‘Watch it, Sid,’ said Dave with an alarmed look. Then he smiled at Thea. ‘He don’t mean nothing by it. Mrs I’s a real star. Lovely lady. You’ll be a friend of hers?’

‘Friend of a friend, actually. The fact is, I’ve never met her. But listen – there’s something you should know about before you get started. Come in for a minute.’

She took them into the living room, and tried to give a brief account of the weekend. Sid interrupted every few seconds, horror ever more visible on his face. ‘Dead!’ he repeated, as if the whole idea was new to him. ‘Up there in the attic? Blimey!’

‘We should know today what she died of. If there’s a full-scale police investigation, that might affect where you can go in the house − for a day or two, anyway. But it should be okay to be in the kitchen. I know Tabitha’s got you on a deadline for that.’

‘End of the week, including the bathroom,’ nodded Dave. ‘Might need us to stay late once or twice, to get it all done. But we have to get into the roof, for the plumbing, see? The hot water tank’s up there.’

‘Yes, well – we’ll just have to take it a day at a time, and see what happens.’

Sid was still numb with amazement. ‘But she can’t have just died. People don’t just die like that. And who 95was she? That’s what I don’t get. Not somebody you knew, at all?’

‘No, I told you,’ said Thea, as patiently as she could. ‘She’d lost all her stuff and needed somewhere to sleep. I couldn’t put her in Tabitha’s room, because she’s locked it, so we made a sort of nest in the attic. It can’t have been very comfortable, but at least there was a rug on the floor. The other bedrooms are completely bare.’

‘Hot up there, as well,’ said Dave. ‘Maybe that’s what did her in.’

‘Maybe,’ said Thea, who had withheld quite a lot of the finer details. ‘It was all very unlucky, and I was probably an idiot to bring her here in the first place.’

‘What does your ’usband think about it, then?’ asked Sid with a glance at her wedding ring. ‘Must have something to say – nasty business like this.’

She hesitated, torn between an indignant reply that it was no concern of her husband’s, and an amused acknowledgement that men still believed that wives should remain under close scrutiny, and nothing but trouble came of letting them have too much independence. ‘He’s not too worried,’ she said lightly.

‘Hmm,’ said the man, clearly disapproving.

‘Come on, Sid. Best get started,’ urged Dave. He led the way through the hall to the barred door. ‘I see you’ve made good use of this,’ he said to Thea, who was trailing after them.

She forestalled the next inevitable question by saying, ‘That’s right. Very clever of you – although it’s going to leave holes in the door frame.’96