No fast answer this time. Harry and Heather exchanged a look that spoke volumes.

Caro sighed – her impatient, ‘I-know-more-than-you-think-I-know’ Dahlia sigh.

‘We could always ask the police to check out that magnifying glass at your waist,’ she said, nodding towards Heather’s middle. ‘I saw how surprised you both were to see it sitting in its case yesterday.’ A lie, but a believable one. ‘And without Marcus’s ledger, there’s no way to prove you didn’t steal that yesterday, like Isobel thinks someone did.’

Posy shook her head sadly. ‘A terrible blow to your respectable reputation, that would be.’

Caro watched as the reality of that settled over Heather and Harry. They had one of those old married couple wordless conversations, where they each made their own arguments with nothing more than a quirk of an eyebrow or the twist of a lip.

She and Annie were getting good at those. She’d never had that sort of rapport with her first husband. That should have been a sign that it was going to end with ties on fire, shouldn’t it?

Heather and Harry came to some unspoken conclusion, and Heather gave a sharp nod. ‘Fine. What is it you want from us?’

Posy hopped over the arm of the bench and sat next to Harry, a broad smile on her face. ‘We want you to tell us everything you know about Marcus. Especially if it has anything to do with why someone might want to kill him.’

‘Did you talk to him yesterday, for instance?’ Caro asked. ‘I thought I saw the two of you together in the library, Harry?’

Harry shuffled uncomfortably on the bench. ‘Well, yes. Rather awkward that, actually. I needed to talk to him about a piece he’d procured for us. And I did talk to him about the jeweller’s loupe, too, as it happened.’

Caro tried to wait patiently for him to continue, and failed. ‘And?’

For a man who’d spoken for a full forty minutes about his latest dentist appointment at dinner the night before, Harry was strangely reticent. Caro looked to his wife for elaboration.

Heather huffed a loud sigh, and dropped onto the bench on the other side of Harry. With three of them sitting there, things looked a little cramped, but Posy didn’t move.

‘Marcus sold us what was supposed to be the only surviving original signed script from Lettice’s play of Murder Misdiagnosed,’ Heather said. ‘There was a fire at the theatre, you see, before the end of the run. This script only survived because Lettice had brought it back to Aldermere with her.’

‘I take it there was a problem with it?’ Rosalind said. ‘What was it? Fake signature? Missing pages?’

‘Nothing like that.’ Harry shook his head. ‘In fact, it all checked out. Authentic, as far as we could tell.’