Before he could move on, the phone rang, and Hitchens took the call. A smile came over his face.

‘It seems Mr Grice’s fingerprints were found in two of the bedrooms at Bain House, including the one where the victim slept. So if he says he was never in those rooms, he’s lying.’

Kessen looked around the group. ‘DS Fry. I know you’ve got a lot on, but perhaps you’d like to have a go at our Mr Grice this time.’

‘With pleasure.’

* * *

‘And who the heck are you?’ said Eric Grice, winding the orange cord around the handle of his power drill.

‘Detective Sergeant Fry.’

‘Oh, aye? Reckon you can get more out of me than your mates did? I don’t have anything more to tell, you know.’

‘Well, let’s see, shall we?’

‘You might have time to waste, but I haven’t. There’s work to do.’

‘Mr Grice, you’ve given us a list of the rooms you visited in Bain House. Are you sure this is a comprehensive list? You haven’t left any rooms out?’

‘No, it’s right,’ he said. ‘A lot of the work I did was on the outside, like.’

‘So the only room upstairs that you were ever present in is the bathroom – is that right?’

‘Yes.’

‘In that case, Mr Grice, how do you explain the fact that we recovered your fingerprints from two of the bedrooms?’

‘The bedrooms?’

‘The master bedroom, where Rose Shepherd slept, and the second bedroom, just along the landing, where she kept her desk.’

‘I don’t know anything about that.’

‘You never did any jobs for her in those rooms?’

He shook his head. ‘She wouldn’t have wanted me going in her bedrooms. Like I told you, she was a very private person, Miss Shepherd. She kept me at arm’s length, so far as she could. I always knew the house was out of bounds, except for when I had to be somewhere to get a job done. I never even went upstairs to use the bathroom. She had a downstairs cloakroom, you know.’

‘I don’t think you understand, Mr Grice. I’m telling you that we found your fingerprints in two of the bedrooms at Bain House. Are you still denying that you went into those rooms?’

‘Well, like I said –’

Fry could feel herself starting to get impatient. Did the man think that he could alter the facts just by continuing to deny them? She leaned across the table, startling him in mid-sentence.

‘What were you doing in Miss Shepherd’s bedroom?’ she said. ‘And before you answer, think about this, Mr Grice: a murdered woman’s body was found in one of those bedrooms, and you’re the only person whose presence we can prove there. If you don’t have any explanation, how do you think that’s going to look when we charge you and prove to a court that you’re lying?’

Grice blinked. He seemed bothered to be scrutinized so closely. But Fry waited, not moving or relaxing her stare while she gave him time to process the implications. Finally, his eyes flickered to the side to avoid her gaze.

‘It was my sister, Beryl,’ he said.

Fry frowned. ‘What was?’

‘There’s always been a lot of talk in the village about Miss Shepherd, you know. Nobody knew anything about her, but that didn’t stop them talking. You know what it’s like – everyone had their own ideas.’

‘In other words, it was all speculation?’

‘Well, yes. There were a lot of half-baked stories. None of them were true, of course. You know what it’s like – a lot of biddies who watch too much telly.’

‘So what relevance is this?’

‘Beryl kept on and on about it. She knew I was the only person who Miss Shepherd let into Bain House, so she thought I ought to know all about the woman. I told her I didn’t know a thing, but she kept pestering me. Pestering and pestering. Of course, she wanted to show off to her pals in the village, and tell the other biddies that she knew the proper facts, all the stuff they didn’t.’

‘The inside information.’

‘Yes, that’s it. She wanted to show off, like. I thought it was a lot of daft nonsense. I told her they all ought to find something better to talk about. But she wouldn’t let up. So next time I was in Bain House, I took a chance to have a bit of a nosy about. To see what I could see. Just to find a bit of something to keep Beryl quiet, that’s all.’

‘So you managed to get into the bedrooms?’

‘Yes. Only for a quick look round. To see if she had any dead bodies or mad relatives hidden away in there, you know.’

Grice gave her a tentative smile, but Fry refused to acknowledge the joke.

‘But you said Miss Shepherd didn’t like you going upstairs. How did you get into the bedrooms without her noticing?’

‘I was mending a joint on a pipe in the kitchen, and I told her I had to turn off the water at the stopcock in the bathroom. She didn’t know any better, you see.’

‘Where was Miss Shepherd while you were nosing around in the bedrooms?’

‘She was downstairs, in her sitting room. She went in there to be away from me, I suppose. So I didn’t go in the front bedroom, because I thought she might hear my footsteps.’

‘And did you find anything interesting to tell your sister?’

‘Not really. Well, nothing at all, as a matter of fact. It was boring.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘So I had to make some stuff up.’

‘Hold on – you made things up about Miss Shepherd to tell your sister?’

‘Well, yes. Otherwise she would have kept pestering me. I had to get her off my back.’

‘And no doubt your sister would have spread this false information around her friends in Foxlow?’

‘That was the general idea. I didn’t think there’d be any harm in it. None of the stuff was ever likely to get back to Miss Shepherd herself, because she didn’t talk to anyone in the village. See what I mean? So it was harmless.’

Fry caught her breath. ‘What false information did you make up, Mr Grice?’

‘I can’t remember now.’

‘I can’t believe it was anything too complicated. You don’t have the imagination.’

He glowered at her. ‘I don’t know. It was just what came to mind.’

‘Let me have a guess, then. Did you tell your sister Miss Shepherd had a hidden safe in the house where she kept all her valuables?’

Grice pulled his face. ‘Yes, probably.’

‘Did you tell your sister Miss Shepherd was a retired teacher from Scotland?’

‘Yes, I think so. I couldn’t really tell –’

‘And, Mr Grice, this is very important – did you tell your sister that Rose Shepherd had a friend called Dougie in Glasgow?’

Eric Grice nodded slowly, but said nothing.

Fry sat back. ‘Well, sir, for a man who thought he wasn’t doing any harm, you’ve certainly wasted a lot of people’s time.’

‘God damn the man,’ said DI Hitchens. ‘I could cheerfully strangle him with his own drill cord.’

‘At least he’s talking now. I’ve got someone taking a statement from him, and we’ll speak to his sister, too, to see if their accounts tally. But I believe he’s telling us the truth now.’

‘Meanwhile, it’s back to square one in our picture of Rose Shepherd. When we ignore all the stuff that Grice made up to keep the gossips happy, the information we have about her now amounts to what?’

‘Nothing.’

‘It can’t do.’

‘Sweet FA, if you prefer.’

‘No, no. We do have some verifiable facts. We’ve got to have some.’

‘If you say so, sir.’

Hitchens looked at the board, scrubbed off some of the details and studied what was left. ‘She’s a British passport holder, born in London. And we’ve got her age – she was born in 1944.’

‘A wartime baby.’

‘Yes. Maybe her parents were killed in the Blitz or something.’

‘I thought we were looking at the verifiable facts.’

‘OK. Well, we’ve got her name, age, place of birth. And her physical details – height, weight, hair colour. She moved to Foxlow ten months ago, and she came here from London. She had plenty of funds, because Bain House wasn’t cheap, and she was a cash buyer.’

‘And apart from that …?’