‘More likely the father,’ Harriet Brough said. ‘My brother was at school with him. A very cold fish.’ She spoke with a confidence and authority that revealed her upbringing. She’d probably wanted to be a lawyer from nursery school on, Siobhan guessed. ‘Where was the mother?’ Brough now demanded of Gill.

‘Couldn’t face it,’ Gill answered. ‘We did ask her.’

‘She couldn’t have made a worse job than those two,’ Brough stated, picking cashews out of the bowl nearest her.

Gill looked suddenly tired. Siobhan decided on a change of subject and asked Jean Burchill what she did at the museum.

‘I’m a senior curator,’ Burchill explained. ‘My main specialism is eighteenth- and nineteenth-century.’

‘Her main specialism,’ Harriet Brough interrupted, ‘is death.’

Burchill smiled. ‘It’s true I put together the exhibits on belief and—’

‘What’s truer,’ Brough cut in, her eyes on Siobhan, ‘is that she puts together old coffins and pictures of dead Victorian babies. Gives me the collywobbles whenever I happen to be on whichever floor it is.’

‘The fourth,’ Burchill said quietly. She was, Siobhan decided, very pretty. Small and slender, with straight brown hair hanging in a pageboy cut. Her chin was dimpled, her cheeks well defined and tinged pink, even in the discreet lighting of the Palm Court. She wore no make-up that Siobhan could see, nor did she need any. She was all muted, pastel shades: jacket and trousers which had probably been called ‘taupe’ in the shop; grey cashmere sweater beneath the jacket, and a russet pashmina fixed at the shoulder with a Rennie Mackintosh brooch. Late forties again. It struck Siobhan that she was the youngest person here by probably fifteen years.

‘Jean and I were at school together,’ Gill explained. ‘Then we lost touch and bumped into one another just four or five years back.’

Burchill smiled at the memory.

‘Wouldn’t want to meet anyone I was at school with,’ Harriet Brough said through a mouthful of nuts. ‘Arseholes, the lot of them.’

‘More champagne, ladies?’ the waiter said, lifting the bottle from its ice-bucket.

‘About bloody time,’ Brough snapped.

*

Between dessert and coffee, Siobhan headed to the loo. Walking back along the corridor to the brasserie, she met Gill.

‘Great minds,’ Gill said with a smile.

‘It was a lovely meal, Gill. Are you sure I can’t … ?’

Gill touched her arm. ‘My treat. It’s not every day I have something worth celebrating.’ The smile melted from her lips. ‘You think your e-mail will work?’ Siobhan just shrugged, and Gill nodded, accepting the assessment. ‘What did you reckon to the press conference?’

‘The usual jungle.’

‘Sometimes it works,’ Gill mused. She’d had three glasses of wine on top of the champagne, but the only sign that she wasn’t stone-cold sober was a slight tilt to her head and heaviness to her eyelids.

‘Can I say something?’ Siobhan asked.

‘We’re off duty, Siobhan. Say what you like.’