He gave a rich chuckle. ‘You come today?’

‘No, I’m sorry. I’m already booked for the rest of the day.’ I’d received a distress call yesterday from Ricky and Morris and had promised the afternoon to them. I couldn’t let them down.

My diary was open, ready on my lap. ‘I’m pretty full up tomorrow,’ I told him. ‘But I could pop around about lunchtime, to discuss the job.’

‘S’good. Tomorrow. Nickolai Antiques, you know where is?’

‘Shadow Lane?’

He grunted in assent. ‘Do not come shop door − flat door, round side.’

‘I’ll find it. About twelve o’clock, then?’

‘See you twelve o’clock. I look forward.’ He chuckled again. ‘I never met goddess before.’

‘Mr Nickolai, are you looking for a regular cleaner …?’ But he’d already rung off. ‘Because I don’t have any regular slots left,’ I added lamely and put the receiver down.

CHAPTER TWO

When I first arrived in Ashburton I needed a job and somewhere to live. Ricky and Morris helped me find both and although I’ve built up a business of my own since then, I try to give them my time whenever they need me.

They run a theatrical costume hire business from their home in Druid Lane, a grand Georgian house standing in splendid isolation on a hill overlooking the town. It’s the sort of house that you imagine in Jane Austen novels, an elegantly proportioned building, painted white, with long windows perfectly aligned on either side of an imposing front door, and set amongst wide, sweeping lawns.

Ricky inherited the place from an aunt. He and Morris met many years ago as chorus boys and decided to make use of Morris’s tailoring background and Ricky’s flair for design, and set up as theatrical costumiers, ‘serving’, as their website puts it, ‘professional and amateur theatres up and down the country’. Nowadays, they keep claiming they’re longing to retire. This, of course, is perfect bullshit. Suggest they begin the process by selling off any of their stock and they both have the vapours. Four of their six bedrooms are currently devoted to costumes and the attics are stuffed with hats, wigs and shoes.

Ricky must have spotted the van coming up the drive because the front door swung open as I approached. ‘The goddess of Arsehole-in-the-Moor!’ he declaimed, bowing low as I walked past him into the hall. ‘Bless you for coming, my angel!’ he added devoutly.

In his youth, Ricky had what might be described as Byronic good looks. Even now, somewhere in his seventies, his iron-grey curls fell becomingly, if not quite so thickly, over his noble brow. He had an aquiline nose, a strong jaw and looked as I imagine Mr Rochester might look, except, in his case, Jane Eyre would have been sadly disappointed on her wedding night.

‘What’s up?’ I asked, eyeing the four wicker laundry hampers standing open in the lofty hall.