‘Get to the point, Inspector,’ she said. ‘What is it you want us to know?’

James let the question hang in the air for a few moments before he answered her.

‘I want you to know that I’m going to serve you and your son with a warrant, Mrs Prescott, and within the next half an hour or so a team of police officers will come here and carry out a thorough search of this house. Your digital devices, clothes and other belongings will be taken away for forensic examination.’ He switched his gaze to Ethan, adding. ‘We’ve also secured a warrant to do the same at your gift shop, Mr Prescott.’

Ethan looked fit to explode. ‘I don’t understand. What do you expect to find that you didn’t find on the phone and laptop I gave you?’

‘I’m not sure what we’ll find,’ James said, ‘but I need to satisfy myself that you’ve been entirely honest with us. You see, I’m not convinced that you and Mrs Murphy have told the truth about what happened when Rachel came across the pair of you on the garden path.’

‘But we’ve both explained what happened,’ Ethan said. ‘And we’ve told you that there’s nothing going on us between us. If you’ve looked through my phone, you’ll know we haven’t been calling or messaging each other.’

‘But that doesn’t mean you haven’t been doing so on other devices,’ James said.

‘Are you actually serious about this?’ Claire snapped. ‘We’ve all been at pains to tell you that Rachel got it wrong. And honestly, she clearly wasn’t in the best headspace.’

‘In that case, you won’t object to a search being carried out,’ James said. He then turned to Libby. ‘We can’t ignore the WhatsApp message that your sister sent to you, which you chose not to mention to us. Or the fact that you failed to tell the truth when we first spoke to you about when you last saw her.’

It was Libby’s reaction that told James he had been right to pursue the issue. She caught her breath and her eyes swivelled nervously in their sockets to the left, towards Ethan.

Abbott picked up on it too and said, ‘You need to understand, Mrs Murphy, that we will explore all avenues in order to get to the truth. And that will include looking through your own personal data too, and speaking to your husband. If there’s even a shred of evidence that you haven’t been entirely honest with us, we’ll find it.’

Claire gave a loud snort of exasperation and her son jumped up.

‘This is all wrong,’ he raged. ‘Why won’t you believe us? We’ve done nothing wrong.’

But Libby just sat there and raised her eyes to the ceiling. It gave James the impression that she was desperate to unburden herself and so he decided to push his luck.

‘You owe it to your younger sister to tell us what really happened when you last saw her, Mrs Murphy,’ he said. ‘We’re not here to pass judgement on you. We just want to find out why and how she was killed, and who did it. If you want to help you must tell us the truth.’