‘He left her only a couple of years after they married. Ran off with a woman with more money than Margaret had. She said she was heartbroken, but too proud to go running back to her parents. She trained as a bookkeeper and worked for a couple of local companies. When I first knew her she’d already retired. Or been made redundant.’ Kate smiled again. ‘She was a whizz with figures and saved me from the VAT man a number of times.’

‘But she kept her husband’s name?’ Vera thought that couldn’t have been easy all those years ago. A single woman with airs and graces, a strange name and aspirations to style.

‘She told me she never stopped loving him,’ Kate replied. ‘Like I said, she was always a romantic.’

‘And your husband?’ Vera asked. ‘Is he still working away?’

There was a moment of silence.

‘No,’ Kate said. ‘He died. An accident at work in the North Sea. The rigs. He drowned. His body was never found.’ And she began to cry again.

Kate led them up the stairs to Margaret’s flat. ‘As she got older, I asked if she’d like to move to one of the downstairs rooms, but she said this felt like home now and the stairs kept her fit.’

‘She was a healthy woman then? Good for her age?’ Despite her new regime and the trips to the pool, Vera was panting, so the words came out in tiny gasps.

‘Oh yes. The business is doing well enough now. We have our regular guests and we do some outside catering, but Margaret said she wouldn’t think of retiring.’ Kate stopped at the door. Joe took out the bunch of keys that the CSIs had found on the body.

‘You don’t have a master key?’ Vera leaned against the wall to catch her breath.

‘For all the other rooms, but not this one. I offered to keep one in case of emergency, but she never seemed keen. The cleaner never went in here, though I’d have been happy for her to service it with all the rest. Mags liked her privacy.’

‘Did she have any visitors?’

‘I was invited in for afternoon tea occasionally,’ Kate said. ‘Lovely. Always something a bit special. Sometimes smoked salmon from the fishery, on little pancakes. Sometimes a fancy cake she’d baked herself. Once a bottle of pink champagne because she said she had something to celebrate. I never saw anyone else come in to see her.’

She hovered on the landing, obviously wondering if she was expected to go into the room with them.

Vera reached out and touched her shoulder. ‘That’s all right, pet. We can take it from here.’