‘I looked back once and didn’t see any sign of him. But I was thinking, you can see the canal from the hotel where they’ve cleared a bit of the shrubbery, maybe it worked the other way too, and he saw me crossing the garden to the hotel. I was wearing a bright pink T-shirt; it would have stood out.’

Amelia screwed up her nose. ‘He’d have to have been staring at that gap when you passed by. Anyway, you haven’t thought it through, if he knew the gap was there, then he already knew where you were staying, didn’t he?’

Molly shut her eyes. Of course, how stupid. Amelia was right. Molly’s shoulders slumped. It was a puzzle she wasn’t going to be able to solve. ‘It’s a mess,’ she said finally. ‘I don’t know how he found out my address, or why he was on my doorstep unless it was to blackmail me, and I certainly have no idea why he was murdered.’

Amelia looked at her, her expression troubled. ‘You aren’t serious about being a suspect, are you?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said wearily. ‘Jack says it’s nonsense to think so, but the man was murdered in Green Park and I happened to be nearby at the same time.’

‘You were always a little bit of an idiot, Molly, but you haven’t a cruel bone in your body. Anyway, you were hardly going to murder the poor fool for rejecting your advances, were you?’

She’d been called a tit and a cow this morning, ignoring the bit of an idiot tag was easy. ‘I told you, the police think we did more than kiss. Stupidly, I didn’t help my case, I told them that he must have come to blackmail me because why else would he have come? And, yes, I probably would have paid him to go away if he’d threatened to tell Jack what happened.’ She pushed a hand through her hair. ‘Jack and I are shaky at the moment, Amelia, I wouldn’t have wanted him to know that I’d made a play for someone else.’

Amelia reached across, took her hand and squeezed it. ‘The police will look into it all but you’re only a little bit of an idiot, Molly, you’d have known they’d find his phone and trace the text from you. If you’d murdered him, you’d have taken it with you, wouldn’t you?’

‘I’ve watched enough crime series, I guess I wouldn’t have been that stupid.’

‘The police will come to the same conclusion when they’ve done some investigating. And hopefully, when they dig around in this poor man’s life, they’ll find someone else with a much stronger motive.’ Amelia filled her mug and picked it up. ‘Did he really have turquoise eyes?’