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‘But Sam wasn’t very well-known. I was there when he was fished out of the river, although I didn’t realise at the time who it was.’
    ‘Oh, Patrick, no! Not again! Not another mystery death!’
    ‘I don’t know. But I’m curious,’ Patrick said. He told her what had happened, and about the owner of the poodle.
    ‘The Telegraph for Monday was beside her. That’s why I wanted to read it,’ he said.
    ‘You think there’s some connection?’
    ‘I don’t know. It could have been something else in the paper that upset her. Another death, one in the ordinary columns. Or it could have been just chance that the paper was there in her room,’ said Patrick. ‘But no one seems to know what really happened to Sam, so I’m going to find out if he knew this woman, if I can. She was interested in the theatre, the neighbour said. Neither of them left notes, which is odd. People tend to, when they intentionally kill themselves. It’s a coincidence that needs to be investigated.’
    ‘Why don’t you just ask the police?’
    ‘I don’t want to make a fuss without cause. This woman’s death is bad enough without stirring things up unnecessarily. She was going to move, any day now. It seems a funny time to commit suicide.’
    ‘It does, rather,’ said Jane. ‘Maybe she couldn’t face the thought of moving.’
    ‘It was her own choice, Mrs Barry said. That’s the neighbour.’
    ‘I see.’
    Jane never liked it when her brother embarked on ferreting out the answers to what puzzled him, but he had an uncanny instinct for recognising when intervention was justified. He seemed to attract crime as others attracted runs of good or bad luck. It would be typical of him to run over not just any harmless poodle, but one connected with some sort of mystery.
    ‘How can I find out what happens at the inquest on Tina Willoughby?’ he asked now.
    ‘By going to it, I should think,’ said Jane.
    ‘No, I don’t want to do that.’ Patrick did not want to show too much interest. ‘I suppose you couldn’t pop over?’
    ‘I certainly could not,’ said Jane.
    Patrick thought of the talkative neighbour. She would be sure to attend; she might have to give evidence of finding the body. He could call on her again. By the time he returned from Stratford-upon-Avon he would have decided on a plan. He said so to Jane.
    ‘Are you going to the theatre already? Has the season begun?’ she asked. ‘Oh, it must have, I suppose. It’s Miranda’s birthday soon. Don’t forget it, will you?’
    Miranda had been born on Shakespeare’s birthday, and Patrick approved of her name, though at the time he had said that if she were a boy he hoped he would have been called, if not William, then George, after the saint whose day it was also, rather than, for example, Orlando.
    ‘I’m not planning to go to the theatre,’ he said.

 
2
     
    The third estate agent whom Patrick consulted in Stratford- upon-Avon was the one who had sold a house to Tina Willoughby. It was too late, after he left Jane, for him to get there before their offices closed, but he left Oxford early the next morning and arrived soon after nine-thirty. As he drove out of Oxford through the incoming traffic he gave hearty thanks that living in college saved him from this daily grind; what with the bus lanes, the long one-way detours and the new shopping precincts, Oxford was sadly changed.
    He was hoping to bluff the relevant estate agent into providing the information he sought, since he had no authority to ask for it; the news of Tina’s death might not have reached them yet, house-buying being, as he knew, a protracted procedure. He had thought of posing as an interior decorator with an appointment to view the place but who had lost the address; however, he decided that he did not look the part. Instead, he said that he was passing through the town on his way home after a week’s absence, and had arranged to meet Tina there, but could not remember where it was, adding