Both Rodney Hoover and Fiona Lee froze. Hoover licked his teeth, which couldn’t have been a lot of fun. Fiona had gone pale. Even her makeup seemed to have lost some of its color. “Why are you asking questions about Lenny?” she asked.

“Because that way people give me answers,” Tim replied. “It’s what I do. I’m a private detective.”

There was an ugly silence. I had to say that it suited Rodney Hoover.

“Lenny is dead,” he said. “You know very well that he’s lying there in Brompton Cemetery. Yes? What could you possibly want to know about him?”

“I know he’s dead,” Tim said. “But I’d be interested to know exactly how he died. I understand you were there.”

“We were there,” Fiona said. A single tear had appeared in the corner of her eye and began to trickle down her cheek. “Poor, poor Lenny! It was the most ghastly, horrible moment in my life, Mr. Diamond.”

“I don’t suppose it was a terrific moment for him either,” I muttered.

She ignored me. “It was about eleven o’clock. Mr. Hoover and I had gone to see him. He didn’t like to come out of his apartment, so we often went over there to tell him how much money we had raised and how the charity was progressing. We talked. We had a glass of wine. And then we left.”

“Lenny said he would come down with us to the car,” Hoover continued. “It was a very beautiful night. He wanted to have some of the fresh air . . . you know? And so, we left the apartment together.”

“Lenny was a little bit ahead of us,” Fiona Lee explained. “He was a fast walker. Mr. Hoover stopped to tie his shoelaces and I waited for him. Lenny stepped into the road. And then . . .”

“The steamroller was going too fast.” He swore quietly in a foreign language. Fiona sighed. “But the driver was on his way home. He was in a hurry. And he ran over Lenny!” He shook his head. “There was nothing, nothing we could do!”

“Do you know the driver’s name?” Tim asked.

“I believe it is Krishner. Barry Krishner.”

“Do you know what happened to him?”

“He is in a hospital for the hopelessly insane in North London . . . in Harrow,” Fiona said. “You can imagine that it was a dreadful experience for him, running over a man with a steamroller. But it was his fault! And because he was speeding, he killed one of the most wonderful men who ever lived. Lenny Smile! I had worked for him for twenty years. Mr. Hoover, too.”

“You’d only worked for him for two years?” Tim asked.

“No. I worked with him also for twenty years,” Hoover said. “But are you telling me, please, Mr. Diamond. Who hired you to ask these questions about Lenny Smile?”