The woman did not speak defensively; it was a statement of fact. Jazz’s heart sank. There would be nothing left to find.

‘Will you need me further? I’ve got things to do.’

‘No, Matron. We’ll come and see you when we’ve finished here,’ Jazz replied. ‘Where will we find you?’

‘I’ll be in the house somewhere,’ she answered unhelpfully, then turned and walked back down the corridor.

Roland opened the door to Charlie’s study and stood aside to let Jazz enter first.

The room was immaculate. The sheets had been changed, washing away any possible clues to the last moments of Charlie’s life. The smell of polish and disinfectant in the small room was powerful, made all the more so as the windows had obviously been sealed shut since.

Roland closed the door behind him and stood by it like a sentry.

Jazz picked her way through the boxes and perched gingerly on the end of the bed. She looked up at Roland.

‘Well, this isn’t much help, is it?’

Roland bristled. ‘When I found the victim and Matron told me he was epileptic, I assumed, as she did, that he’d had a fit of some sort. He’d been foaming at the mouth, which the paramedics assured me was a symptom. We all thought the same until the results of the PM came in.’

Jazz shrugged in resignation. ‘Nothing we can do about it now. What about forensic evidence? I assume the SOCOs were called?’

‘No, Ma’am.’ Roland was looking very uncomfortable now. ‘Neither the school nor the paramedics nor I had any reason to believe a crime had been committed. I was only called because the headmaster wanted to cover his back. If the lad had been in his own home, we wouldn’t have been involved. To all intents and purposes it was death by natural causes.’

‘And it still may be misadventure at worst,’ Jazz replied, trying to diffuse his defensiveness.

‘My super gave me the impression you wouldn’t be here at all if it hadn’t been for the boy’s father being so well connected.’

‘Perhaps not, but we still have to establish whether or not Charlie took the tablets by mistake.’

‘Well, he must have done,’ Roland said. ‘I mean, the alternative is murder. And who’d want to murder a schoolboy? We’re hardly talking gang warfare here, are we? Foltesham’s a quiet town and this school is full of decent middle-class kids.’

‘Have you run the usual checks on Charlie Cavendish?’

‘Course. Clean as a whistle. All he’s got to his name is three points on his licence for speeding. He got a brand-new car from Dad on his seventeenth birthday and passed his test a few days later.’ Roland rolled his eyes. ‘The kids of today, eh? I had to save up for four years to buy my first banger.’

‘Well, we know he wasn’t short of money, that’s for sure.’ Jazz swept her eyes around the room. ‘So, when you were called to the scene, where did you find him?’