‘Well?’ she prompted, once they were settled at a 111table under a blue umbrella, in the company of one other small group of people. ‘Don’t keep me in suspense.’

The answer came almost too starkly. ‘It was murder. Pressure on both the carotid arteries by someone who knew what they were doing. It’s not as easy as it looks on the movies, but it’s not especially complicated, either. Your lady had pressure on both sides of her neck, cutting off blood flow to her brain very quickly. She actually died of heart failure, according to the pathologist.’

‘Oh, hell.’ The words were less forceful than they might have been, due to Thea’s anticipation of just such a revelation. She felt wary and puzzled. ‘So – I must be a suspect, surely?’

‘Well – on paper, perhaps. But anybody who knows you can see the idea’s ludicrous. And just about everybody in the Gloucestershire police does know you, as far as I can tell.’

‘Okay. That’s a relief.’ She paused, visualising the helpless woman, probably still barely awake, facing a determined killer looming over her. ‘She was right to be scared, then,’ she said. ‘All along, she was right. She said “We fear those we hurt”. It sounded wise at the time, but I suppose it’s obvious when you think about it.’

‘Someone out for revenge, then,’ said Barkley, with fresh animation. ‘That gives us something to go on.’

‘Only if you know who she was, surely?’

‘We’ll soon work out an identity for her. Everyone’s so well documented these days, it can’t take long.’

Thea’s mind had drifted sideways. ‘Oh Lord − what’s 112Drew going to say?’ Her abandoned husband loomed large in her thoughts. She could feel his exasperated concern from twenty miles away.

‘Don’t ask me. Wasn’t he in something of a similar situation, a while back?’

‘That’s how we met, actually. I suppose it’s good that he’ll have an idea of how it feels. But what are the Cirencester people going to think? They don’t know me, do they?’

‘Gladwin’s going to have a word with them, when she gets a minute.’

Thea forced down a feeling of panic. It was irrational and distracting. There was nothing for her to worry about, she insisted to herself. But it certainly gave added force to the need to discover precisely who did kill Grace. And for that, she needed as much information as she could possibly get. ‘Do you have any idea what time it happened?’ she asked.

‘I imagine you know how that goes. She was warm, virtually nothing in her stomach, and a few other details that all point to only an hour or so from the time the police doctor got to her. That has to be a guess, of course. But it seems reasonably solid.’

‘Thank heaven for that, at least. I mean – that must make it less likely to have been me. If I was going to kill her, wouldn’t I have done it in the night?’