“Can I open my eyes now?” asked Cordelia mockingly. “Fourteen minutes and about five seconds.”

The Stonemason’s Arms was a long low stone building with a roof of heavy slate slabs. They found themselves in a clean, neat public bar, with matching wooden chairs, olde worlde wooden tables, and chintz curtains at the windows. But the beer was real ale on hand pumps, so they perched on bar stools with a pint of best bitter for Lindsay and a dry white wine for Cordelia, having ordered two ploughman’s special lunches. Lindsay wasted no time in eliciting information from the barmaid, a faded woman around forty who turned out to be the landlord’s wife.

“I suppose you don’t get much time off,” she said sympathetically.

“Oh, we always take Tuesdays off,” said the woman. “You have to get away from the place sometimes, or else you’d go mad. It was always my husband’s dream to retire to a country pub. When he was made redundant a couple of years ago, it seemed the obvious thing. Myself, I think it’s a lot of hard work and not as much fun as people seem to think.”

“Well, you certainly know how to please your customers. This is one of the nicest pints I’ve had in a long time. Actually, a friend of mine recommended this place to us. James Cartwright, I suppose you know him?”

“Oh yes, he’s a regular in here. He often pops in for his evening meal. Living alone, with his daughter boarding at that school, I think he enjoys the company and not having to cook for himself. You’d think he’d have a housekeeper, really, but he seems to prefer looking after himself.”

“Yes, he was just saying to me yesterday that it’s just as well he’s a familiar face in here. He was telling me the police had some daft idea he might have had something to do with the murder on Saturday night, but that since he’d been here at the time he was completely in the clear. He said it was a real blessing you knew him.”

The landlady nodded vigorously. “That’s right. We had the police here on Sunday asking about him. He came in about five to eight, I remember, because I’d been watching Go for Gold on the telly. I told the police, don’t be silly, Mr. Cartwright couldn’t have anything to do with a murder! He was just the same as usual, chatty and cheery. He had something to eat—I think it was the grilled local trout—and two or three pints of his usual and then went off about ten.”

“Lucky for him, really,” said Lindsay. She was spared any further conversation by the arrival of their generous lunches, and the two of them retired to a distant table. As they ate, Cordelia talked between mouthfuls of cheese and bread.