‘Our fees are ninety-five pounds a week, Mr Wexford,’ said the matron. ‘And with the extra for laundry and dry-cleaning, sure and you might say five thousand a year for a good round figure.’

‘I see.’

‘The ladies only have to share a room with one other lady. We bath them once a week and change their clothes once a week. And if you could please see to it your aunt only has synthetic fabrics, if you know what I mean, for the lot’s popped in the washing machine all together. We like the fees a month in advance and paid on a banker’s order, if you please.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t please,’ said Wexford. ‘Your charges are more than I expected. I shall have to make other arrangements.’

‘Then there’s no more to be said,’ said Mrs Corrigan with a smile nearly equalling the candlepower of Dr Moss’s.

‘Just out of curiosity, Mrs Corrigan, how do your – er, guests meet your fees? Five thousand a year is more than most incomes would be equal to.’

‘Sure and aren’t they widows, Mr Wexford, and didn’t their husbands leave them their houses? Mostly the ladies sell their houses, and with prices the way they are today that’s enough to keep them in Summerland for four years or five.’

Mrs Wrangton had intended to sell her house, and she was having it re-decorated inside and out in order to get a better price. She had intended to sell the roof over the Bettses’ heads – no wonder she had implied to Dr Moss that Doreen Betts would be sorry to see the back of her. What a woman! What malevolence at ninety-two! And who could have said she wouldn’t have been within her moral as well as her legal rights to sell? It was her house. Doreen Wrangton might long ago have found a home of her own, ought perhaps to have done so, and as Doreen Betts might have expected her husband to provide one for her. It is universally admitted to be wrong to anticipate stepping into dead men’s shoes. And yet what a monstrous revenge to have on an uncongenial son-in-law, a not always co-operative daughter. There was a subtlety about it that evoked Wexford’s admiration nearly as much as its cruelty aroused his disgust. It was a motive all right, and a strong one.

So at last he had found himself in Castle Road, in the Bettses’ living room, confronting an elderly orphan and her husband. The room was papered in a silvery oyster colour, the woodwork ivory. He was sure that that door had never previously sported a shade lighter than chocolate brown, just as the hall walls had, until their recent coat of magnolia, been gloomily clothed in dark Lincrusta.

When the two of them had protested bitterly about the gossip and the apparent inability of the police to get their priorities right, Doreen Betts agreed without too much mutiny to answer Wexford’s questions. To the first one she reacted passionately.