Angela had left the ‘Met Lab’ earlier that year to go into partnership with Richard Pryor when they founded this private forensic consultancy. Moira, who lived alone in the next house down the valley, had impulsively taken on the job of part-time housekeeper and rapidly slid into being their typist as well, reviving her spirits from the loneliness that followed the death of her husband in an industrial accident.

‘I’m sure they won’t turf you out into the street tonight, Priscilla!’ said Sian. ‘Perhaps you can stay with us for good?’

Moira managed to suppress a frown as she went through to her office next door. Apart from the fact that there was not enough work for two biologists, the prospect of both Angela and Priscilla living in Garth House under the same roof as Richard was not one that appealed to her. She would have been reassured to hear the conversation that continued after she left the laboratory, for Priscilla, as she continued to pipette sera into her banks of little tubes, replied to the suggestion that she stayed on in the Wye Valley.

‘It’s great here, Sian, you’ve all been so kind to me. But I don’t want to stay in forensic science permanently. I’d like to get back to my first love, anthropology. That’s why I’ve been dithering around lately, waiting for a vacancy to turn up somewhere.’

The technician loved a good gossip and this was a chance to delve some more. ‘I’m not quite clear what you did before this,’ she asked.

Priscilla filled her last tube, then swung around on her swivel chair, her long auburn hair swirling above the collar of her white coat.

‘I did a degree in physical anthropology in London, then my doctorate on blood types in different ethnic groups. After that, I went to the Natural History Museum in Kensington for a while, then moved to the police laboratory in New Scotland Yard, doing this sort of work.’ She waved a manicured hand at the tubes and bottles on her bench top.