I stood on the front porch and tried to push the envelope through the letterbox, but the flap – which had always been stiff – wouldn’t shift at all.

Eh? I peered at it closely. It almost looked … well … rusted shut. I smacked at it with the side of my palm. No movement. So next I tried the door handle. The door was locked.

‘It ain’t locked,’ Mrs Barrow insisted, ‘he never locks nothing, that one. I suppose it’s ’cos he’s got nothing worth the taking of.’

I tried the handle again. It came off in my palm.

‘This is ridiculous!’ I exclaimed, finally losing patience. I planted the handle into the front pocket of Mrs Barrow’s housecoat and stomped around to the back. Mrs Barrow followed, slightly affronted. ‘What’re you expecting me to do with it?’ she demanded.

I climbed up on to the back porch and tried the back door. Again the door was locked.

‘I’m delivering this damn thing if it’s the last thing I do!’ I muttered, flapping the envelope, slightly hysterical now.

‘It isn’t locked,’ Mrs Barrow insisted, ‘I was in there not half an hour since.’

I knelt down and attempted to push the envelope under the door, but the gap – much as I’d suspected – was too narrow.

I scrambled to my feet and tried the handle again. Still locked. Mrs Barrow (losing patience), shoved me out of the way and tried the door herself. This time the handle came away in her hand.

‘Now I’m getting myself proper spooked,’ she growled. ‘What exactly have you got in that envelope of yours, Carla?’

‘Only cash,’ I answered, slightly defensive.

‘An’ what’s it be for, precisely?’

‘Uh … I’m paying Mr Huff back his rental money.’ I shrugged.

‘Guilty conscience?’ Mrs Barrow snorted.

‘Because his wife died!’ I hotly retorted.

‘Mrs Ashe?’ Mrs Barrow was suitably horror-struck. ‘Dead, you say?’

‘Uh …’ I floundered, unsure how precisely to answer this question without begging several dozen more.

‘No. No. His first wife,’ I eventually settled for. ‘Not Mrs Ashe.’

‘Oh.’

Mrs Barrow mulled this over.

‘And he might need to return home for the … you know … funeral,’ I added.

‘Ah.’ Mrs Barrow nodded.

‘So I thought I’d refund some of his rental money, as a gesture of …’

‘Poor soul’s broke as the Ten Commandments,’ Mrs Barrow interjected.

‘Yes. Apparently so.’

‘Well …’ Mrs Barrow inspected the newly detached handle. ‘I think as it would be fair to say that some body – or some thing – ain’t too keen on you delivering that there envelope.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ I pooh-poohed her, jumping down off the porch and heading towards the air-raid shelter where a selection of old tools was generally stored.

‘You can scoff alls you like, girlie …’

Mrs Barrow followed. ‘… but don’t you reckon as it might …?’

I emerged from the shelter holding an old screwdriver. First I tried to re-affix the back door handle (to no avail; the screwdriver was too small to mesh with the fitments), next I tried the front door (featuring the same generation of old, Bakelite handle; but the screwdriver was too large this time). I returned to the shelter and re-emerged, thoroughly exasperated, with a nail and a hammer.