He sighed. ‘Like I said, I can’t tell you much. We have someone examining the body right now, but you saw it.’

She had. She wasn’t going to forget it any time soon. ‘It was … bloated.’ The words she’d overheard another member of his team telling him came back to her. ‘Like it had been in the water for a while, then got tangled in the reeds?’

Tight-lipped, Larch nodded confirmation.

‘So she drowned?’ Rosalind pressed. ‘Only, I thought I saw … something else. The back of her head …’ She blinked to try and clear the image from her mind’s eye. It didn’t work.

Larch’s gaze darted sideways, towards the window and the water. ‘We think she was killed by a blow to the head before she went in the water.’

‘Oh. That … that probably won’t make Caro and her head injury feel much better.’

‘I wouldn’t imagine so, no.’ At least he was straight and to the point. ‘And that’s already more than I should have told you. Are you sure none of you have anything more to tell me about why you were there tonight in the first place? Did you tell anyone that you were going?’

Rosalind shook her head. ‘No. It was a … spur of the moment thing.’

He gave her a long, disbelieving look. ‘Here’s the thing, Ms King. While I appreciate that you and your friends here this weekend believe yourself to be detectives, my team and I have actually trained to do this work. We have experience. We know what we’re doing – and what not to do – based on the actual law, rather than fiction. So I’ll tell you now, things are going to go better for all of us if you tell us what you know and let us do our jobs, rather than playing Miss Marple or Dahlia Lively or whoever and screwing up my investigation. Okay?’

Thank goodness he’d said that to her, rather than Caro. Setting a Detective Chief Inspector’s tie on fire wouldn’t be a good way to start a working relationship.

Rosalind gave him her coldest look, her tone icy as she said, ‘Believe it or not, DCI Larch, even actors are capable of telling the difference between real life and the roles they play.’ She wanted to tell him they’d known it was murder long before his team had even suspected. That if he had any sense, he’d be buttering them up for information, rather than scolding her. But she didn’t. ‘I’m sure you and your team are more than capable of solving this murder without our help, so we shall leave you to it. I assume you will want to question us all in the morning?’

‘You assume correctly,’ Larch said. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me—’