Banks stared at her, shocked by the outburst. “You met him?”

She gave a harsh laugh. “When the agency found that Tony seemed to have a penchant for rubbing shoulders with the stars of the entertainment world, the little wife always got to meet the big names. Kept her happy, didn’t it? Gave her something to tell her dull, boring suburban housewife friends about at coffee mornings. Except we didn’t have any dull, boring suburban housewife friends, and I never attended coffee mornings. I’d be talking about Ginsberg and Burroughs or the latest Godard or Antonioni film with a bunch of unemployed artists smoking Gauloises in the pub, more likely. And they didn’t give a damn about the Danny Caxtons of this world. Meeting Danny Caxton was supposed to be one of the perks.”

“I gather you didn’t exactly like him?”

“That was my personal feeling, yes. Right from the start. Have you ever met someone who repulsed you at first sight? I don’t mean because of looks, ugliness, or anything like that—Danny Caxton was as handsome as they come—but for want of a better word, because of something you sense inside, something wrong. Something evil.”

“Once or twice,” said Banks. “It’s an occupational hazard.”

“Yes. I suppose it must be in your job. That’s what I felt about Danny Caxton, right from the start. After that, I did my best to avoid him.”

“Have you any idea what it was about him that repulsed you so?”

“No. That’s the problem. I can’t really put it into words. There’s nothing concrete at all. Nothing he said or did I can put my finger on. He was always pleasant and charming to me. There was just something reptilian about him. He gave me the impression of a man who took what he wanted without qualms. I know he was an actor, and it probably came naturally, but I felt that every word, every gesture, every expressed feeling was fake, was something deliberate, to get an effect or produce one on the listener, to misdirect or to convince people he was just like one of us, when he wasn’t at all. As if he was wearing a mask.”

Banks had heard people talk like that about psychopaths: the learned, simulated responses, knowing when it would be normal to laugh, when to pretend to shed a tear. “And your husband?” he asked. “What did Tony think?”

“I think Tony was rather dazzled by him. Certainly the first time they worked together—1966, I think it was—life went on much as normal. It was only later that he started to change.”

“In 1967?”