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street, but his attention was on the names outside the tall terraced houses on his right.
    Crawling in bottom gear, he soon spotted ‘Meadowlane’ cut into a slate plaque at the side of a heavy front door. There was only one other car parked in this section of the road and he pulled up behind it and went to ring the bell.
    It was answered by a short woman in a long linen apron, with a frilled mob cap on her grey curls. For a moment, Richard thought he had strayed into a stage production of a Regency play, but the woman smiled and pulled the door open wide.
    â€˜Doctor Pryor? You are expected, please come in.’
    He went into a rather gloomy hallway, unsure whether or not this was Mrs Oldfield, though she did not tally with Trevor Mitchell’s description. The house smelled of mothballs and furniture polish.
    â€˜Mrs Oldfield is in the drawing room,’ said his guide, clarifying matters and indicating an inner door on the left of the hall. The servant, for that was what he decided she must be, tapped on the panels, opened it and stood aside for him to enter, calling out in a strong Gloucester accent, ‘Dr Pryor, ma’am!’
    In the high-ceilinged room, its bay window looking down on the main street, he saw another elderly lady in a high-backed chair, one hand on a silver-headed ebony stick. She sat erect, her plain dark dress closed at the throat by a large cameo brooch. Her face was long and lined, set in a severe expression, under a swept-back mass of white hair, gathered in a bun at the back.
    For a moment, he thought of Queen Victoria, though she was really nothing like the pictures he had seen of the old Empress – perhaps it was the stern expression and the gimlet-sharp eyes that regarded him.
    â€˜Excuse me not rising to greet you, Professor,’ she said in a surprisingly melodious voice. ‘But I suffer from severe arthritis. Please be seated.’ As she waved her cane to indicate a similar chair opposite, he saw that all her finger joints were badly distorted.
    As he made some polite greeting and subsided into the chair, Agnes Oldfield waved her wand at the old servant, who was still hovering in the doorway.
    â€˜You may serve coffee now, Lucas,’ she commanded grandly and the woman vanished. Even though it was less than an hour since taking coffee with Mitchell, Pryor felt it unwise to decline, even if the draconian old lady had allowed it.
    Obviously her code of conduct demanded some light conversation before they got down to business.
    â€˜I understand you have not long returned from living in the East, Professor,’ she began. Again, he desisted from explaining that he preferred being called ‘Doctor’ and gave a quick resume of his recent life.
    â€˜You were in the Army?’ she demanded.
    â€˜A major in the Royal Army Medical Corps,’ he admitted.
    Agnes Oldfield gave a delicate sniff. ‘My late husband was a colonel in the Hussars. We lived in India for a time, you know.’
    Pryor again felt that he was playing a bit-part in some Oscar Wilde comedy, but the moment passed as Lucas came in with a tray of coffee, immaculately served in thin china amid a profusion of solid silver jugs, basins and spoons. They waited while the maid went through the ritual of moving small tables, pouring coffee and setting one at the side of the lady of the house, before giving Richard his cup. Then she proffered a plate of thin ginger biscuits and quietly left the room.
    â€˜My solicitor has explained the problem, I take it, Professor,’ she began, fixing him with a beady eye.
    â€˜I feel sure that this tragedy involved my nephew Anthony and that the coroner was in error with his verdict.’
    Richard placed his cup back on the saucer, half-afraid of chipping the delicate china.
    â€˜I understand perfectly, Mrs Oldfield. The problem is the lack of evidence to work with. I hoped that perhaps you could – well, fill in some of the gaps, as