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‘Before Sarge came in, I got the feeling there was something you wanted to tell me about Cassie,’ he said. ‘Am I right? Was it about a boyfriend?’
    Molly was still a virgin and had every intention of staying that way until she got married, so she was crippled with embarrassment at having to tell George what Cassie had told her. But one of those men might be the murderer, so she had to spill it out.
    Keeping her eyes downcast, she began to tell him what Cassie had said about the men in her life.
    ‘She said Gerry was “good in bed”, but mean,’ she managed to get out, not fully understanding what the first phrase meant.
    From sixteen until she was eighteen she’d been courted by Raymond Weizer. They occasionally went to the pictures but mostly just went for walks. When he was called up for National Service, it fizzled out. And, as she had once confided in Cassie, there hadn’t even been any fizz to start with; they’d never done anything more than kiss. Her parents had approved of Raymond because his family were farmers and he would inherit the farm in due course. Raymond married Susan Sadler six months after he was demobbed and they now had three children. Since then Molly had been to the pictures and to the village dance lots of times with various young men, but kissing was still as far as she went and, with just one exception, none of the men had been exciting enough to make her wish she dared go further.
    However, realizing that the men in Cassie’s life were vital to the investigation into her death, she had to tell George exactly what Cassie had told her, albeit blushing and stumbling over her words sometimes.
    George looked a little embarrassed, too.
    ‘It was hard to tell you something like that, which was a confidence,’ she admitted when she’d finished. ‘Especially as, sometimes, I didn’t fully understand what she was telling me, and I didn’t like to ask her to explain.’
    ‘You did very well,’ he said, and she noticed he had a little dimple in his chin when he smiled. ‘I don’t suppose you know these men’s surnames, or where they live,’ he asked.
    ‘No, but they can’t live far away, not if they just turn up when they feel like it,’ Molly said. ‘Have you looked to see if Cassie had an address book? I’ve seen her in the phone box lots of times. She could’ve been phoning one of them.’
    George gave her one of those ‘you don’t need to make suggestions to the police’ looks.
    ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m being bossy.’
    ‘It’s okay. Better to be bossy than say nothing. Would you be able to tell us what Petal was wearing today?’
    ‘No. Yesterday she was wearing her blue checked school dress, but Cassie didn’t let her wear her school clothes at any other time. My guess is that she was wearing red shorts, but I could probably tell you better if you let me look in the bedroom. I could see what was missing.’
    ‘Has Cassandra ever said she was troubled by anyone?’ George asked. ‘Someone that turned up there, made a nuisance of themselves – maybe someone from her past?’
    ‘She never said – well, except about Gerry,’ Molly replied. ‘But she was tough, George! If someone was being a nuisance, she’d see them off. She wouldn’t just put up with it.’ She almost added, ‘Like I would’; after all, she’d put up with her father saying the most horrible things to her for years, and hitting her, too. Cassie had been very blunt about it, saying her fatherwas a brute and her mother almost as bad for letting it happen, so Molly should walk out on the pair of them. ‘Did she tell you where she lived before she came to Sawbridge?’ George asked, breaking across her thoughts.
    Molly pondered the question; it was something she’d always been curious about. ‘I can’t give you a straight answer because Cassie never told me, but I think she’d spent most of her life in or near London, because she would mention art galleries and theatres there in a