The room was small with a desk, a straight chair, an easy chair and a couple of filing cabinets. Without speaking she took a cheque book from a drawer in the desk and a pen from a set precisely lined up with the desk blotter. She wrote out a cheque and handed it to me.

‘Thanks. Do you sign all her cheques, Miss Reid?’

‘Yes,’ she snapped. ‘For the household and the estate.’

I folded the cheque and put it in my pocket, it restored my confidence; she didn’t look like the sort of woman who wrote rubber cheques.

‘Good bit of that is there? Estate I mean.’

She bit on the end of the pen and then pulled it away, almost spitting the words out. ‘I sized you up in one look. You’re going to trade on this poor old fool’s weakness and bleed her for whatever you can.’ She threw down the pen. ‘You make me sick.’

‘I didn’t see too much weakness.’

‘You wouldn’t, you’re too stupid. She’s batty.’ She got up, opened the biggest filing cabinet and riffled through until she came upon a single sheet of paper. ‘Get out your notebook, detective,’ she said.

I did and wrote what she read out to me — ‘Albert Logan, 31 View Street, Leichhardt.’ She put the paper back and slammed the drawer home. She stood with her back to the cabinet, tight and hostile, still breathing hard and wafting a little gin across to me. She was like no paid companion I’d ever seen; that sort of job dries people out. Being paid for their responses and emotions erodes their personalities, turns them into husks. She was well and truly living and breathing. Her clothes were severe on her lean frame but they suited her. She obviously knew things, had opinions, but there was no way to make her an ally.

I dropped into the easy chair and took out tobacco and papers. She started to protest but I gave her a hard look and she subsided. She sat down behind the desk, scornful again, and watched me get a cigarette going, flip the dead match into a waste paper basket and dirty the air.