But, standing outside the shop in the weak spring sunshine, Vera knew she couldn’t wait a whole night before confronting Morgan. It would kill her. Sometimes she had this reckless streak. Impulsive. The sensible thing would be to wait, to consider all the angles; she couldn’t do it.

‘If it’s a late finish, I’ll drop you home,’ she said. ‘Then pick you up in the morning. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if you have to leave your car here overnight.’

And he had no argument to that. He climbed into the car beside her. She thought he was as eager as she was to talk to Morgan. He just had to go through the motions of putting his family first.

‘So what did you get from the house-to-house?’ Vera knew she was a good driver. Instinctive. These small roads could be tricky if you didn’t know them, but she couldn’t afford to hang around. Then she sensed Ashworth tense beside her and put her foot on the brake, reduced the speed a bit. She needed him to concentrate. She listened to his account of the conversation with Jenny’s neighbour.

‘She thought Lister had fallen for one of her clients?’

‘She wasn’t that certain,’ Ashworth said. ‘Just that it was someone unsuitable.’

‘But she wouldn’t have plucked the idea of a client out of thin air!’ Vera was excited now. ‘Jenny might have said something, dropped a hint that made Hilda think that way. And it stuck in her mind, even though she couldn’t remember the original comment.’

‘Maybe.’ Vera saw that Ashworth thought she was making too much of it. He was her restraining influence. Sometimes, she thought, he was her conscience.

‘Connie said that Jenny met Michael Morgan,’ Vera said. She kept her voice calm. Didn’t want Ashworth to think she was over-reacting. ‘Apparently she wanted to do her own assessment of the man.’

‘You think Lister was having an affair with Morgan?’ His voice was sharp and incredulous.

‘I’m keeping an open mind,’ she said. ‘But if the bastard killed her, I’ll have him.’

Tynemouth was a pretty little town, with a wide front street and bonny Georgian houses. A castle and a priory, both in ruins. Tea shops and posh frock shops and a converted church on one corner, called the Land of Green Ginger, where you could buy antiques and books and fancy children’s clothes. In the evening the bars and the restaurants pulled in the younger crowd, but this time of day, so early in the season, it was the haunt of elderly ladies and middle-aged couples walking hand in hand, window-shopping. The same sort of clientele, Vera thought, as the Willows Health Club.