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It is always a mistake to confess to murder while wearing a paisley bow tie.‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ asked Henry.‘That you have just killed somebody?’ I asked.‘That I might have killed somebody,’ he said. He looked a little sheepish. The genuine murderer –

the real pro – tends to keep track of that sort of thing. And he wasn’t dressed for murder. The tweed jacket, the checked waistcoat, and above all the yellow bow tie . . . they spoke of a man who would fiddle his expenses and arrange for his pregnant secretary to have a sordid backstreet abortion. They would have enabled Henry to audition as an extra in a fifties costume drama – a dodgy bookmaker, say, or a ne’er-do-well younger brother destined for exile to one of the more obscure colonies. They were not clothes that you would risk wearing for a murder.

An unlikely murderer and no sign of a body – more red herrings for the improbable detective Ethelred and his chocolate-guzzling agent Elsie to unravel