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available in charity shops. With this in mind I planned to travel light.
    When, after a pause, the door of my friend Maggie’s flat opened and the most beautiful man I had ever clapped eyes on in my life gazed at me sleepily, I thought I had come to the wrong address.
    â€˜You’re Ingrid,’ he said with a smile that turned my knees to jelly.
    I prayed that I had gawped neither at him nor at his deep-violet-coloured pyjamas.
    â€˜Maggie told me you were coming,’ he went on, opening the door wide. ‘She’s out right now, seeing a client, but told me to wait on you hand and foot until she comes back. I’m Julian, by the way, the lodger.’
    I endeavoured to slay any suspicion of another arrangement he and my old friend might have, telling myself sternly that Maggie was in her early fifties. Sadly, I failed. Unless this gorgeous mortal before me was gay.
    As I already knew, her homes always reflected Maggie’s chosen career – that of interior designer – although I was also aware that she never invited her clients to where she lived, at least not since she had had a bad experience with a slightly dodgy character who had tried to steal a small but valuable item when her back was turned.
    I went in. My friend had only lived in this particular apartment for a few months and had certainly had the place redecorated: the smell of paint still lingered. I do not have time to pore over home and garden magazines, but here, surely, were the latest trends imbued with her personal taste. In the living room were the ‘signature’ silk-covered and hand-embroidered cushions and lampshades as well as the woven wall hangings and antique furniture that I recognized, remembering that she had inherited them from an aunt.
    Julian had taken my travel bag from me without my noticing and was bearing it away, presumably in the direction of the spare bedroom. ‘Tea? Coffee?’ he asked over his shoulder. ‘Or are you one of those writers who like whisky at any time of day?’ – this with the kind of grin that told me two things; well, one really: he wasn’t gay and was flirting with me for his own amusement.
    â€˜Coffee, please,’ I answered, adding, ‘I hope I didn’t get you out of bed.’
    â€˜You did, but I’m glad. I hadn’t meant to sleep in. Rehearsals at noon.’
    â€˜You’re involved with the theatre?’
    â€˜Dance. I’m with the Royal Ballet.’
    Maggie had been saying for a while, during our periodic telephone conversations, that I must come and stay with her and see the new flat. She lived quite a way from what was to be my zone of operations, in West Hampstead, but I did not intend to inflict myself on her for very long nor return to her home every night, and would be out for most of the day.
    â€˜I understand you’re in London to research a book,’ Julian said over coffee. He had changed, ready to go out, into black jeans and black roll-neck cotton top and looked good enough to eat. ‘What’s it about?’
    â€˜Murder.’
    â€˜Don’t tell Maggie – that kind of thing makes her nervous.’
    It suddenly occurred to me that if our activities stirred up trouble right from the start – in other words, if Patrick and I stirred up a nest of criminal hornets – I would have to be very, very careful that I was not followed back here.
    The next morning, with a slight hangover, Maggie and I having drunk far too much wine as we had yarned into the small hours, I set off for Woodhill, using the tube. This mode of travel did nothing to improve my headache and it was a decidedly grumpy novelist who arrived and headed straight into a chemist’s for some kind of cure and then into Starbucks for something with which to wash it down. Part of my irritation was caused by the realization that I had behaved stupidly in not staying clear-headed, and it was unfair to blame Maggie even though