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hair was wet for one thing.”
    “Maybe she was washing it.” Lieutenant Weinburger batted my words away with an impatient flick of the wrist.
    “With her earrings on?” I asked pointedly.
    “So she forgot they were in.” He was unimpressed. “It happens, believe me. When you get older you forget what’s what. My own mother doesn’t know what day of the week it is half the time. So, tell me about this guy you saw. You get a good look at him?”
    I shut my eyes and tried to remember. But what flashed through my head was something completely different: an image of the production of
Mary Poppins
Mum had taken me to when I was little. “He looked like an old-fashioned English gentleman,” I said. “Like someone off the stage.”
    “The stage, huh?” The policeman looked from me to Graham with one eyebrow raised. “You like the theatre? Movies? TV? Crime shows?”
    I shrugged but didn’t answer. I could see him thinking my imagination had been working overtime and it made me really cross.
    “What was the guy wearing?” he asked.
    I described the man as fully as I could: the white trousers, the waistcoat, the stripy blazer with the flower in its buttonhole.
    “Like this?” Lieutenant Weinburger put a plastic evidence bag containing a tattered red carnation into my hands. The stem was broken. Like Baby Sugarcandy’s neck, I thought, and my stomach gave a little heave. “My men found it by the gates,” he added.
    “I think that’s the one,” I said. “It looked like it was about to fall out. And he was wearing a straw hat. Quite a smart one. That fell off too.”
    “We’ve got that. Anything else?”
    “A bow tie.”
    “Colour?”
    “Red.” I looked at the policeman intently. “And his jacket was red-and-white stripes, exactly the same colours as the sash on Baby Sugarcandy’s dress.
And
the curtains,
and
the sofas.
Weird!
What is it with all this red and white?”
    “I don’t know, kid. You Brits have funny taste, I guess.” Lieutenant Weinburger wasn’t at all interested in my observations. I could see him thinking that Graham and I were just a pair of over-excitable children. It was really starting to annoy me. “OK, here’s what I think happened,” he said. “She’s washing her hair, setting it, doing whatever she does to get that style of hers in place. The guy comes to the door and rings the bell. Her PA’s collecting you from the airport, and her daughter’s shopping, so Miss Sugarcandy goes to answer the door herself. She’s at the top of the stairs and trips. He hears her fall, panics and runs away. Until we get the pathologist’s report we’re going to assume it was just the way it looks. An accident.”
    I bit back the words of protest that tried to leap out of my mouth. I was sure I was right: I had a hunch the size of the Empire State Building that Baby Sugarcandy had been murdered. But until the police admitted it Graham and I couldn’t say or do anything more. Could we?
    The interview was over. We stood up and Mum shook Lieutenant Weinburger politely by the hand.
    “Go get some sleep,” he told her. “I’ll bet you all need it.”
    “Yes,” yawned Mum. “We’re really jet-lagged.”
    “You guys staying here?” the policeman asked.
    A cloud flitted across Mum’s face. “Oh… I don’t know,” she said uncertainly. “We were supposed to, but now… Maybe we should find a hotel or something.”
    Sylvia’s voice interrupted her. “They were invited by Miss Sugarcandy and they’ll stay here, Lieutenant,” she said firmly as she crossed the room towards us. “I’ll take you to the guest wing now, it’s all ready for you. Take as long as you need to get over your journey.”
    We followed Sylvia through the kitchen and out of the back door into a large paved courtyard that was lined with potted orange trees. Several shiny metal dustbins were tucked behind a low wall.
    “The guest wing is just here,” Sylvia explained as we crossed to a door diagonally