‘Of course…!’ Hansom could tell a hawk from a harnser. ‘He was offering her a lift, that’s as plain as my eye. He was someone who knew she was going to catch that bus home, and what’s more, he was someone who was known to Shirley Johnson.’

‘And had his car on the car park.’

‘Too true… her husband! He was sculling around in his car all the evening. He says he was on a pub crawl out by Halford Ferry and Lordham, but it’s a fact that we can’t check his movements after half past nine.’

‘It might equally well have been someone else…’

‘Don’t you believe it — Derek Johnson hated her guts. He’s the dead spit of Neville Heath, eyes, curls and everything. I could smell him for our man the moment I set eyes on him, it was only this other business that put me off him for a bit.’

Gently shrugged indifferently, knowing Hansom’s enthusiasms from of old. It needed only the appearance of progress to set him in full cry. But Stephens’s suggestion, though it narrowed the field a little further, didn’t point to Derek Johnson or to any other individual.

‘Do you know where the Palette Group members parked their cars?’

Stephens had taken the question off Gently’s lips.

‘They’re a poverty-stricken bunch, I shouldn’t think they’d got any cars.’

‘Not the chairman, St John Mallows?’

‘Oh, him. He’s got a Daimler.’

‘And did you find out where he parked it?’

‘Huh…! Hansom made a contemptuous motion of his head.

A moment later, however, he climbed off his high horse. He was far from being dense when he gave himself time to think.

‘There are two or three others who own heaps of some sort — Aymas is one, and Farrer, and Allstanley. But I wouldn’t mind betting that they parked them in the Haymarket — or Chapel Street, in front of us. That’d be nearest for the George III.’

‘But, to date, you haven’t made any definite inquiry?’