‘No,’ I told him gloomily. ‘Sometimes I think that we’ll never find out what happened.’ Suddenly I found I had to dash tears away. ‘What was the old fool up to?’ I asked angrily, groping in my pocket for a tissue. ‘What did he do to get himself killed?’

Paul presented me with a handkerchief. ‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever know that either.’

CHAPTER THIRTY

Next morning, after I had walked the Tribe and called in on Maisie, I went to Nick’s place and began a systematic search. I was looking for the rings and anything that might throw light on Nick’s murder. I started in the bedroom where I stripped the bed and turned the mattress, inspecting it for holes, tears, or any places where stuffing might have been removed to create a hiding place. Then I took out every sock, shirt and item of underwear from the chest of drawers, shook it out, folded it and replaced it. A small round tin, stuffed between layers of clothes, rattled in a promising manner, but only contained collar studs. I searched the pockets of all the coats and suits hanging in the wardrobe, probed the linings, felt down the length of all his ties and shook out every one of his shoes. I found nothing.

The cabinet in the bathroom revealed nothing but a shaving brush, soap and denture fixative. I’d probably been watching too many movies, but I decided to take the lid off the cistern. It seemed to be a common hiding place for drugs, guns, and other potentially lethal things wrapped in plastic. The lid weighed a ton. It took me a minute or two of grunting, trying to heave the wretched thing aside enough for me to look underneath, and then the only object confronting me was the ballcock.

Disgusted, I turned to the airing cupboard, removing every sheet, blanket, towel and pillowcase before shaking it and refolding it, as I had with the clothes.

I was about to begin in the living room when the sickly rattle of the doorbell announced Paul’s arrival. I gave a silent cheer. I felt as if I’d been alone there for hours. It was a relief to see another human being.

Together we got a lot done. We bagged up Nick’s clothes, curtains and bedding, loaded them into Paul’s van and drove them to Ashburton’s only charity shop. Paul tore up the carpet in the living room, and, along with the mattress, took it to his field to burn. I scrubbed the floorboards until my knuckles were raw and felt a lot better.

Finally, we went down into the shop. After a struggle we managed to get the door of the shop open, and with the jangling of a little iron bell, let in fresh air for the first time in years.

‘There you are, open for business!’ Paul declared.