‘We’d better keep an eye on him. He’s very upset.’ Lowther put an arm round his wife. ‘And how are you coping?’

The question seemed to start her tears all over again, and tears turned to deep, racking sobs. It was a few moments before she could get her breath back.

‘How did it happen?’ she said. ‘How on earth did it happen?’

‘Hell, I don’t know.’

Mrs Lowther pulled out a tissue to dry her eyes. They both stood in their garden in silence for a while, listening to the trickle of water, the chatter of a blackbird. No one watching them could have told what they were thinking, or whether the Lowthers were even thinking the same thoughts.

‘Well, we have to make sure we look after the living now, don’t we?’ said Moira. ‘That’s the most important thing.’

Henry Lowther patted her shoulder. ‘That’s all I’ve ever wanted,’ he said.

‘Between two and four a. m.?’ said Hitchens when Cooper and Fry returned to Bain House. ‘Is that the best they could do?’

‘Sorry.’

‘Well, it falls bang in the middle of our time scale, anyway. So it helps a bit, I suppose.’

‘We’re no closer to filling in details of Miss Shepherd’s background, though,’ said Fry.

Hitchens shook his head. ‘Not much nearer. Although the owners of the village shop think Rose Shepherd’s accent might have been Irish.’

‘Do they? But her passport says she was British. Born in London.’ Fry laughed. ‘It’s possible, though. Irish is foreign enough for folk round here.’

‘Why don’t we put it to Bernie Wilding?’ suggested Cooper.

But Hitchens shook his head. ‘It would be leading him too much. At the moment, he can’t identify Miss Shepherd’s accent, but if we suggest a particular nationality, he might try to make all his recollections fit in with the suggestion. I bet we could get him to agree that Rose Shepherd was an Iraqi or an Australian – anything we like the sound of.’

‘The name Shepherd sounds more Australian than Iraqi,’ pointed out Cooper.

‘I meant those as examples,’ said Hitchens. ‘Wake up, Ben.’

‘I was joking.’

‘Right. Well, it hasn’t been a laugh a minute round here, I can tell you – not with Mr Kessen in the mood he’s in. We have found a laptop, though. It was in the bottom drawer of the victim’s wardrobe.’

‘Well, that’s good news,’ said Fry. ‘Has it been checked out yet?’

‘We haven’t had time to go through the files, but Miss Shepherd definitely had internet access. It looks as though she used an ordinary modem dial-up connection, so she could have used the laptop right there in the bedroom, plugged into the socket for the bedside phone.’

‘Any interesting email correspondence?’