Dr Moss, small, dark and trim, came in from the corridor between the consulting rooms. He gave Wexford the very wide smile that showed thirty-two large white teeth which the chief inspector had never been able to precisely define as false, as crowns or simply as his own. The teeth were rather too big for Dr Moss’s face which was small and smooth and lightly tanned. His small black eyes didn’t smile at all.

‘Enter the villainous medico,’ he said, ‘who is notoriously in cahoots with greedy legatees and paranoid Post Office clerks. What evidence can I show you? The number of my Swiss bank account? Or shall I produce the hammer, a crafty tap from which ensured an immediate subarachnoid haemorrhage?’

It is very difficult to counter this kind of facetiousness. Wexford knew he would only get more fatuous pleasantries, heavy irony, outrageous confessions, if he attempted to rebut any of it or if he were to assure Moss that this wasn’t what he had meant at all. He smiled stiffly, tapping his feet against the leg of Crocker’s desk, while Dr Moss elaborated on his fantasy of himself as corrupt, a kind of latter-day William Palmer, poison-bottle-happy and ever-ready with his hypodermic to gratify the impatient next-of-kin. At length, unable to bear any more of it, Wexford cut across the seemingly interminable harangue and said to Crocker:

‘You witnessed her will, I understand?’

‘I and that busybody Radcliffe, that’s right. If you want to know what’s in it, the house and three thousand pounds go to Doreen Betts, and the residue to another patient of mine, a Mrs Parrish. Residue would have been about fifteen hundred at that time, Mrs Wrangton told me, but considering her money was in a building society and she managed to save out of her pension and her annuity, I imagine it’ll be a good deal more by now.’

Wexford nodded. By now Dr Moss had dried up, having run out, presumably, of subject matter and witticisms. His teeth irradiated his face like lamps, and when his mouth was closed he looked rather ill-tempered and sinister. Wexford decided to try the direct and simple approach. He apologized.

‘I’d no intention of suggesting you’d been negligent, Dr Moss. But put yourself in my position . . .’

‘Impossible!’

‘Very well. Let me put it this way. Try to understand that in my position I had no choice but to make enquiries.’

‘Mrs Betts might try an action for slander. She can count on my support. The Bettses had neither the opportunity nor the motive to do violence to Mrs Wrangton, but a bunch of tongue-clacking old witches are allowed to take their characters away just the same.’

‘Motive,’ said Wexford gently, ‘I’m afraid they did have, the straightforward one of getting rid of Mrs Wrangton who had become an encumbrance to them, and of inheriting her house.’

‘Nonsense.’ Momentarily the teeth showed in a white blaze. ‘They were going to get rid of her in any case. They would have had the house to themselves in any case. Mrs Wrangton was going into a nursing home.’ He paused, enjoying the effect of what he had said. ‘For the rest of her days,’ he added with a touch of drama.