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better.’
    ‘Then let me ask a last question,’ said Keedy. ‘I saved it until the end because it’s the most important one. Why did you leave in the middle of the party? Weren’t you enjoying it?’
    ‘I was enjoying it very much, Sergeant.’
    ‘So why did you walk out when you did?’
    ‘I had this upset stomach,’ she replied, putting a hand to her midriff. ‘It’s been troubling me all day. I hoped that it would wear off but it got steadily worse. There was a point during the party when I felt I was going to be sick.
That’s
why I had to leave. I simply had to get out of there.’ She pulled her coat around her shoulders. ‘Can I go now, please?’
    ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘please do. And thank you for your help. I’ll be in touch.’
    Her whole body tensed. ‘Why? I’ve told you all I can.’
    ‘There may be some small detail that slipped your mind.’
    ‘But there isn’t, Sergeant. I’ll swear it.’
    ‘Then I’ll let you go,’ he said, pleasantly, getting to his feet. ‘Goodbye.’
    ‘Goodbye.’
    Having stayed at the hospital longer than she needed, Maureen now left it as if she had an urgent appointment elsewhere. Chewing on his pencil, Keedy watched her go. He felt profoundly sorry for her. Having dealt with survivors of explosions before, he knew how consumed with guilt they could become, blaming themselves for escaping from an accident that had claimed the lives of others. Not that the bomb at the Golden Goose was in any way accidental – it was deliberately designed to kill and wreck. Maureen Quinn had been extremely fortunate to leave the building when she did and she appeared to have had a good reason for doing so.
    Keedy wondered why he simply didn’t believe her.

CHAPTER THREE
    It was just like old times. Ellen Marmion was seated in her kitchen, having a cup of tea with a member of the police force. However, it was not her husband on this occasion but her daughter who was nibbling a ginger biscuit beside her. Having established that Joe Keedy had been sent off to investigate a crime that evening, Alice had sighed resignedly in a way she’d seen her mother do a hundred times. Instead of going back to her flat, she went back home so that she could commiserate with Ellen about their absent partners. Having joined the Women Police Service on impulse, Alice was now having regrets. Her duties were strictly circumscribed and seemed to consist largely of taking orders from her superiors and carrying messages to and fro. Longing to be given some operational role, she was confined to clerical work. It made her look back on her time in the Women’s Emergency Corps with fondness. The work had been onerous but it had a wonderfully unpredictable range to it.
    ‘Did you find out where they
were
going?’ asked Ellen.
    ‘No,’ replied her daughter, ‘but it must have been a major incident or they would have sent someone less senior than Daddy.’
    ‘That’s one way of looking at it.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Let’s just say that Claude Chatfield is not your father’s greatest admirer. He takes pleasure in unloading awkward cases onto him. To give him credit, he does his job well but there’s a nasty streak in the superintendent.’
    ‘That’s because he knows, in his heart, that Daddy is a much better detective. At least, that’s what Joe believes. They call him “Chat”, by the way.’
    ‘Oh, I’ve heard your father call him a lot worse than that, Alice.’
    They shared a laugh and reached for another home-made biscuit. Ellen was delighted to see her daughter again. Since she’d moved into a flat of her own, Alice’s visits had become less and less frequent. With her son away in France and her husband on call at all hours, Ellen was well acquainted with loneliness. An unexpected evening with Alice was therefore a bonus. She bit into her biscuit.
    ‘Have you set a date yet?’
    ‘We’ve set it a number of times, Mummy, but we keep changing our minds.’
    ‘Why is