“I always wondered why you hated Dudley so much,” she said slowly. “I sensed it in you from the very first. I knew you disliked me, and I thought that was because you believed I was having an affair with Dudley, but you hated Dudley even more. I thought it was because of what had happened to Amelia. That was a part of it, of course, but it wasn’t the real reason. The real reason was Jenna.” She waited, but Arthur said nothing. Still she could not read any of his emotions. That door was slammed in her face but she could feel the tension coming off him like static.

“Avery said that there were three other cases she knew of that mirrored in some way Amy Robsart’s death,” Lizzie said. “There was Amethyst Green, the serving maid at Oakhangar, and there was Amyas Latimer, the clerk in Oxford. There was Amelia, of course. But there was a fourth, someone called Mia.”

“Mia was Jenna’s real name,” Arthur said. His voice sounded dull.

“Yes,” Lizzie said. “I didn’t work it out straight away because of the names, but of course Jenna Gascoyne was her stage name; her real name was Mia Roberts.” She took a gulp of the lemonade. It felt cool and sweet, soothing.

“Avery told me that Jenna couldn’t cope with the pressures that came with her work,” Lizzie said. “You told me yourself that she was messed up and you did everything you could to help and support her. Everyone says the same; that Jenna developed anorexia and her life spiralled into depression and drug-taking and she died. What the reports don’t say—” she cleared her throat, “what I saw when I touched the phoenix, was that Jenna had been partying with Dudley’s band, with Call Back Summer, just before she died. It was Dudley who gave her the drugs—and was too pissed to save her when she fell in the swimming pool at Oakhangar. It was an accident, but in so many ways he was culpable all the same.”

Arthur stirred at last. “The band’s management hushed it up because it would have been too damaging,” he said. His voice was rough. “It would have finished them. I only found out two years ago. Millie told me. She said Dudley had let slip one night that Jenna had died in the pool at Oakhangar. Millie had been away at the time because it was whilst Jessica was ill. She badgered the whole story out of him.” Arthur ran a hand through his hair. “It was the beginning of the end for them really. I don’t think Millie ever thought Dudley was faithful to her but the thought of him getting high with her brother’s fiancée whilst she was away with her dying mother...” His face twisted. “It was pretty horrific. It sounded like some mad orgy of drink and drugs and by the end of it Jenna was dead and everything was a godforsaken mess.” He looked at Lizzie properly for the first time. “I guess Dudley never told you?”