Mrs Thwaite’s room was neat to the point of severity, Gina was pleased to see. Straight away she saw three books on a little table in the sitting room and a quick inspection showed them to be from the mobile library.

Gina decided to allow herself three minutes to see what useful facts she could find out about Mrs Thwaite. Quickly she opened the drawers in a little sideboard to one side of the fireplace: letters and stationery. Then she looked in the wall cupboard, but that was just crockery and, interestingly, a selection of glass tumblers.

Promising. And what does she drink out of those glasses, I wonder.

There was no obvious place to hide any bottles, so Gina ran into the bedroom and quickly searched under the bed, finding only a pair of worn slippers and a stray handkerchief. So now, the wardrobe or the chest of drawers?

She flung open the wardrobe door and the odour of mothballs enveloped her. Reaching in low, she pulled out a handbag from the floor of the wardrobe and felt about behind at the back. Hurray! A bottle of gin and, better still, a half-empty bottle of gin. Gina recognised the shape and the label from the bottles that the Stellions had on a tray in the sitting room.

I bet she’s stolen them. And this awful smell of mothballs covers up any smell of the drink on her.

There was no time to contemplate Mrs Thwaite’s Achilles heel any longer: the library van was waiting and Gina had been quite long enough ‘finding’ the books in a pristine room.

The mobile library was parked by Tom’s house and there was no one else around. Nell sometimes spoke of an old fella called Mr Shepherd, so Gina envisioned an elderly, grey-haired and wrinkled librarian at the desk. What she saw was a darkly handsome young man just a few years older than herself. Not Mr Shepherd, then.

‘Are those Mrs Thwaite’s books?’ he asked, looking carefully at Gina’s face.

Both Gina and Ellen were used to people remarking on the likeness between them, and so Gina knew why the man was gazing at her.

‘Who’s asking?’ she said.

‘I am the librarian,’ he answered unhelpfully.

‘Yes, I can see that,’ Gina replied, ‘but who are you to Mrs Thwaite that you should be so keen to have the poor lady’s books returned … to save her being fined, I gather?’

‘Mrs Thwaite is my aunt,’ the man disclosed reluctantly.

‘Oh … so you must be Mrs Thwaite’s sister’s son,’ ventured Gina. ‘And Mrs Thwaite is staying at her sister’s recovering?’

‘Yes,’ said the man, wondering how this pretty young woman knew so much. ‘Aunt Eliza is at our house until she’s better.’

‘And how is Mrs Thwaite?’ asked Gina. ‘I was that sorry to hear that her arm is broken.’

‘It’s a bad break but she’s mending slowly.’