‘My mother died of a stroke,’ Mrs Betts said tremulously. ‘It was on the death certificate, Dr Moss put it on the death certificate.’

Betts snuffled and wheezed. He reminded Wexford of an aged rabbit, a rabbit with myxomatosis perhaps. It was partly the effect of the brown woolly cardigan and the furry slippers, and partly the moustache and the unshaven bristly chin. ‘She was ninety-two,’ Betts said in his thick catarrhal voice. ‘Ninety-two. I reckon you lot must have got bats in the belfry.’

‘I mean,’ said Mrs Betts, ‘are you saying Dr Moss was telling untruths? A doctor?’

‘Why don’t you ask him? We’re only ordinary people, the wife and me, we’re not educated. Doctor said a cerebral haemorrhage,’ Betts stumbled a little over the words, ‘and in plain language that’s a stroke. That’s what he said. Are you saying me or the wife gave Mother a stroke? Are you saying that?’

‘I’m making no allegations, Mr Betts.’ Wexford felt uncomfortable, wished himself anywhere but in this newly decorated, paint-smartened house. ‘I am merely making enquiries which information received obliges me to do.’

‘Gossip,’ said Mrs Betts bitterly. ‘This street’s a hotbed of gossip. Pity they’ve nothing better to do. Oh, I know what they’re saying. Half of them turn up their noses and look the other way when I pass them. All except Elsie Parrish, and that goes without saying.’

‘She’s been a brick,’ said her husband. ‘A real brick is Elsie.’ He stared at Wexford with a kind of timid outrage. ‘Haven’t you folk got nothing better to do than listen to a bunch of old hens? What about the real crime? What about the muggings and the break-ins?’

Wexford sighed. But he went on doggedly questioning, remembering what the nurse had said, what Dr Moss had said, keeping in the forefront of his mind that motive which was so much more than merely wanting an aged parent out of the way. If he hadn’t been a policeman with a profound respect for the law and for human life, he might have felt that these two, or one of them, had been provoked beyond bearing to do murder.

One of them? Or both? Or neither? Ivy Wrangton had either died an unnatural death or else there had been a series of coincidences and unexplained contingencies which were nothing short of incredible.

It was the nurse who had started it, coming to him three days before. Sergeant Martin brought her to him because what she alleged was so serious. Wexford knew her by sight, had seen her making her calls, and had sometimes wondered how district nurses could endure their jobs, the unremitting daily toil, the poor pay, the unsavoury tasks. Perhaps she felt the same about his. She was a fair, pretty woman, about thirty-five, overweight, with big red hands, who always looked tired. She looked tired now, though she hadn’t long been back from two weeks’ holiday. She was in her summer uniform, blue and white print dress, white apron, dark cardigan, small round hat and the stout shoes that served for summer and winter alike. Nurse Radcliffe. Judith Radcliffe.