There had been about twelve people waiting for Antonia. Beatrice Ardleigh had appeared last. She had been wheeled up to her table by the taciturn Cerberus, whose name, it turned out, was Ingrid. Beatrice went on to describe Antonia’s previous book as ‘sublime’. The plot had been ‘devilishly clever’, ‘darkly comical’ and ‘stupefyingly ingenious’, the clueing ‘superb’. She had never guessed the murderer. Besides – she adored it when characters dis-played such high levels of literacy and erudition.

‘Thank you very much,’ Antonia said again. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She always felt extremely foolish in the face of extravagant compliments.

‘Ingrid says it’s all a trick – that it can all be done with a dictionary of quotations,’ Beatrice continued. ‘Surely that’s not how you do it? Ingrid hates it when characters swap lines of poetry “like in a game of ping-pong”, but I think it’s such fun… Do you like poetry?’

‘I do.’ Antonia picked up her pen. ‘Shall I write – “To Beatrice”?’

‘“To Bee”… Please. That’s what my best friends call me.’ Antonia wrote obligingly on the flyleaf, To Bee – With my very best wishes. Antonia Darcy.

‘Would you cross out your name and write it in your own hand? The way writers do it? Thank you. It means so much to me.’

‘Thank you very much,’ Antonia said for the third time, with an air of finality, she hoped. She went on smiling but leant back in her chair. She was encouraged to see Ingrid’s grip on the wheelchair handles tighten, but Beatrice Ardleigh said, ‘A moment, darling… Ingrid doesn’t care much for detective stories, I am afraid.’

‘Well, some people don’t.’ Antonia managed a light-hearted shrug.

‘Not the tricksy whodunit type, no,’ Ingrid said. She smiled only with her lips – her eyes remained expressionless, Antonia noticed. ‘All that insufferably cosy amateurish atmosphere of “let’s sit down and puzzle it out”. Denouements that hinge on seemingly irrelevant details placed in Chapter 1.’