“Oh, yes, you’re the lady my wife was telling me about.” They shook hands across the counter and he added with a worried frown, “Was I supposed to be expecting you today?”

“Not at all. I was just passing, so I thought I’d call in. Could you spare me a moment or two between customers?”

He looked wary but she had intended no irony.

“Tuesday is a slow day for customers. I don’t know why. So I mostly do repairs. We could sit in the workshop.” He unlatched the countertop between two cabinets to allow her through.

“If you’re sure,” Jean said, glancing back at the unattended valuables in the window as he showed her into the workshop, which was hardly more spacious.

“The bell will ring if anyone comes in and I’ll leave the door open.”

Full of apologies for the lack of comforts, he offered her a sagging green armchair in one corner. When she sat in it the arms were level with the tops of her ears, the seat inches from the ground. Her long legs sprawled across the floor between them, as ungainly as a fallen horse. The only other seat, which Mr. Tilbury now took, was the revolving stool at the bench where he had just been working. Beside her on a low table was an electric hotplate, kettle, cup, the remains of a sandwich in a greaseproof paper wrapping and a skinny apple core. He whisked the debris away and threw it into a wastebasket under the bench.

“May I offer you a cup of tea, Miss Swinney?” he asked.

His relief when she declined confirmed her sudden flash of intuition that the used cup beside her was the only one he had and that she was the only visitor he had ever entertained here.

“You and your wife have obviously discussed the North Kent Echo’s interest in her story,” Jean began, looking up at him from her disadvantaged position near the ground. “I wanted to reassure myself that you were comfortable with the idea.”

“That’s thoughtful of you,” he replied. “But this matter is so very much my wife’s concern that I take my lead from her. As long as it has no ill effect on Margaret.”

“Yes. Margaret.” Jean shuffled forward onto the rigid seat edge to gain a few precious inches of height. It was hard to assume any kind of authority with her knees higher than her hips.

“You’ve met her?” At the mention of her name his worried expression lightened.

“Briefly. I thought her delightful.”

“Yes,” he beamed. “She is. Quite the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

Jean flipped through her notebook to the pages of scribbled shorthand she had written during her visit to the Tilburys’ house in Sidcup the previous week.

“How old was Margaret when you first met your wife?”

“About six months. I came as a lodger to their house in Wimbledon. Gretchen’s mother, Frau Edel, let out rooms to bring in money. One of the other tenants had moved out because she didn’t like the idea of living with an unmarried mother. It didn’t worry me, of course. And then when I got to know the Edels better, they told me Gretchen’s story.” He recounted it, at Jean’s prompting, all just as Mrs. Tilbury herself had described.