‘I don’t know. Five or six, I suppose. The last time was three weeks ago, to clear the guttering and sweep up dead leaves.’

‘Mr Grice, did Rose Shepherd ever talk to you while you were at her house? Did she tell you anything about herself?’

‘No, not her.’

‘Nothing at all?’

‘Not a thing.’

‘Any little detail that she might have let slip could be useful to us. Why don’t you give it some thought –’

‘I don’t need to give it any thought,’ said Grice. ‘She never talked to me. She pointed out the jobs that wanted doing, then left me to it. She hid herself away somewhere, went up to her bedroom or something. I thought it was a bit odd at first. The second time I went up to see her, I tried to make conversation. Only to ask whether she wanted me to fix the loose corner of a carpet while I was there. But she didn’t want to discuss anything. In fact, she got a bit cross. She told me she’d get somebody else in, if I wanted to ask questions instead of doing the job. I reckon she meant it, too. After that, I didn’t even dare ask for a cup of tea.’

‘I assume she paid well.’

‘Aye, that was it. You do what the customer wants, especially if they’re paying over the odds.’

Hitchens was studying him carefully. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t see anything in all the time you were in Bain House, Mr Grice. From what you’ve just said, you were practically unsupervised. You must have been curious. Well, weren’t you?’

‘A bit. But I couldn’t snoop about the place. I didn’t want her to turn up suddenly and catch me at it. I’d have been out of a job definitely then.’

‘Even so, you’re an observant man, I’m sure. It would be hard to spend time at Bain House, as you did, and not notice anything.’

‘OK, there might be something that occurs to me. But I can’t imagine how it would be of any use.’

Hitchens smiled at him. ‘You’d be surprised. The smallest thing might be significant.’

‘All right. Well, like you said, I’ll give it some thought.’

‘By the way, we’ll need to take your fingerprints, sir.’

‘Why?’

‘For elimination purposes.’

‘I don’t know what that means.’

‘Well, since you visited Bain House several times, your prints will be there. We need to know which ones are yours, so we can discount them.’

‘Oh, I see. All right.’

Cooper looked at the work he was doing on the wall. ‘Did you say this house belongs to your sister?’

‘No, I just said she lives here.’

‘Who does she live with?’

Grice leaned towards him in a conspiratorial manner.

‘Can you keep a secret?’

‘Yes.’

He leaned a bit closer. ‘So can I.’