I nodded. “What’s so odd about her getting upset? She’d just found out that her sister had nearly died.”

Phyllis’s gaze flickered past me to the cookery books, as if trying to recall exactly. “That’s the thing. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t her sister she was upset about. We talked about her and she was fine, if worried. Perfectly normal. But when I mentioned Bob Jameson, that we were extra jumpy this weekend with what had happened to him, and that we’d got a terrible fright when we’d seen her sister, her eyes welled up.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

Her eyes locked on mine. “Certain. She started to cry, couldn’t seem to stop herself. It was almost as if she had been holding it in and what had happened to her sister allowed her to show it. It seemed so strange when her father clearly couldn’t abide the man.”

“Was she sad about his death?” I asked, realizing that I’d barely heard Sue utter two words since I’d met her. I didn’t know her at all. Whatever Phyllis had been able to find out was a hell of a lot more than I had.

The bookseller shook her head. “I don’t know. It wasn’t clear and I didn’t ask her. But she definitely didn’t want me to see; she hugged the wee fella to hide her tears and pretended she was fine. But the mention of his name certainly triggered something. I didn’t know she knew him, did you?” Phyllis frowned. “I mean, I knew that Jude knew and disliked him, but I didn’t realize there was any other connection between the two families.”

“Neither did I,” I said, deep in thought, while picturing again the moment I’d witnessed between Sue and Derek, Bob’s brother.

I sighed. The whole thing was becoming very entangled. For the moment I decided to enjoy my wine and put all thoughts of the Jamesons and the Burns aside for a few hours.

While Phyllis went to root in her cupboards, I finally called Charlie about Guinness and he said he’d be happy to take him in. Amazingly my phone still had a charge, although it died the second Charlie rang off. And fifteen minutes later I was sitting in front of a bowl of homemade tomato soup, toasted olive bread, tea and wine. Fred was at my feet. I’d taken my boots off and he seemed content to rest his head on my socked feet.