He gave the rest of the room a cursory search to make sure that he hadn’t missed anything that might tell him more about Alex Fielding or her killer, but there was nothing. As far as he could see, there were no cameras or photographic equipment of any kind in either of the rooms he had checked so far, and the third door led only to a bathroom, stark and impersonal like the rest of the flat. He went back to the room he had started in, wondering who slept in the army bed. It was reasonable to assume that Fielding’s killer had taken her camera and was, in all probability, now using it as part of his deception on St Michael’s Mount – but was it someone she knew, perhaps even someone she had lived with? Hopeful 254of offering Penrose answers as well as more questions, Fallowfield scoured the flat for anything that might provide a clue to the impostor’s identity or Fielding’s death, but every new idea – from the yard to the bathroom cabinet – drew a blank.

He was on his way back to the car to radio for help when he remembered the suitcase on the bed. On the off chance that Fielding was taking something more interesting than smart clothes to Cornwall, he stepped carefully around her body to examine the packing, but the only other items in the main compartment were two pairs of shoes and a wash bag. He had more luck in the side flap, where he found a notepad and a sheaf of photographs. The pad contained ideas for the assignment at the Mount, together with scribbled notes about the island and even more information on Marlene Dietrich – background research which proved little more than Fielding’s diligence. The photographs, too, seemed to be of the film star – nothing remarkable, just shots of her leaving a hotel or arriving at a social engagement, usually with a handsome escort on her arm, and Fallowfield flicked quickly through them, assuming that they were the photos which Fielding herself had taken for The Times. He stopped abruptly when he arrived at the last few images, astonished to see himself in one of them; he was leaving an inquest with Penrose, and he remembered the photograph appearing in The Times a few weeks ago, part of the newspaper’s coverage of a recent murder, where a man had killed his wife and three children in Kensington. Quickly, he laid the other pictures out on the bed, wondering why Fielding had been so interested in this particular case, but it soon became obvious that the connection between the photos wasn’t the case at all, but 255the man investigating it. Every one of the dozen photographs featured Detective Chief Inspector Archie Penrose as its main subject – at a murder scene or a trial or a police station – and some of them went back years.

There was no time to speculate on what any of this might mean. Aware that Penrose was waiting for news, with time stacked against him, Fallowfield hurried to the police box at the end of the street to telephone for help.