“I’ve seen her in the shop,” Ivy said. “Only time she gets out.”

“She should take a stand,” said Ivy, pushing back into place a strand of iron grey hair that had had the temerity to stray from under her “invisible” hairnet. Her sharp, beady eyes behind steel-rimmed glasses clouded as she added, “My own mother was similar, and I left it too late. Had me under her thumb until she passed away. And even then she used to come back and haunt me. I don’t think she approves of Barrington, though. Haven’t heard from her since I arrived.”

“That’s one good thing, then,” said Deirdre promptly. She was finding her plans for caring for her elderly cousin more tricky than she had supposed, and her daily visits to Springfields were more of a duty than a pleasure.

HANGMAN’S ROW, A small terrace of three cottages, was still in Roussel hands. In spite of its gruesome name, the lane was leafy and shade dappled. It was half a mile or so from Barrington Green, where the local gibbet had once stood as a warning to transgressors. A young farmworker, his wife and baby, lived at one end of the row, with widow Blake and her spinster daughter in the middle cottage. The new tenant was at the far end of the terrace, and had yet to be seen long enough for the locals to pronounce judgement.

Rumours of Roussel’s rent increase were true. A few new coats of paint had smartened up the cottage, and Theodore had found at the local dump a surprising supply of little-used bathroom and kitchen fittings to bring the place up to standard. Satisfied with this, he had advertised the cottage for what he regarded as a more realistic rent than the other two.