‘So how did you become such a fan of Dahlia Lively, anyway?’

Kit gave her a sideways look. ‘Press answer or real answer?’

‘Real.’ She knew what that was like – having one answer to share with the world at large, and another that only a few got to hear. Kit would be handing out the press answer to anyone who asked on the panel later, she was sure. But if they were going to work together they needed to trust each other, and sharing a truth was the fastest way she knew to do that.

Perhaps Kit was aware of that too, because he nodded. ‘Okay, then. When I was twelve or so, my mum was working two jobs to make the rent after my dad left. She didn’t want me home alone, though, so every day after school I went to the local library to wait for her to pick me up.’

‘You didn’t hang out with your mates?’ Posy asked.

‘Sadly, at twelve, I was not the suave, handsome and personable soul you know today,’ he said. ‘Mates were not something I had to worry about.’

Posy thought back to when she was twelve. She’d just starred in her first big movie, after a few years as a recurring character on a TV soap. She’d been on the cover of every teen girl magazine, but her friends had mostly been the catering staff on set, and one of the director’s dogs. ‘I get that. Go on.’

‘The librarian noticed I was spending a lot of time there, and sort of took me under her wing. I helped her shelve books instead of doing my homework, and she let me read books from the adult section in return. She knew I’d read all the kids’ murder mysteries, so one day she handed me The Lady Detective and told me to see if I could figure out whodunnit.’

‘And could you?’

‘No. But I was hooked from then on. Even though the world they were written about looked nothing like mine, the characters were still people I could believe in. And the mysteries fascinated me.’

Posy could imagine a smaller, skinnier Kit curled up in a corner of a London library, devouring a stack of old paperbacks. Maybe Lettice hadn’t written for their generation, who hadn’t even been born when she died, but somehow her books still spoke to them. Dahlia Lively belonged to Kit Lewis as much as she did to the likes of Marcus and Harry and Heather.

Kit stared up at Aldermere again, and Posy finally figured out what was bothering him.

‘You know, what Anton said earlier, at lunch … he was out of order,’ Posy said.

‘He wasn’t wrong though, was he?’ Kit’s smile was melancholy. ‘I mean, this place really doesn’t have any precedent for a DI Johnnie like me, does it?’