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the girls go up the stairs. ‘I didn’t want to tell you about it in front of them, it’s been enough of a shock for them already tonight.’
    He went on to tell Maud what the police found when they answered the emergency call. ‘I’m afraid your daughter-in-law was dead on our arrival, we won’t of course know the exact cause of death until the post mortem. Your son admitted they’d had a bitter quarrel, but he claimed her fall was an accident.’
    ‘Well it would be, my Reg ain’t a wife beater,’ Maud said stoutly. ‘Though ‘eaven knows that little floozy was enough to drive any man to it.’
    ‘Would you know what they might have been quarrelling about?’ he asked gently.
    ‘She were a slut and a spendthrift,’ Maud spat out. ‘But Reg never slagged ‘er off to me, ‘e adored ‘er. I tried to put ‘er straight many’s the time, but she’d stick ‘er nose in the air and tell me to mind my own business. She thought she was too good for the likes of me, she were from a snotty ‘ome up in Eltham.’
    ‘Would you have her parents’ address?’ Hewitt asked. ‘We’ll have to inform them of her death.’
    ‘She ain’t got none now,’ Maud said. ‘’Er ma was killed in the Blitz and ’er dad a few years later. There was an uncle, but she didn’t ’ave no truck wif ’im ’cos her dad left everything to ’im instead of ‘er.’
    Hewitt was very relieved he hadn’t got to call on any more relatives, and he was instantly curious as to why Anne’s father should disinherit her. After sitting down and making the customary sympathetic remarks about Maud’s shock, and attempting to reassure her that anything she chose to tell him about her daughter-in-law would be off the record at this stage, he probed deeper.
    ‘Did she quarrel with her father too?’
    ‘I dunno. Anne said ‘e cut ‘er off ‘cos she didn’t stay wif ‘im after her ma was killed. I always reckoned there were more to it than that though. Still, we ain’t gonna find out now, are we?’
    Hewitt agreed they weren’t and suggested he made them both a cup of tea.
    ‘I’ll do it,’ Maud said and got up from her chair. As she filled the kettle she explained that Reg was one of eight, the fifth child, and how he’d always been different from the others. ‘I’ll tell you now, because I know you’ll soon find out, all my boys ‘cept Reg ‘ave got themselves in trouble before now. They’re like their dad, boozers, without a brain between them. But Reg was always different. He used to look after me when the old man beat me, supported me and the younger ones once ‘e was dead. See it’s all decorated nice in ‘ere? Reg done that an’ all. ‘E’s always trying to get me to move somewhere nicer, but me old chums and me memories are ‘ere. Reg’s one in a million, ‘ard-working, sober, kind and generous. You can ask who you bleedin’ likes and you’ll ‘ear the same. Right good dad to the girls an’ all. So don’t you go thinking ‘e’s a murderer.’
    ‘What did he do in the war, Mrs Taylor?’ Hewitt asked.
    ‘Joined the army, didn’t ‘e? Didn’t even wait for ‘is call-up, ‘e reckoned it was every man’s duty to fight for their country. ‘E saw all the action over in France, ‘e was at Dunkirk and at Normandy, a bloody good soldier too, got made a corporal in no time, and then a sergeant.’
    ‘Anne must have found it difficult in the war, Dulcie would’ve only been a baby when it started and then May born in 1942,’ Hewitt probed. ‘Anne was very young too.’
    ‘Yeah, she found it ‘ard,’ Maud agreed. ‘It were tough on ‘er when her ma died. But I was around, I ‘ad Dulcie ‘ere any time she needed a break. But she got matey wif a couple of girls soon after she moved into a place in New Cross, and she told me to piss off once when I went round to see ‘ow she was. We never got on after that, I reckon she was ashamed of me.’
    Hewitt thought it sounded as if Anne might have been