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would not have been surprised if pressure of work had made Richard quite forget his promise to entice the patent agent to dinner, and a little gentle reminder from the besotted Mrs Rusham would do no harm. The housekeeper agreed and asked whether Willow would be lunching at the flat.
    â€˜Yes, I think I probably will,’ she said. ‘But don’t do anything very elaborate. I ate enormously with Mr Crescent last night.’
    â€˜Very good, Miss Woodruffe,’ said Mrs Rusham formally and departed for her immaculate kitchen, carrying the egg-smeared Minton plate with her.
    Willow leaned back in her chair, picking up her coffee cup in one hand and The Times in the other. When she had read the home news, the letters and the ‘Friday page’, she put the newspaper down and instead leafed through the Daily Mercury. Sensational, badly written and smudgily printed, it was not a newspaper she had ever read until she had met one of the journalists who worked on its diary section during the course of her investigation into the murder of the Minister. Willow had felt rather bad about having cheated information out of Jane Cleverholme, the journalist, and as a sop to her conscience had taken the paper ever since. Willow rarely read much of it, but was occasionally entertained by the different ways it reported the same items she had read in The Times.
    That Friday the Daily Mercury had its usual complement of death, disaster, failure, petty malice and sex. Willow dropped it fastidiously into the wastepaper basket, as she usually did, and thought of an excuse to telephone Jane Cleverholme.
    When she answered, Willow announced herself, adding:
    â€˜I’ve just been reading the Mercury and wondering all over again why on earth you …’
    â€˜Don’t say it,’ said Jane bitterly. ‘I know; but it pays well and I still haven’t had the break I need to get out. Never mind that now. How are you, Cressida? Still planning to write your romance-among-the-tabloids book?’
    â€˜Well actually,’ said Willow slowly and feeling guilty, ‘I’m not sure that it’s going to work. My agent is a bit doubtful about it and the more I think about it, the more worried I get. I imagine that there’d be even more elephant traps than usual.’
    â€˜What are you talking about?’ demanded Jane briskly.
    â€˜Elephant traps,’ Willow repeated in an obliging voice. ‘Oh, you know, Jane, ghastly opportunities for wholly unconscious libel and that sort of thing. And newspapers are so used to being charged enormous sums when they libel people that they might be a bit vindictive. I’m an appalling coward about libel, I’m afraid.’
    â€˜So what can I do for you?’
    â€˜How shaming that you think I’d only ring you if I wanted something!’ said Willow. ‘But in fact you are right; I wondered whether you knew anything at all about an actress called Claire Ullathorne? She died just over a month ago: suicide, I think.’
    â€˜I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of her,’ said Jane. ‘Why d’you want to know? A backstage romance?’
    â€˜That sort of thing,’ lied Willow calmly. ‘The strains and stresses of that life. You see, I’ve heard that she was reasonably well-off and attractive, and so it seems that she must have killed herself just because of a part she didn’t get. Where could I find out about her?’
    â€˜Hmmm,’ said Jane. ‘I could look through our clippings library if you like; but you’d probably get as much information from the reference books, although they wouldn’t have our inimitable style and gloss.’
    â€˜Good idea,’ said Willow foreseeing that her self-indulgent day was going to be more taken up with the investigation than she had planned. ‘But what are they? I don’t suppose she’d have made Who’s Who .’
    â€˜No,’ agreed Jane.