But he showed no inclination to go. They came in, blinking in the light and bringing with them a gust of cold air which billowed the white woodsmoke across the room. Celia Calthrop went straight to Dalgliesh’s chair and arranged herself as if to receive an evening’s homage. Her elegant legs and feet, carefully displayed to advantage, were in marked contrast to her heavy, stoutly corseted body with its high bosom, and her flabby mottled arms. Dalgliesh supposed that she must be in her late forties but she looked older. As always she was heavily but skilfully made up. The little vulpine mouth was carmine, the deep-set and downward-sloping eyes which gave her face a look of spurious spirituality much emphasised in her publicity photographs were blue shadowed, the lashes weighted with mascara. She took off her chiffon headscarf to reveal her hairdresser’s latest effort, the hair fine as a baby’s, through which the glimpses of pink, smooth scalp looked almost indecent.

Dalgliesh had met her niece only twice before and now, shaking hands, he thought that Cambridge had not changed her. She was still the sulky, heavy-featured girl that he remembered. It was not an unintelligent face and might even have been attractive if only it had held a spark of animation.

The room had lost its peace. Dalgliesh reflected that it was extraordinary how much noise seven people could make. There was the usual business of settling Sylvia Kedge into her chair which Miss Calthrop supervised imperiously, although she did nothing active to help. The girl would have been called unusual, perhaps even beautiful, if only one could have forgotten those twisted ugly legs, braced into calipers, the heavy shoulders, the masculine hands distorted by her crutches. Her face was long, brown as a gypsy’s and framed by shoulder-length black hair brushed straight from a centre parting. It was a face which could have held strength and character but she had imposed on it a look of piteous humility, an air of suffering, meekly and uncomplainingly borne, which sat incongruously on that high brow.