‘He came straightaway. I thought maybe he’d call an ambulance but he didn’t. He said she’d had a stroke and when people had strokes they shouldn’t be moved. We stayed with her – well, doctor and I stayed with her – but she passed away just before half-past.’

Wexford nodded. Something about what she had said was wrong. He felt it. It wasn’t that she had told a lie, though she might well have done, but something else, something that rang incongruously in that otherwise commonplace narrative, some esoteric term in place of a household word . . . He was checking back, almost there, when a footstep sounded in the hall, the door opened and a face appeared round it.

‘There you are, Doreen!’ said the face which was very pretty considering its age. ‘I was just on my way to – Oh, I beg your pardon, I’m intruding.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Mrs Betts. ‘You can come in, Elsie.’ She looked blankly at Wexford, her eyes once more old and tired. ‘This is Mrs Parrish.’

Elsie Parrish, Wexford decided, looked exactly as an old lady should. She had a powdery, violet cashew, creamy smell, which might equally well have been associated with a very clean baby. Her legs were neat and shapely in grey stockings, her hands in white gloves with tiny darns at the fingertips, her coat silky navy-blue over blue flowery pleats, and her face withered rose leaves with rouge on. The bouffant mass of silvery hair was so profuse that from a distance it might have been taken for a white silk turban. She and Wexford walked down the street together towards the shops, Elsie Parrish swinging a pink nylon string bag.

‘It’s wicked the way they gossip. You can’t understand how people can be so evil-minded. You’ll notice how none of them are able to say how Doreen gave Ivy a stroke when she wasn’t even there.’ Mrs Parrish gave a dry satirical laugh. ‘Perhaps they think she bribed that poor young man, the painter, to give Ivy a fright. I remember my mother saying that fright could give you a stroke – an apoplexy, she called it – or too much excitement or drinking too much or over-eating even.’

To his surprise, because this isn’t what old ladies of elegant appearance usually do or perhaps should do, she opened her handbag, took out a packet of cigarettes and put one between her lips. He shook his head when the packet was offered to him, watched her light the cigarette with a match from a matchbook with a black shiny cover. She puffed delicately. He didn’t think he had ever before seen someone smoke a cigarette while wearing white gloves. He said:

‘Why didn’t you go round and sit with Mrs Wrangton, that afternoon, Mrs Parrish?’

‘The day she died, you mean?’

‘Yes.’ Wexford had the impression she didn’t want to answer, she didn’t want to infer anything against Doreen Betts. She spoke with care.