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I felt I was trapped in a play by Arthur Pinero. But I was unable to decide whether it was the frenetic action and confusion that made me think of farce (The Magistrate, perhaps? I wondered ruefully) or the depth of passion and emotion released that reminded me of Mrs Patrick Campbell as the tragic and fated figure of The Second Mrs Tanqueray that I had seen at St James’s the previous summer. I did not try, but let my fear continue to fuse into anger and sarcasm.

‘But no. A robbery now; and it’s only the corpse that’s been stolen. I mean, what does that –’

‘John!’ Susan stopped me with the authority of a schoolteacher. ‘Calm down.’

‘What? Oh, I’m sorry.’

Glumly I sat down beside her, realising that she had addressed me by my Christian name, and that I was now thinking of her in the same fashion. Fear brings people closer together.

‘Why are you suddenly so tense?’ she enquired.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I lied. We were not yet that close. ‘I’m worried, I suppose. I thought I knew just about what was going on here. Now this happens.’ I reasoned that half the truth was better than none at all.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly.

‘What for? You didn’t take it.’

‘How do you know?’ She smiled. ‘Anyway, that is not what I meant at all.’

I began to stand up again but Susan put her hand on my shoulder. Her grip was surprisingly strong, and I found myself pushed down into the chaise longue. I fought down my nervous energy, turning it into speech: ‘But there’s just no reason for it. I mean, who would want a corpse? There’s not a lot of demand for them these days, is there? Except apparently around here.’

‘There must be some reason for it.’ Susan was giving the problem considerably more thought than I. More than was necessary in my opinion.

‘Yes, someone’s gone mad. That’s the reason.’

‘Really?’ The voice came from the door and I looked across to see Herr Kreiner. He was leaning against the door frame, watching us intently. I wondered how long he had been there. I wondered when Susan had noticed him for she seemed not to be surprised. ‘Do you think so?’ he continued, pushing himself upright from his casual posture and crossing to help himself to a brandy.

I did not. But my brain refused to accept the events so far as connected or logical. ‘Well, it’s got to be, hasn’t it? There’s no motive – at least you can credit the murderer with that.’

‘I don’t know that “credit" is the word I’d choose,’ Kreiner said as he slumped down in a chair and swirled the liquid round inside his glass. He stared into it for a moment before dipping in his index finger, shaking off the excess liquid and then licking the remainder from it. There was something so absent-minded, so natural, about the gesture that it did not seem at all uncouth. Only somehow naïve.

I assumed of course that both he and Susan had realised that the murderer and whoever moved the body were different people. ‘There is no reason why the murderer should move it,’ I told them.

‘A murderer has to be mad as well,’ Kreiner said with an exaggerated heaviness.

‘Rubbish,’ I retorted, too strongly, taking out my glasses and polishing them vigorously on my handkerchief by way of distraction. It was an act I often used with clients. ‘Give him a decent reason for it and any man will kill. That’s all war is – legalised murder. The reasons may justify it sometimes.’

‘Or the principles?’ Susan wondered.

My polishing act did not appear to have distracted her from my somewhat flimsy argument so I put the spectacles on and peered over the top of the frames at her. ‘Yes. Or to save oneself or one’s friends.’ That had not worked either. I had merely succeeded in losing my own concentration and slipping up again. I tried looking through the lenses instead.

‘So you think that whoever killed Richard Harries was sane and had a motive?’ Kreiner asked. The notion evidently amused him.

I was still staring through my spectacles at Susan. From the way she met my gaze, she seemed to think that I was studying her even more intently than before. Another act. Then I remembered that Harries