“Could I ask you about the threatening notes to Margot you saw, Mrs. Hickson?”

“Oh, yes, of course,” said Irene, pleased. “So you believe me, do you? Because the police didn’t.”

“There were two, you said in your statement?”

“That’s right. I wouldn’t’ve opened the first one, only Dorothy was off, and Dr. Brenner told me to sort out the post. Dorothy was never off usually. It was because her son was having his tonsils out. Spoiled little so-and-so, he was. That was the only time I ever saw her upset, when she told me she was taking him into hospital the next day. Hard as nails, usually—but she was a widow, and he was all she had.”

Janice reappeared with refilled teapot and cafetière. Robin got up and took the heavy teapot and cafetière off the tray for her. Janice accepted her help with a smile and a whispered “thanks,” so that she didn’t interrupt Irene.

“What did the note say?” Strike asked.

“Well, it’s ages ago, now,” said Irene. Janice handed her a packet of indigestion tablets, which Irene took with a brief smile, but no thanks. “But from what I remember…” she popped pills out of the blister pack, “let me see, I want to get this right… it was very rude. It called Margot the c-word, I remember that. And said hellfire waited for women like her.”

“Was it typed? Printed?”

“Written,” said Irene. She took a couple of tablets with a sip of tea.

“What about the second one?” said Strike.

“I don’t know what that said. I had to go into her consulting room to give her a message, see, and I saw it lying on her desk. Same writing, I recognized it at once. She didn’t like me seeing it, I could tell. Screwed it up and threw it in the bin.”

Janice passed round fresh cups of tea and coffee. Irene helped herself to another chocolate biscuit.

“I doubt you’ll know,” said Strike, “but I wondered if you ever had any reason to suspect that Margot was pregnant before she—”

“How d’you know about that?” gasped Irene, looking thunderstruck.

“She was?” said Robin.

“Yes!” said Irene. “See—Jan, don’t look like that, honestly—I took a call from a nursing home, while she was out on a house call! They called the practice to confirm she’d be in next day…” and she mouthed the next few words, “for an abortion!”

“They told you what procedure she was going in for, over the phone?” asked Robin.

For a moment, Irene looked rather confused.

“They—well, no—actually, I—well, I’m not proud of it, but I called the clinic back. Just nosy. You do that kind of thing when you’re young, don’t you?”

Robin hoped her reciprocal smile looked sincerer than Irene’s.

“When was this, Mrs. Hickson, can you remember?” Strike asked.

“Not long before she disappeared. Four weeks? Something like that?”

“Before or after the anonymous notes?”

“I don’t—after, I think,” said Irene. “Or was it? I can’t remember…”

“Did you talk to anyone else about the appointment?”

“Only Jan, and she told me off. Didn’t you, Jan?”

“I know you didn’t mean any ’arm,” muttered Janice, “but patient confidentiality—”

“Margot wasn’t our patient. It’s a different thing.”

“And you didn’t tell the police about this?” Strike asked her.

“No,” said Irene, “because I—well, I shouldn’t’ve known, should I? Anyway, how could it have anything to do with her disappearing?”

“Apart from Mrs. Beattie, did you tell anyone else about it?”

“No,” said Irene defensively, “because—I mean, I wouldn’t have told anyone else—you kept your mouth shut, working at a doctor’s surgery. I could’ve told all kinds of people’s secrets, couldn’t I? Being a receptionist, I saw files, but of course you didn’t say anything, I knew how to keep secrets, it was part of the job…”

Expressionless, Strike wrote “protesting too much” in his notebook.

“I’ve got another question, Mrs. Hickson, and it might be a sensitive one,” Strike said, looking up again. “I heard you and Margot had a disagreement at the Christmas party.”

“Oh,” said Irene, her face falling. “That. Yes, well—”

There was a slight pause.

“I was cross about what she’d done to Kevin. Jan’s son. Remember, Jan?”

Janice looked confused.

“Come on, Jan, you do,” said Irene, tapping Janice’s arm again. “When she took him into her consulting room and blah blah blah.”

“Oh,” said Janice. For a moment, Robin had the distinct impression that Janice was truly cross with her friend this time. “But—”

“You remember,” said Irene, glaring at her.

“I… yeah,” said Janice. “Yeah, I was angry about that, all right.”

“Jan had kept him off school,” Irene told Strike. “Hadn’t you, Jan? How old was he, six? And then—”

“What exactly happened?” Strike asked Janice.

“Kev had a tummy ache,” said Janice. “Well, schoolitis, really. My neighbor ’oo sometimes looked after ’im wasn’t well—”

“Basically,’ interrupted Irene, “Jan brought Kevin to work and—”

“Could Mrs. Beattie tell the story?” Strike asked.

“Oh—yes, of course!” said Irene. She put her hand back on her abdomen again and stroked it, with a long-suffering air.

“Your usual childminder was ill?” Strike prompted Janice.

“Yeah, but I was s’posed to be at work, so I took Kev wiv me to the practice and give ’im a coloring book. Then I ’ad to change a lady’s dressing in the back room, so I put Kev in the waiting room. Irene and Gloria were keeping an eye on him for me. But then Margot—well, she took ’im into her consulting room and examined ’im, stripped ’im off to the waist and everything. She knew ’e was my son an’ she knew why ’e was there, but she took it upon herself… I was angry, I can’t lie,” said Janice quietly. ‘We ’ad words. I said, ‘All you ’ad to do was wait until I’d seen the patient and I’d’ve come in wiv ’im while you looked at him.’

“And I’ve got to say, when I put it to her straight, she backed down right away and apologized. No,” Janice said, because Irene had puffed herself up, “she did, Irene, she apologized, said I was quite right, she shouldn’t have seen him without me, but ’e’d been holding his tummy and she acted on instinct. It wasn’t badly intentioned. She just, sometimes—”

“—put people’s backs up, that’s what I’m saying,” said Irene. “Thought she was above everyone else, she knew best—”

“—rushed in, I was going to say. But she were a good doctor,” said Janice, with quiet firmness. “You ’ear it all, when you’re in people’s ’ouses, you ’ear what the patients think of them, and Margot was well liked. She took time. She was kind—she was, Irene, I know she got on your wick, but that’s what the patients—”