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the circumstances in which her car had been found, Mrs Wasborough professed disbelief.
    All arrogant, cool detachment she asked, ‘Are you telling me that my car has been involved in a crime? What a nuisance! I do hope it’s drivable and you can get it back to me some time today?’
    ‘I don’t know about that, ma’am. I shouldn’t think so. I’d have to ask my chief.’
    ‘Well, put me through to him then,’ she demanded.
    Chief Inspector Fred Pike took the call and asked far more questions than Mrs Wasborough felt was necessary. She considered his behaviour intrusive and told him so in no uncertain terms.
    ‘My husband will be home at four. I suggest you deal with him if you have anything more to ask. This is too inconvenient! Just get that bloody car back to me
today
!’ And she slammed down the telephone.
    ‘Snotty upper-class bitch!’ was Fred Pike’s verdict.
    Forensic had not as yet even arrived in Sefton Under Edge where they would go over the car then have it towed to the police garage in Oxford for a further once over. Fred Pike smiled to himself because he knew Mrs Wasborough would not have her car back for a very long time if they found anything untoward.When he thought how angry that would make her, he was delighted.
    The Chief Inspector’s first sight of the car confirmed his gut instinct that this case was trouble. He radioed in to his office and summoned twenty men at once to comb the wood. Forensic arrived while he was still on the telephone. If the search of the woods revealed nothing untoward, nor the questioning of the villagers and the Buchanans, he would put it down as just another stolen car snatched by joyriders.
    Several days passed and forensic had done its work which included analysis of the bloody fingerprints on the window. It was a woman’s thumb and forefinger, type B. As a matter of course they ran the prints through the system to see if they belonged to any known criminal and came up with nothing. A search of the woods and interviews of the residents in the area revealed nothing that might help to find the culprits who had stolen the car. Several days had passed. The Chief Inspector pulled all his men off the case but left the file open.
    Fred Pike was a good detective, and instinct told him that there was more, much more, to this abandoned car than stealing for a joyride and somehow the Wasboroughs were more involved than they appeared to be. Fred Pike daily expected a call from either Mr or Mrs Wasborough, demanding their car. He found it strange that after his one conversation with Mrs Wasborough, he never heard from them again.
    At odd moments through the day Pike would be reminded of that conversation. It still niggled him that she should have been so deliberately rude to him, that she should not have been at all interested in the fact of her car’s being stolen, all she had wanted was to have it returned. It suddenly occurred to Fred that Mrs Wasborough was for some reason acting out a role. She had been deliberately rude to him for a reason.
    The newspapers, radio and TV were full of the search for Lady Olivia Cinders who seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth. It was all the talk everywhere. Had she committed suicide? Had she got away abroad? The tabloids were dredging up every scrap of smut they could find about Lady Olivia and her prince.
    Fred Pike had the habit of breakfasting at a small cafe a few streets from his office. It was the best fry-up for the money that could be found in Oxford. Sally Ann’s Cafe was frequented by many officers from Pike’s division. He preferred breakfast with them to the chaos of the first meal of the day with his wife and four children whom he adored, but not first thing in the morning.
    He, like every officer in the country, was following the Cinders case with a professional eye. Every one of them had their own theory about what had happened on the night of the murder; whether she’d done it or she hadn’t. Where she