He’d filled the wooden box with completed spars as they were speaking, and he heaved it up and took it over to an open-back lorry, where he slung it alongside various crates that sat among a collection of curious implements, which Heath was happy to identify for them without being asked to do so. He was building up a real head of steam on his topic. They had shearing hooks for carving into the thatch-

“Takes about a millimeter off, it does, sharp as anything, and you got to use it with care lest you slice into your hand.”

– leggetts which were used to dress the thatch and which, to Barbara, looked like nothing more than an aluminium grill with a handle, something one might use on the cooker to fry up bacon; the Dutchman, which was used in place of the leggett to dress the thatch when the roof was curved…

Barbara nodded sagely and Nkata jotted everything in his notebook, as if expecting he’d be tested on it later. She was having trouble keeping it all straight and determining how she would bring the thatcher away from his lengthy exposition on the process of thatching a roof and back to the subject of Gordon Jossie, when Heath mentioned “and ever’one of them’s different,” which brought her round to pay closer attention to what he was saying.

“…bits an’ bobs that the blacksmith provides, like the crooks an’ the pins.” The crooks were curved at one end-hence the name, as they resembled a shepherd’s crook in miniature-and these were hooked round the reeds and driven into the rafters to hold them in place. The pins, which resembled long spikes with an eye at one end and a sharp point at the other, held the reeds in place while the thatcher was working. These came from the blacksmith, and the interesting bit was that every blacksmith made them according to however he wanted to make them, especially as far as the point was concerned.

“Forged on four sides, forged on two sides, cut to give it a slash tip, spun on a grinding wheel…Whatever the blacksmith fancies. I like the Dutch ones best. I like a proper forging, I do.” He said this last as if one could not expect such a thing as proper forging to go on in England any longer.

But Barbara was taken by the very idea of blacksmithing and how it might relate to making a weapon. The thatching tools themselves were weaponlike, if it came to that, no matter Heath’s referring to them dismissively as the bits and bobs of his job. Barbara picked one up-she chose a pin-and found its tip was nice and sharp and suitable for murder. She handed it to Nkata and saw by his expression that they were of the same mind on the matter.

She said, “Why was he twenty-one years old when he came to you, Mr. Heath? Do you know?”

Heath took a moment, apparently to adjust to the abrupt change in topic as he’d been nattering on about why the Dutch took more pride in their work than the English and this seemed to have to do with the EU and the mass migration of Albanians and other Eastern Europeans into the UK. He blinked and said, “Eh? Who?”

“Twenty-one was old for an apprentice, you said. What had Gordon Jossie been doing before he came to you?”

College, Ringo Heath told them. He’d been a student in some college in Winchester, studying one trade or another although Heath couldn’t recall which it was. He’d brought two letters with him, though. Recommendations these were, from someone or other who’d taught him. It wasn’t the typical way an apprentice presented himself for potential employment, so he’d been quite impressed with that. Did they want to see the letters? He thought he still had them.

When Barbara told him that they did indeed want to see them, Heath turned towards his house and bellowed, “Kitten! You’re needed.” To this a most unkittenlike woman emerged. She carried a rolling pin under her arm and she looked the type who’d be happy to use it: big, brawling, and muscular.

Kitten said, “Really, pet, why’ve you got to yell? I’m only just inside, in the kitchen,” in a surprisingly genteel voice, completely at odds with her appearance. She sounded like an upstairs someone from a costume drama, but she looked like someone who’d be washing the cook pots in a decidedly downstairs scullery.

Heath simpered at her, saying, “Darling girl. Don’t know the strength of my own voice, do I. Sorry. Have we still got them letters that Gordon Jossie handed over when he first wanted a job? You know which ones I mean, don’t you? The ones from his college? You remember them?” And to Barbara and Winston, “She keeps the books and such, does my Kitten. And the girl’s got a mind for facts and figures that’d make you dizzy. I keep telling her to go on telly. One of those quiz programmes or summat, if you know what I mean. I say we could be millionaires, we could, if she got herself on a quiz show.”

“Oh, you do go on, Ringo,” Kitten said. “I made that chicken and leek pie you love, by the by.”

“Precious girl.”

“Silly boy.”

“I’ll see you when I see you.”

“Oh, you do talk, Ring.”

“Uh…About those letters?” Barbara cut in. She glanced at Winston, who was watching the exchange between man and wife like a bloke at an amorous Ping-Pong match.

Kitten said that she would fetch them, as she reckoned they were in Ringo’s business files. She wouldn’t be a moment, she said, because she liked to stay organised since “leave things to Ringo, we’d be living under mounds of paperwork, let me tell you.”

“True enough,” Ringo said, “darling girl.”

“Handsome-”

“Thank you, Mrs. Heath,” Barbara said pointedly.

Kitten made kissy noises at her husband, who made a gesture that seemed to indicate he’d love to swat her on the bum, at which she giggled and disappeared inside the house. Within two minutes, she was back with them, and she carried a manila folder from which she extricated the aforementioned letters for their inspection.

These were, Barbara saw, recommendations attesting to Gordon Jossie’s character, his work ethic, his pleasant demeanour, his willingness to take instruction, and all the et ceteras. They were written on the letterhead of Winchester Technical College II, and one of them came from a Jonas Bligh while the other had been written by a Keating Crawford. They’d both indicated knowledge of Gordon Jossie from within the classroom and from outside the classroom. Fine young man, they declared, trustworthy and good-hearted and well deserving of an opportunity to learn a trade like thatching. One would not go wrong in hiring him. He was bound to succeed.

Barbara asked could she keep the letters. She’d return them to the Heaths, of course, but for the time being, if they didn’t mind…

They didn’t mind. At this point, however, Ringo Heath asked what Scotland Yard wanted with Gordon Jossie anyway. “What’s he s’posed to’ve done?” he asked them.

“We’re investigating a murder up in London,” Barbara told them. “A girl called Jemima Hastings. D’you know her?”

They didn’t. But what they did know and were willing to assert was that Gordon Jossie was definitely no killer. Kitten, however, added an intriguing detail to the Jossie résumé as they were about to leave.

He couldn’t read, she told them, which always made her wonder at the fact that he somehow completed courses in college. While obviously there were classes one took that might not require reading, she had always found it a bit odd that he’d managed such success at the Winchester college. She said to her husband, “You know, darling boy, that does suggest something not quite right about Gordon, doesn’t it? I mean, if he could actually manage to get through his course work and still hide the fact that he couldn’t read…It does rather imply an ability to hide other things, wouldn’t you say?”

“What d’you mean he couldn’t read?” Ringo demanded. “That’s rubbish, that is. Bah.”

“No, precious. It’s the truth. I saw it. He absolutely could not read.”