Mathews put his hand on Johnny Soper’s shoulder and Penrose was relieved to have someone there who knew the family. ‘Come inside, lad, and let’s get a drink down you.’ He looked at Penrose. ‘That’s all right, isn’t it?’

‘Of course it is.’

They headed towards the hotel, but Soper turned back. ‘How did she die?’ he asked.

Penrose’s dilemma returned and he chose a middle path. ‘We found your mother at the bottom of the stairs. She died from a head injury.’ It was the truth, but not the whole truth, and he felt a pang of conscience as Emily Soper’s son accepted it and turned away.

‘What a tragic fucking coincidence that is,’ Fielding said. ‘Poor bloke. Christmas will never be anything but misery for him now.’

There was no trace of anything but sincerity in the words, but Penrose decided to test him. ‘If it’s a coincidence,’ he said, waiting for the reaction.

His meaning took a second or two to sink in, but when 239it came, the surprise seemed genuine. ‘You mean she was murdered as well?’ Fielding asked. ‘It isn’t just Hartley you’re after someone for?’

The barely suppressed enthusiasm for the idea was exactly what Penrose would have expected from a journalist; if Fielding was an impostor, he was a good one. ‘Keep that to yourself for now. Let’s go and find the landlord and get those calls made.’

The warmth of the hotel was almost as welcome as the prospect of contact with the outside world. A convivial Christmas lunch was obviously drawing to a close in the dining room, and as they waited in reception, a room full of revellers wearing coloured paper hats stared in bemusement at the new arrivals and their wet, dishevelled clothes. Penrose introduced himself and asked to use the telephone, and the hotelier pushed it across the desk, mercifully too busy to engage in much conversation. ‘Isn’t there somewhere more private?’

‘There is, but not with a telephone,’ the man said in a beggars-can’t-be-choosers sort of way, and Penrose considered himself told.

‘Go and wait in the bar,’ he said to Fielding. ‘I might be some time, so get yourself a drink on me. It’s the least I can do after this morning. Make it a large one.’

Fielding took his whisky to an empty table – near the islanders but not with them – and Penrose positioned himself carefully to keep an eye on the bar while making his calls. As luck would have it, there was far too much rowdiness for him to be overheard as he asked to be put through to Scotland Yard, and then to his detective sergeant, Bill Fallowfield, who had drawn the short straw of Christmas Day duties. 240‘Happy Christmas, sir,’ Bill said, when he finally came to the telephone. ‘We didn’t expect to hear from you today. Fed up of hobnobbing with film stars, are you?’

‘No, Bill, I’m fed up of trying to guess how two people have died.’ Fallowfield was one of Penrose’s closest friends, as well as his most reliable colleague, and usually he found the sergeant’s relentless good nature a welcome contrast to his own, more cynical, personality; today, he had no patience for anything but the task at hand. There was a silence at the other end of the telephone, and he took advantage of it to bring Fallowfield succinctly up to date.