‘Oh, no, no, it’s not just that, not at all. Mrs Betts sent for Dr Moss on May 23rd, just four days after Dr Crocker went away. Why did she? There wasn’t anything wrong with Mrs Wrangton. I was getting her dressed after her bath and I was amazed to see Dr Moss. Mrs Wrangton said, I don’t know what you’re doing here, I never asked my daughter to send for you. Just because I overslept a bit this morning, she said. She was so proud of her good health, poor dear, never had an illness in her long life but the once and that was more an allergy than an illness. I can tell you why he was sent for, Mr Wexford. So that when Mrs Wrangton died he’d be within his rights signing the death certificate. He wasn’t her doctor, you see, but it’d be all right if he’d attended her within the past two weeks, that’s the law. They’re all saying Mrs Betts waited for Dr Crocker to go away, she knew he’d never have just accepted her mother’s death like that. He’d have asked for a post-mortem and then the fat would have been in the fire.’ Nurse Radcliffe didn’t specify how, and Wexford thought better of interrupting her again. ‘The last time I saw Mrs Wrangton,’ she went on, ‘was on June 1st. I had a word with the painter as I was going out. There were two of them but this was a young boy, about twenty. I asked him when they expected to finish, and he said, sooner than they thought, next week, because Mrs Betts had told them just to finish the kitchen and the outside and then to leave it. I thought it was funny at the time, Mrs Wrangton hadn’t said a word to me about it. In fact, what she’d said was, wouldn’t it be nice when the bathroom walls were all tiled and I wouldn’t have to worry about splashing when I bathed her.

‘Mr Wexford, it’s possible Mrs Betts stopped that work because she knew her mother was going to die the next day. She personally didn’t want the whole house re-decorated and she didn’t want to have to pay for it out of the money her mother left her.’

‘Was there much money?’ Wexford asked.

‘I’d guess a few thousands in the bank, maybe three or four, and there was the house, wasn’t there? I know she’d made a will, I witnessed it. I and Dr Crocker. In the presence,’ said Nurse Radcliffe sententiously, ‘of the legatee and of each other, which is the law. But naturally I didn’t see what its provisions were. Mrs Wrangton did tell me the house was to go to Mrs Betts and there was a little something for her friend Elsie Parrish. Beyond that, I couldn’t tell you. Mind you, Mrs Parrish won’t have it that there could have been foul play. I met her in Castle Road and she said, wasn’t it wicked the things people were saying?’