‘That’s right. He came to see me a little while ago, you know. Quite recently. I don’t know exactly… I lose track of time. They give me so many drugs now. But he came to see me. It was so sweet of him. He wanted to talk about Lula.’

Strike remembered Bristow’s assertion that his mother had not known who Duffield was, and he wondered whether Lady Bristow had played this little game with her son; making herself out to be more confused than she really was, to stimulate his protective instincts.

‘Charlie would have been handsome like that, if he’d lived. He might have been a singer, or an actor. He loved performing, do you remember? I felt very sorry for that boy Evan. He cried here, with me. He told me that he thought she was meeting another man.’

‘What other man was that?’

‘The singer,’ said Lady Bristow vaguely. ‘The singer who’d written songs about her. When you are young, and beautiful, you can be very cruel. I felt very sorry for him. He told me he felt guilty. I told him he had nothing to feel guilty about.’

‘Why did he say he felt guilty?’

‘For not following her into her appartment. For not being there, to stop her dying.’

‘If we could just go back for a moment, Yvette, to the day before Lula’s death?’

She looked reproachful.

‘I’m afraid I can’t remember anything else. I’ve told you everything I remember. I was just out of hospital. I was not myself. They’d given me so many drugs, for the pain.’

‘I understand that. I just wanted to know whether you remember your brother, Tony, visiting you that day?’

There was a pause, and Strike saw something harden in the weak face.

‘No, I don’t remember Tony coming,’ said Lady Bristow at last. ‘I know he says he was here, but I don’t remember him coming. Maybe I was asleep.’

‘He claims to have been here when Lula was visiting,’ said Strike.

Lady Bristow gave the smallest shrug of her fragile shoulders.

‘Maybe he was here,’ she said, ‘but I don’t remember it.’ And then, her voice rising, ‘My brother’s being much nicer to me now he knows that I’m dying. He visits a lot now. Always putting down poison about John, of course. He’s always done that. But John has always been very good to me. He has done things for me while I’ve been ill… things no son should have to do. It would have been more appropriate for Lula… but she was a spoiled girl. I loved her, but she could be selfish. Very selfish.’

‘So on that last day, the last time you saw Lula—’ said Strike, returning doggedly to the main point, but Lady Bristow cut across him.