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“Is she, now?” said Agatha. “Maybe we should look into that alibi ourselves. What about you, Harry?”

He told them how he had engineered the meeting with Joyce and how he was taking her to see The Mikado. Phil was horrified. He could not now tell Agatha he was going himself. He cursed himself. After all, the whole point of his visit to Mabel was to get friendly with her. Now it was too late. Agatha would wonder why he had held that bit of information back. He’d need to have a private word with Harry.

“See you all here at nine in the morning,” said Agatha.

“I won’t be in,” said Patrick. “I got the names of the men who checked into that Web site. Better you don’t know how. I’m going to try to see some of them tonight, so it’ll be a late evening for me. I might be a bit late in the morning.”

“Fine,” said Agatha.

Harry left quickly, and, with surprising agility, Phil raced after him down the stairs. “Wait, Harry,” he said. “You can’t go to The Mikado.”

“Why?”

“Mabel’s taking me there and she knows what you look like and of course she knows Joyce.”

“Why didn’t you say something upstairs?”

“Don’t know,” mumbled Phil.

“Damn, I’ll think of somewhere else to take her.”

NINE

HARRY rang Joyce’s doorbell. She appeared dressed in a cashmere stole under which she wore a little black dress, sheer stockings and very high heels. She appeared to have drenched herself in an overpowerful and very cheap scent.

Harry complimented her on her appearance while helping her into his car and all the time thinking she had such a rabbity face.

“I hope you won’t be too disappointed,” said Harry. “But The Mikado is off.”

“Oh, why?”

“Well, I like the traditional stuff and someone told me this production is set in a modem-day factory with the whole chorus dressed in denim overalls. So what I thought instead is the Classic Cinema. They’re showing Brief Encounter. Did you ever see it?”

“No.”

“I thought we’d go there and then have dinner at the Royal afterwards.”

Joyce’s protuberant eyes widened. The Royal was Mircester’s best hotel and the restaurant was very expensive. She had tried several times to get Robert Smedley to take her there, but he’d always refused.

“Sounds lovely,” she said.

Harry had taken the precaution of bringing two large handkerchiefs with him. Joyce cried her way through the whole blackand-white film.

“You must think me very silly,” she said outside the cinema, “but it brought back a lot of sad memories.”

“You mean you were in love with a married man?” asked Harry lightly.

“Oh, no, nothing like that. When we get to the hotel, I’ll just go to the ladies’ and repair my make-up.”

So she wasn’t going to admit to having an affair with Smedley, thought Harry.

Joyce came back. She picked up the large menu. “I always like fish,” she said. She ordered avocado stuffed with prawns to start and then a whole grilled lobster. Harry had a feeling she was choosing by price rather than taste. Perhaps Smedley’s attraction for her had been nothing more than money. He ordered pate followed by boeuf bourguignon and also a half bottle of red wine for himself and a half bottle of white for Joyce.

She said coyly that she always liked to have a dry martini before eating. “Could you make it a large one?” she asked. “I’m quite nervous.”

Harry expected the meal to be a fairly silent one. Joyce obviously did not want to talk about Smedley and he wanted to tell as few lies about his background as possible, but Joyce turned out to be loquacious enough for both of them. She prattled on about her parents, father now dead and her mother in care in Bath. She talked about a previous job as secretary to a supermarket manager—”I didn’t even get a discount on my groceries”—and Harry tried not to let his eyes glaze over with boredom.

He kept trying to turn the conversation back to the murder and Joyce always kept on talking about something else.

She finished her meal with crepes Suzette, then brandy and coffee. Harry paid the bill with cash. He did not want to use a credit card in case Joyce