‘Well, he is a doctor, so it could have been any potion or poison. But Mrs McTavish was alive and well until twelve months or so ago, about the time I met him. I met him here, in this very inn, one night when I was passing through; and I was on my uppers because my husband had left me barely anything and I’d been evicted from our lodgings. I was travelling, looking for work. Anyway he complained about Mrs McTavish constantly. Kitty, that was her name, the poor dear. After a day or so of taking me for lunches and walks and so on, he declared himself most in love with me.’ She fluttered her eyelashes at this. ‘Most devastatingly in love with me. And how different I was from Kitty, who was a monstrous nag. And his marriage was chaste and miserable. He begged me to stay awhile here, in Kelso, and not venture any further in search of work. He gave me my first dose of laudanum, which he said would help my nerves; said he would reward me for my company, from time to time. Any price. Well, a few weeks later Kitty died.’

‘Oh, goodness,’ I breathed.

‘She had dropped dead, just like that. It was the talk of the inn for a while. Poor Kitty. One morning she was fossicking through her orchards for cherries and apples, and by lunch she was clean dead. They said it was her heart. Well, Dr McTavish said it was her heart. But I do not think there was anything wrong with her heart, for she was only a woman of thirty-five.’ Mrs Rose drew a deep breath, and I could see her pulse quivering at her throat. Her skin was goosepimpled. ‘He poisoned her. I am sure of it. To get her out of the way.’

‘If you suspect him of such wickedness, why do you associate with him?’ But I could barely believe this tale. Mrs Rose was the most melodramatic person I had ever met.

‘You are right,’ she replied. ‘I should not associate with him at all. But he is my best source of income for now, and I will move on when I have saved up enough to live on.’

It sounded awful. I was relieved I was not this pretty little thing, terrified of the man she relied upon. She reminded me, suddenly, of my own ma. And although you could not find any two women who were less alike, they both had the fear of a man about them. It shrinks a woman, that fear. Diminishes her to a shell.