She breathed in deep, gathering thoughts, words. ‘We came here in 1945.’ In all the years in England, she’d never gone against this injunction of her father’s, We do not talk of Germany, but the detective knew this anyway. Arnold Fisher, aka Hermann Fischer. ‘People talked about suicide, all the time. Anyone could put their hands on phials of potassium cyanide at the end of the war,’ she went on. ‘Just like that one. They were that easy to come by.’ She wanted to shake her shoulders, feel the shackles of silence as they slid away. ‘Cyanide was the weapon of choice, you must know that. Zyklon B. Mass murder. Individual suicide. It was no coincidence that Eva Braun took cyanide. Or the Goebbels. You’ll have heard of them. But not the thousand others like them.’

DS Fielding took notes, squiggles of shorthand. ‘Where did your father keep it?’ he said.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I had no idea he had any.’

‘Did he have a safe? Or somewhere under lock and key?’ She thought of the secret compartment in Mutti’s bureau in Berlin. Did her father have one?

‘Not that I know,’ she said.

‘His passport? Documents? A will? Things like that? Where did he keep all those things?’

Betty shrugged. They’d never been abroad, had no need of a passport, but now, she thought, there must be something official, somewhere. ‘Perhaps in the bureau,’ she said, pointing. ‘That was always locked.’

‘Do you have the key?’

‘No.’ She sniffed. ‘Sorry. You must think me hopeless.’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘We’ll find it. Perhaps Mrs Henderson will know.’

‘Perhaps,’ Betty said. ‘She seems to know everything.’ She hoped the detective didn’t hear the cut to her voice.

‘May I just ask, what were you doing today?’

‘Today? Before I came here, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘I met John at four, at the British Museum.’

‘John? The gentleman here?’ The detective looked across at John. ‘Your boyfriend?’

‘He’s not my boyfriend,’ Betty said, screwing up her eyes. She sounded petulant, she knew, but she didn’t want to be associated with John.

‘And you both came here then?’

‘We left when the museum closed, about five, and came straight here.’

‘Before you met John, what were you doing?’

The detective’s tone was silky, like a spider, but she sensed a menace there. Did he think she’d come to Hatfield, poisoned her father?

‘I was writing,’ she said, adding, ‘An article.’

‘Where? Did anyone see you?’

She laughed. The absurdity of the question. ‘I can’t write at home,’ she said. ‘My room’s too small and the house is too noisy. So I go to the public library, the reference part, Willesden Green.’ She looked at him. ‘Near where I live. Then I went to the Partisan—’

‘The Partisan?’