Ron Willis reached for the phone. It was the Thames Valley Police in Oxford who informed him that Professor Christopher Buchan had been poisoned by an almond cocktail laced with potassium cyanide. The latter, with its odour of bitter almond had been disguised. The barman furnished a description of the woman who entered the cocktail bar with the professor. She was long-legged and estimated to be in her mid- or late-thirties with wavy, shoulder length blonde hair and blue eyes. Unfortunately, the barman was unable to be more accurate. “One customer’s like another,” he shrugged. The police held out little hope of the photo-fit.
One detail that emerged was that the blonde had an American accent. But as Willis later pointed out to Meade that didn’t mean a thing. Anyone with half a brain could
