d been having at the flat?’