“Hmm.” Phyllis looked around her. “You might be right. I moved some books from the spare room earlier, in case I needed to give someone a bed. And you haven’t seen the attic. I moved some up there after you left.”

I tried to imagine Phyllis climbing up into her attic and failed.

Always ready to have a laugh at her own expense, she caught my expression. “Just as well I have a sturdy ladder.” Her eyes narrowed in amusement. “Anyway, I think we might have to make ourselves comfortable in the kitchen for this evening.”

We reversed back out of the sitting room and made our way towards the small kitchen, past another half-wall of books. It occurred to me that Phyllis might have been a little over ambitious with her invitation to Maeve even if she had cleared space in the spare bedroom. But she assured me that there was room enough for someone to stay there.

With difficulty – especially for Phyllis herself – we made it into the kitchen. Once there we could move around, since it was the one room in the flat where there were no stored books, although there were cookery books, and many of them, brought back from Phyllis’s eclectic travels around the world and neatly arranged in a bookcase above the cupboards. Food, books and travel were Phyllis’s three loves. And Fred, of course, who had overtaken all three in recent years. He came in to join us, carefully manoeuvring his way around, his tail low, having learned to be careful from hanging out with Phyllis in the bookshop all day.

I perched on a stool while Phyllis got cracking on some food, pouring each of us a glass of crisp white wine from the fridge before she did anything else. “I think we’ve earned one, don’t you?”

I clinked her glass with mine. “Absolutely.” The wine was delicious. Phyllis never failed to deliver on the food and wine front.

She leaned her bosom on the table as she took a good sip. “That poor girl.”

“I know.”

“I got a wile fright when I saw her lying there in the doorway of the bookies. I thought it was another death. It’s good that she has a sister to take care of the little one.” She frowned. “What was her name again? The sister?”

“Sue.”

“Sue,” she said quietly. Her brow furrowed, in an expression like the one she’d had earlier at the hospital, as if she was trying to work something out.

“What is it?”

Phyllis shook her head and took another sip. “Just something I found a wee bit odd. I can’t shake the feeling that it was a bit off.”

“Go on,” I urged.

“Sue got really upset, suddenly, when you went off to talk to Molloy.” There was a brief pause as she glanced up at me over her glass. “I presume that’s where you went?”