Sitting on a stool at the counter, smoking a Rothmans and nursing a tonic water — ice, no lemon — the girl who had momentarily piqued my curiosity looks older at close quarters than she did from the other side of the dining room. If I’d been asked to guess her age before I met Suki I’d have said she was in her late twenties; today, having learned to look for such indicators as the set of her mouth and the laughter lines at the corners of her eyes, I’m inclined to revise that estimate to something like thirty-one or thirty-two.

She’s no Jean Shrimpton, that’s for sure. Although we’re roughly the same height, her figure has meandered a fair few steps further along the all too familiar trail that begins in the lush meadows of curvaceous and well endowed, then winds through the higher pastures of nicely rounded and pleasantly plump only to peter out among the bleak, treeless fells of a spreading waistline and running to fat. Her most arresting feature — ignoring the vast spread of cleavage visible above her low-cut peasant blouse — is her multicoloured hair, a riot of pinks, greens and blues chopped into messy layers from a wayward centre parting, so short on one side it shows off practically the whole of her left ear and a good third of her neck, but long enough on the other to brush her right shoulder, thus giving the impression that during her last visit to the salon she had dashed from the chair before an overeager, barely competent stylist could do any more damage to her precious locks. In contrast her make-up is immaculate yet understated, and the only item of jewellery she’s chosen to display is a delicate silver chain from which hangs a large pendant shaped like a crucifix, but with a loop instead of the top arm.

“It’s called an ankh,” she says, lifting it from her creamy skin. “The ancient Egyptians wore them as fertility symbols. It’s ever so old. Can you see the hieroglyphics? Where my finger is, just there.”

I take the amulet in my right palm, only briefly registering the fact that my hand is so close to her chest I can feel the heat emanating from her body. In my previous incarnation such proximity would have left me embarrassingly tumescent; now it only stirs a vague sense of competition.

“Very pretty,” I remark as I push away the mischievous thought that with a bust like mine I could look every bit as sexy as her if I made the effort.

“Isn’t it? My friend Cathryn brought it back from a dig outside Luxor. Of course she had to give all that up when her mum’s health began to fail. It’s a shame, she had such a promising career ahead of her, but you never know what’s around the next corner, do you? I’m Kerrieanne Latimer, by the way. Kerrie for short, like the county in Ireland but with an ‘ie’ at the end instead of a ‘y’.”

And a ‘K’ at the beginning, not the ‘C’ she wrote down in the register. A woman of mystery indeed — or perhaps the atlas her parents consulted had a misprint.

There’s a slightly coarse feel to the freckled hand she offers me, one that suggests she’s closer to thirty-five than thirty, but her grip is firm and warm.

“Ruth Hansford-Jones,” I reply. “Pleased to meet–“

“I know, sweetheart. You’re the girl who’s much too intelligent to be wasting her time in a place like this just because she blames herself for the break-up of her marriage. That’s what Norah thinks, anyway.”

“I’m sorry...?”

They’ve been talking about me behind my back? What else did they discuss, the reason I haven’t got a boyfriend?

“You’re also fighting shy of getting involved with the opposite sex again,” Kerrie goes on, as if my thoughts have appeared inside a fluffy cloud above my head. “Which in your situation is probably the worst mistake you can make. Norah didn’t tell me that, of course. She didn’t have to. I can see it in your eyes.”

This is turning into a very bad dream. I glance towards the foyer with a silent plea to the practical joker who set the cosmos in motion that one of the regulars might come in and provide me with an excuse to ignore her, but at twenty past seven on a chilly Tuesday evening in the middle of April there’s more chance of Vivienne Westwood striding through the door, slapping a five-figure modelling contract on the bar, telling me she’s booked me on the next Concorde to New York and tossing in a brand new BMW and a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park to clinch the deal.

Looks like I’m on my own, then. Battling back the urge to launch a tirade of four-letter words at her, I trawl the deepest reaches of my memory for a civil yet appropriately contemptuous riposte.

“If you say so,” is what eventually surfaces.

“There’s no need to pull a face like you’ve just swallowed a bluebottle, sweetheart. Your name only came up after I happened to mention that as I hoped to do a spot of amateur sleuthing while I was here, it would be nice if I could hire a trusty sidekick to help me out for a day or two. Norah says a break like that will do you a power of good, so consider yourself roped in.”

She delves into her shoulder bag and pulls out a white foolscap envelope.

“What’s that?” I ask before the homunculus at the controls can issue a directive to my mouth warning it that the question makes me sound like a four year old on her first visit to the seaside.

“Well, since you can’t very well claim to be rushed off your feet I thought that instead of sitting there contemplating your navel you might start by reading this while I phone my boyfriend to tell him I’ve arrived safely and remind him not to allow my children to stay up too late. It may be the school holidays, but they still need all the sleep they can get, and you don’t need me to tell you how manipulative teenage girls can be. Oh, and if you can let me have some small change, as much as you can spare? Be a love and charge it to my room, would you?”

