‘Two uniformed officers forced entry to the house and found an eleven-year-old girl screaming hysterically in the back room on the ground floor. In the study there were two bodies. Timothy Slater, a journalist, had been shot through the heart. Robert Gryffe, a British government minister, was shot through the forehead. There were two guns. One belonged to Monsieur Gryffe. It was lying beside him and bore his fingerprints. We have been unable to trace the origin of the second gun as yet, but it was found in Monsieur Slater’s right hand, which was folded beneath his body. There were no signs of a forced entry to the house, no traces of a third party, except of course for the child. Conclusion?’ He paused and then answered his own question. ‘They killed each other. On the face of it, everything points to that. Trajectory of the bullets, position of the bodies, prints on the guns.’

Bannerman sat in stunned silence. He had thought himself prepared for anything, but not this. For the first time in many hours he was no longer aware of the places where he hurt. He remembered Slater’s file of cuttings on Gryffe, the tension between the two men at the party the night before. He leaned forward, his mouth dry. ‘So, what . . . You’re closing the case already?’

For the first time, du Maurier smiled. ‘At present we are treating both as suspicious deaths.’

‘And?’

Du Maurier raised his eyebrows but said nothing, waiting for Bannerman.

‘You said everything points to them killing each other . . . on the face of it.’

The Inspector’s smile broadened. ‘Yes, there are other factors to consider.’

Now Bannerman waited as du Maurier lit a cigarette.

‘Apart from the three or four clear prints on the gun Monsieur Slater was holding, it is otherwise clean. No other prints, no smudges. But what is more important, Monsieur Slater, it would appear, was left-handed. It is very unlikely that he would be able to place a shot so accurately with his right hand.’

The smile was gone now, and he drew distractedly on his cigarette.

‘Also, the bullet that killed Monsieur Slater entered the heart centrally. Monsieur Gryffe, we discover, has owned a gun for many years but has never had any formal training in its use. A remarkable piece of shooting for two untrained men. And we must also consider that each shot would have been instantly fatal, so that unless they were fired at precisely the same moment the man who shot first would have survived. In addition we found a suitcase in a cupboard off the study. It contained two hundred and fifty thousand American dollars in used notes.’

Du Maurier folded his hands on the desk in front of him.

‘And, of course, there was the assault perpetrated on you in Monsieur Slater’s flat within an hour of the shooting. And whatever was taken from the safe, if anything.’

Bannerman frowned. ‘So it was murder.’