Short shook his head. ‘I assumed she was still living in Poland. That was what her parents had told my father, when he was still dealing with them: that she’d gone with her husband to start a new life there. She wasn’t a beneficiary and, after all this time, it seemed too complicated to track her down.’

‘And all the time Margaret was in a flat in Harbour Street in Mardle. I wonder if she visited them in the care home.’ Vera realized that she’d finished the sherry and she set the glass on a small table.

‘You’d have to check with the staff. Certainly she never got in touch with me to find out where they were living. As I said, until she phoned the office to make an appointment, I assumed that she was still living abroad.’

Vera was baffled by this. Margaret Krukowski had been a good woman, a church-goer, yet she’d seemingly made no attempt to find out what was happening to her elderly parents, who’d lived only half an hour away from Mardle. They’d stayed at the same address until they’d moved into residential care, so it would have been easy for her to find them. Margaret didn’t seem like a woman who would hold a grudge for fifty years. After all, her parents had been right about her husband. He’d deserted her after a couple of years of marriage. Had pride been her sin then? Had she led them to believe that she was happily settled in Poland, because she didn’t want to admit that she’d been wrong, or had they spread the story to explain her disappearance?

Short continued. ‘Margaret got in touch with me out of the blue a week ago. I must admit that I was intrigued. I’d heard a lot about her, at least about the rift with her parents. I only had time to see her the day that she died. We were flying to Barcelona that evening and I tried to put her off until my return, but she insisted. “I don’t know how long I have,” she said. So I went into the office specially to meet her.’ He leaned forward in his chair. ‘She was an impressive woman. Articulate and attractive. She said that she was dying and that she wanted to order her affairs. I asked if the cancer might not be treated. There’s been so much progress in medical matters. But she said she wasn’t interested in fighting the disease. She had no desire to prolong her life.’ Vera thought she could understand that. She wasn’t a woman who stood on her dignity, but she’d hate hospital, the tests and the poking about, tubes and needles. It was the only reason she was making an effort to get fit.

‘Margaret was here to make a will?’ Joe Ashworth, wanting things clear and tidy.