As I make a careful note of the money I’ve given her, I’m tempted to leave the envelope where it is and let Kerrie with an ‘ie’ at the end — as if I’ll ever have to spell it — know in no uncertain terms just what she can do with her amateur sleuthing. The woman’s unbridled effrontery has left me stunned. Who the hell does she think she’s talking to? She must be spectacularly good in bed; I can’t think what else the bloke she’s living with gets out of the arrangement.

But my natural inquisitiveness — to say nothing of a fully justified fear that if Norah found out I’d insulted one of the guests she’d have me scouring out milk-encrusted pots and pans until the cliffs were eroded so far back the hotel fell into the sea - gets the better of me. Soon I’m holding a sheet of watermarked vellum headed by an insignia belonging to Barton & Harris, a firm of New Stranton solicitors.

Dear Ms Latimer

Re: Helen Dorothy Sutton (deceased)

As you may be aware we have recently acted in connection with the administration of the Estate of the late Helen Dorothy Sutton who died on 3rd December 1978. By her Will, dated 20th August 1974, Miss Sutton bequeathed her Residuary Estate equally between your father and Carol Evelyn Vasey. Your father died before Helen Dorothy Sutton, but there was a provision that should he have children living at his death, such children would take his share by substitution.

You are, therefore, equally entitled with your siblings to your father’s share of the residuary estate.

We enclose for your attention a copy of the Estate Realisation and Distribution documents as agreed by Mrs Vasey as the Executor, and our cheque in the sum of  £83,645.67 representing the balance due to you...

I put the letter down unfinished. My eyes are misty, for Helen Sutton was not only my teacher but a near neighbour and a good friend to me before I left Northcroft to become a student. Yet my sadness at the untimely death of a woman who couldn’t have been much older than forty is swiftly replaced by a growing sense of incredulity. The phrase ‘with your siblings’ implies that Kerrie’s father had at least three children; a quick calculation puts the total value of the residuary estate in that event at just over half a million pounds.

My hand goes to my mouth.

Half a million?

How did Helen amass such extraordinary wealth? Did she come into an inheritance of her own? How successful must her investments have been, that they accrued so large a final dividend?

Maybe tagging along as this woman’s Girl Friday might not be so uninteresting after all.

But whether it’s what I’ve come to think of as feminine intuition or some other subconscious process at work, I feel reluctant to come clean regarding Ruth’s relationship with Helen until I know more about the latter’s connection with Kerrie Latimer’s family.

When Kerrie returns from the payphone in the foyer, the armchairs and alcoves are still empty. I decide that I’ve nothing to lose by trying to be more assertive.

“Seems pretty straightforward. What d’you need me for?”

“Ooh, that’ll help!” she grins, climbing back on her stool and lighting up once again.

“What will?”

“The fact that you can string more than two or three words together at a time. I was starting to have my doubts.”

It’s not so much the last straw as the detritus from an entire Nebraskan grain harvest.

“Now listen, I’ve had about as much–“

“That letter arrived on my doormat last Thursday right out of the blue,” she interrupts, taking as little notice of my truncated invective as she does of the canned laughter filtering from the lounge. “I’ve never heard of anyone called Helen Sutton. Nor have my sisters, and what Shannon and Clare can’t tell you about our family history isn’t worth knowing. We can hardly ask mum who she was, can we? What if it’s news to her as well? It’s taken her a long time to get over losing dad, and the last thing she needs right now is to worry herself sick over an affair he may or may not have had in the dim and distant past. So as I’m the one with the most time on my hands, it’s up to me to root around and see what I can unearth.”

Is that supposed to have me champing at the bit? No one would blame me if I was to say I’d come across more intriguing stories watching repeats of Mr & Mrs.

“So why stop here and not somewhere in New Stranton?” I ask, more to prove I’m capable of constructing a complete sentence than out of any real desire to know.

It’s the wrong thing to say. Kerrie’s eyes flash with exasperation.

“You did read the letter all the way through, didn’t you?”

“Most of it...”

“Jesus, Mary an’ bloody Joseph!” she cries, her Home Counties vowels temporarily giving way to an accent that sounds as if it originated in a Lancashire mill town. “I give you one simple task, an’...oh, what’s the use? Look, if you’d bothered to get as far as the second last paragraph you’d know the estate agent hasn’t been able to sell the house yet. There, where it says ‘the property at 6 Redheugh Close’. I had to set off at the crack of dawn so I could reach here in time to ask them if they’d tell me where Mrs Vasey lives, because as I’m sure you know they won’t give out that sort of information over the phone, and get them to tell me which was the nearest hotel to that address.”

“It’s pronounced Red-yuff,” I put in.

“Is it really? You live and learn, don’t you? Well, however you say it we’re going to have to rid ourselves of the place somehow, though goodness knows how much it’ll fetch if what I saw on the way over is anything to go by, so one thing I’d like you to do for me tomorrow — that is if you can stop playing with your fringe for five minutes — is to set up a meeting between the two of us, preferably on neutral territory. That way we should be able to come to an agreement before I go back on Friday rather than have to communicate through our solicitors, with all the extra delays and expense that’s certain to entail.”

