Tony appeared with their drinks, nodding as he set them down. “On the house.” He smiled as he handed Derek his bottle of non-alcoholic beer. “You and the sergeant are the only ones who drink those.”

Once they’d thanked him and Tony had returned to the bar, it quickly became clear exactly why our companions had chosen to put Phyllis’s comment aside and join us at our table. They couldn’t stand to be in one another’s company, and we provided dilution. Neither Derek nor Amanda addressed a single comment to one another, nor looked in one another’s direction the whole time they were with us. Derek, in particular, seemed taciturn and tense.

I wondered what had happened. Derek had been comforting Amanda at the B & B this morning, although I realized now that I only had his word for that. The memory of the two of them sitting wordlessly beside each other in the hall came back to me, along with Amanda’s uncomfortable scene with Jude’s daughter Sue. And then there was Derek’s considerably more comfortable encounter with Sue that I’d witnessed from the office window. What was that all about? With a jolt I remembered something he’d said a few days ago, at the waterfall, when we’d been on our way back from Mamore. About developing feelings for someone else. Could that someone else be Sue? There was quite the age gap between them.

I was mulling this over when I noticed that while Liam and Phyllis had managed to get Derek to chat, Amanda was staring bleakly at the wall. I was beside her, so she fell to me.

“I really am so sorry about Bob,” I said, feeling somehow that I needed to say it again. “I met him briefly here in the pub last night. Such an awful, awful thing to happen.”

“It’s absolutely unbearable.” She cast a cold eye in Phyllis’s direction, so maybe she hadn’t forgiven her after all. She’d had work done on her face, I saw now; the giveaway swelling above her mouth was more obvious when she frowned. “I don’t know what I’d have done if that doctor hadn’t given me something.”

So that explained the glassy eyes, I thought. What had Harry given her? I wondered.

“Must have come as such a shock.”

A tear snaked down her cheek, and she took a tissue from her bag and rubbed her nose. “I can’t imagine how someone could do something so terrible.”

“You’ve no idea who might have wanted to …” I began tentatively. God, I just couldn’t help myself, could I?

But she shut me down immediately, her voice flat. “There was no one. Everyone loved Bob. Bob was hugely respected and admired for all of the hard work he’d done for so many causes over the years.”