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gave it, adding: “I’m out quite a lot, I use the English-faculty library and the Bodleian, but there’s an answering machine.” She stood up, as did the Inspector.
    â€œI’ll look out for you next time I come past your garden. Go on the canal much, do you?”
    â€œNot this year. I used to have a boat but the wood was rotten and it sort of fell apart.” Loretta edged towards the door, not wanting to get involved in more small talk. “Shall I—who do you want to see next?”
    â€œDudley’s got a list—the Incredible Hulk who brought you in.” The Inspector smiled, inviting Loretta to share in this small joke at the expense of a junior officer, but she was already thinking about something else.
    â€™There is one thing,” she added, fiddling with the door handle. “I assume it’s all right for Bridget to stay with me tonight? I’ve talked to Sam and we both thought it was a good idea to get her away from . . . from all this.” She gestured vaguely through the window, where a WPC was conferring in a low voice with someone out of vision. “I know you’ve got a job to dobut she’s in a state of collapse . . . I gather Dr. Summers has talked to—to someone about interviewing her tomorrow.”
    The Inspector pursed her lips. “So I’ve been told. I’ll make a note we can get Dr. Bennett on your number. We don’t want anyone thinking she’s disappeared, do we?” She came round the table, her high heels clicking on the stone floor, and the expression of official disapproval cleared from her face. “You’re very wise, actually,” she said in her previous confidential tone, “because the press are going to love this one.”
    â€œThe press? Oh,
God
” This was an aspect of the affair that had not occurred to Loretta, but she realized that a police press officer was probably briefing journalists at this very moment. Her ex-husband, John Tracey, had been a reporter on a south London newspaper in the early days of their marriage, and their evenings were frequently wrecked by his routine calls to the local police, ambulance station and fire brigade. “Anything for us?” he used to ask, assuming a chummy, all-boys-together tone which made Loretta cringe. Five minutes later he would be on the trail of a story, smiling apologetically as he pulled on his raincoat, and she would be lucky to see him again before she went to bed.
    â€œA real country-house murder,” the Inspector was saying, leaning back against the table and crossing her slim ankles. “Not to mention the university angle. They all watch
Inspector Morse
these days.”
    â€œDo you really have to tell them?” Loretta let go of the door handle and came back into the room.
    The Inspector pulled a smart leather bag towards her and removed a packet of Silk Cut. “Do you mind?”
    Loretta was about to say she did, then realized that the smoke would at least camouflage the pungent whiff of rotting flesh which wafted through the open windowwhenever the breeze was in the right direction. Perhaps that was why there had been a feverish handing round of cigarettes in the kitchen when she came downstairs just before the first police car arrived.
    â€œI don’t like it either”—the woman lit up and paused to inhale—“but we need their help, especially in a case like this where identification—well, I’m not giving away any secrets if I say identification’s our first problem. We give them the story, someone might be on the phone tomorrow morning saying my sister Susan walked out of the house last month after a row with Dad and nobody’s seen her since. Anyway, we couldn’t keep it quiet if we wanted to. There were over forty people in that garden when she was found, not counting kids.”
    â€œYou’re not suggesting—” Loretta broke off, remembering that Stephen