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‘Yes, sir. But never as much as I do now.’

‘Thank you for the vote of confidence.’

He looked over at me and smiled. ‘You’re doing all right, sir,’ he replied in a slow and measured voice, and I felt something lighten inside me. ‘So what do we do now?’ he continued.

‘Only one thing we can do at the moment,’ I said, rising from the chair. ‘Go and join the others for dinner.’

* * *

THE ACCOUNT OF JOHN HOPKINSON (11)

Dinner was thin on the table, but we were not hungry. Only Sergeant Baker, now over the worst of his shock apparently, was able to more than pick at his food. Perhaps for him a reasonably sized meal was a mere bagatelle in culinary terms. I watched Ian Stratford carefully but surreptitiously as Simpson crossed from the door and whispered to him; and suddenly he, like me, was years younger – standing in front of my desk as I waved him to a seat. An image of the questioning of the evening before, almost. But in reverse, another out-of‐joint reflection.

He was nervous, still in his coat, his fingers playing along the rim of his hat. Forgive me for not standing – fractured ankle… Now, what can I do for you, sir? (Can’t remember his name. Oh well, just preliminary after all.)

‘A matter of some delicacy… I wonder if… possibly… You see, she’s been…’

Ah, yes – I quite understand. Not the first case of this type we’ve dealt with. Most unfortunate… My sympathy, sir. (How can I palm this off on Gerald? God – I don’t want it! More Gerry’s line; ‘delicate’, what a word… He’ll love it. Just his biscuit.) Now, perhaps you could tell me… ?

‘Of course. That is – my wife…’

Stratford’s face froze, mouth open; his private agony stilled. Until it found voice and screamed at me across my desk…

I was suddenly back in the dining room at Banquo Manor: older but no wiser, fork held stationary in front of my mouth. Stratford mirrored my action across the table – his mouth open to receive the meat; Simpson was still beside him

The scream stopped – cut off. Choked off. Abrupt. Susan’s knife slipped from her hand and fell in slowed motion. It crashed at last into her near-empty plate, spun, lifted – blade uppermost – above the china, then dipped back on to it, echoing itself and clattering us back to reality before settling.

Stratford was already on his feet, typically the first to recover. Across the table from him, Fitz Kreiner was a hair’s breadth of elapsed time behind. Perhaps he was as used to this sort of happening as Stratford. Forensics must have its own drama. And nightmares.

‘Catherine,’ murmured Elizabeth, her face stone – immobile, cold, pale. It had certainly been a woman’s scream. Or a girl’s. I followed Stratford and Kreiner, Baker on my heel catching his arm on his chair in the hurry. Thoughts and movements were becoming muddled. Simpson somehow held the door open – had he been in front of us?

So many stairs…

The fact that Harries’s body was back on the bed, the sheet that had covered it pulled to his feet, failed to surprise me. I realised somehow at the back of my mind that I had heard Simpson’s hushed words to Stratford, that this is what he had been telling the inspector. Stratford was already kneeling by the supine figure of Beryl Green, his finger on her bruised neck feeling for the pulse.

‘What was she doing in here?’ His professional, almost dispassionate tone told us immediately that she was dead. Almost dispassionate.

‘She found the body was back when she came in to change the sheets.’ Simpson’s voice seemed unaffected. His face was not: grief, horror, sadness all met in his eyes. ‘I left her sitting over there.’ He gestured towards the overturned chair by the dressing table; she had stood up hurriedly. ‘I came to get you while she got over the shock.’

‘You left her in here – with that?’ Kreiner asked.

I could only agree with his incredulity. If the sight and smell of Harries’s body made me feel ill, God alone knew how it would have affected a sixteen-year‐old girl, however