‘You’re right there. It’s difficult to know with Billy, though. I think it’s mostly talk, but he’s got a short fuse. Quick-tempered. Typical redhead, I suppose. And he doesn’t hold his drink well.’

‘You mean he gets violent?’ asked Carole.

‘No, no, he’s a harmless drunk. Gets maudlin rather than violent. Sorry for himself. More likely to weep on someone’s shoulder than hit them. Sounds off while he drinks his first pint, gets more and more miserable with the second one.’

Carole hadn’t thought of it before, but of course Ted Crisp must be in a unique position to classify the kind of drinkers who came through the Crown and Anchor. Over the years he might have built up dossiers on all of them. She hoped he hadn’t fitted her drinking behaviour into any category.

The landlord turned a beady eye on her. ‘Anyway, Carole, you reckon Bill Shefford is another of your murders?’

‘What do you mean – my murders. I don’t have murders.’

‘No? Well, all right, not your own. You share them with Jude.’

He chuckled and Jude joined in. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think this is one of them. Sounds like a straightforward accident to me.’

‘Yeah?’ asked Ted. ‘Gearboxes are substantial bits of kit. Don’t just fall off. If they did, our highways’d be cluttered up with them.’

‘Bill did say he was going to remove one,’ Carole pointed out. ‘So, I suppose he loosened the … screws or whatever holds the thing in position and then it slipped or … I don’t know. Do you know how a gearbox is fixed into a car, Ted?’

‘Search me. I’m afraid I never was one of those kids who always wanted to know what went on under a car’s bonnet. More interested in what went on under a lady’s bonnet!’ He guffawed, demonstrating once again perhaps why his career as a stand-up comic had been short-lived.

‘Tell you, though,’ he went on, ‘there’s a bloke been coming in recently who’d know all about gearbox fixings.’

‘Oh?’

‘Just moved down here. Ex-car salesman. Got a crippled wife. Adrian something-or-other.’

Carole felt a small pang. She had known that her exclusive friendship with Adrian Greenford wouldn’t last long. He’d found his way to the Crown and Anchor without her help.

‘He’s in most nights,’ said Ted. ‘I’ll ask whether a gearbox is any good as a murder weapon. Oooh, and while I think of new people coming in, there was a bloke the other day asking after you, Jude.’

‘Oh?’

Carole another little pang. No doubt this would be another of her neighbour’s ex-lovers.

‘Some kind of therapist, I think … I gave him your number. Hope you don’t mind.’

‘No, that’s fine, Ted. Presumably he gave you a name?’

Ted grinned. ‘Jeremiah … which is a name and a half, if you ask me.’