So, Mark and I walk across town to this launch-come-dinner thingie in the court rooms just above Browns. It’s about half six. There’s the usual polite chit-chat with a glass or two (or three or more) of wine. Someone knocks over the spindly little table holding the notebook, but doesn’t quite manage to break it so we are not saved the wrath of Powerpoint.

That done, we go in for dinner.

And there is a dead body lying on the floor between two of the tables. Blood seeping from the corner of her mouth.

Mild curiosity from the hack pack, not wanting to get too close for fear someone might ask a question. Everybody has a good gawp and then two rather hefty guys carry her, none-too-carefully, out of the room, so we can sit down and have dinner. She has big thighs, one of them says. Can’t say I noticed.

Very good food.

Then some tart from Blackpool turns up, and ends up getting blind drunk and sitting on the lap of the guy beside me. Fortunately I’d wedged myself into the corner near an air-con unit so I was lap-inaccessible. She ends up knocking over a wine glass into another guy’s chocolate pear desert, then running off with his plate and swapping it for an undamaged one from another table.

By the end of the evening she is dancing, alone, around her handbag, strategically dropped where the body had been just a couple of hours earlier.

Smart tuxedo guy goes out to the loo. Comes back in with a gash on his forehead and blood dripping down the inside of his collar. Claims to have been mugged at the urinal (’bonked from behind’ as he puts it). Had his rather flash pocket watch stolen.

Then, solicitor type, who seems to know very little about law, asks us to make notes on what we’d seen since arriving, and anything suspicious anyone might have said. Sad to say, the drink had stolen the specifics from my mind, leaving behind just the three Bs - body, Blackpool and bonked from behind. No chance of deducing anything useful from that.

Perhaps I’m not cut out for these murder mystery evenings.

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