Set up a meeting? Do I look like a secretary?

She tears the cover from a beer mat, scribbles down Carol Vasey’s name and an address on Albion Crescent, then announces that unless she eases away the stresses and strains of her seven-hour drive from the south coast in a tub filled to the brim with fragrant, steaming hot suds she’s liable to fall asleep where she’s sitting. I watch her leave, thinking that if I get through to the weekend without ending up either in a padded cell struggling against my restraints or in one of the more conventional kind awaiting trial for murder I’ll congratulate myself on a job well done.

Sod’s Law operating at maximum efficiency, less than ninety seconds after Kerrie’s departure the first of the non-residents, a retired postman named Jack whose lugubrious mutterings concerning the state of the economy are like a Vaughan Williams fantasia to my ears, makes his appearance. Hard on his heels comes Sylvia, helping herself to a pineapple juice and taking the stool nearest the hatch. She waits until the old gentleman is ensconced in his favourite chair with a bottle of Double Maxim and the South Durham Herald before beckoning me over.

“How are you getting on with Nancy Drew?” she enquires, her smile so knowing it could romp the grand final of University Challenge.

“You’ve heard about that, have you? All I’ll say is I’d sooner spend a week with her than a fortnight. I reckon Norah owes me one.”

“Don’t be daft, Ruth. Mam’s right, a change of scene might be just the thing to perk you up a bit.” She lowers her voice, aware that Jack isn’t quite as deaf as he likes people to think. “Well, did she spill the beans, then?”

I hesitate for a moment, unsure of my ground. All I’ve told Sylvia is that I lived in Northcroft until I was twelve; she hasn’t pressed me for details, and I haven’t divulged any. If I confess that I remember Helen Sutton from junior school, I risk breaking that unspoken accord. Would it not be wiser to pretend that the name means nothing to me?

My mind made up, I lean closer.

“Are you ready for this? It’s strong stuff.”

“You can be an annoying little madam sometimes. Come on, out with it.”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” I put my lips to her ear. “Okay, here’s what it’s all about. A woman who used to live on the Triangle left Ms Latimer’s dad a packet. Now he’s dead too, so it’s passed to her and her sisters. Trouble is, none of them know her from Eve.”

Sylvia’s frown accentuates the thin creases at the sides of her mouth.

“Lived on the Triangle? What was she called?”

“Let me think...Helen something-or-other.”

“Sutton?”

“Yeah, that was it.”

She nods her head.

“Helen Sutton, eh? I might’ve known she had money stashed away.”

I hand over the beer mat.

“This is the other beneficiary. I’ve been given the job of making sure they meet up.”

Sylvia’s jaw plummets so far her chin must be visible to shipping off the coast of New Zealand.

“Carol Vasey...” she gasps. “Now we’re for it. You’d best get yourself over there, tell her what’s going on. Write her a note in case she’s gone out. I don’t know, talk about letting the cat in among the pigeons.”

“Sorry Sylv, you’ve lost me.”

“Carol Vasey!” she hisses, as though that explains everything from the origin of the universe to the continuing popularity of Terry and June.

“I’ve got a degree, you know. Believe it or not, I can read. What about her?”

She couldn’t look much more surprised had Al Capone sauntered in with Little Red Riding Hood on his arm.

“You mean to tell me you don’t...what d’you do all day, go round with cloth stuffed in your lug holes? If I said she was Carol Hodgson till a short while back, would that help?”

Now I’m the one with unhinged mandibles.

“Oh,” I say quietly. “That Carol Vasey.”

Some time before I arrived at the Gladstone respected town councillor Bob Hodgson — Trisha’s dad, but that belongs to a long-vanished world — drowned after he was swept from the Heugh breakwater at high tide during a storm everyone on the headland agrees was one of the worst in living memory. But there the consensus ends. Too many issues, the most pertinent of which was what he was doing down there to begin with, remained unresolved for the coroner’s verdict of death by misadventure to be universally accepted. Weeks later, tongues were still wagging in the pubs and clubs, the hairdressers, the post offices and the corner shops.

The most voluble spoke not only of Bob but also his widow Carol, who had been deputy headmistress at Mill House Primary School in New Stranton when the tragedy occurred, and was to take early retirement soon afterwards. Carol had raised the alarm, then been rushed to hospital suffering from a head injury she received at an unknown point in the proceedings. Although she appeared to make a swift recovery, at the inquest she testified to having no recollection whatsoever of the incident, a claim backed up by the doctor who had treated her. When word subsequently spread that Carol was about to marry the very same doctor, a man nearly twenty years her junior, and with the earth barely settled on her husband’s grave, the rumour machine clicked into top gear. The only reason not put forward to account for Bob Hodgson’s death was that he had fought with time-travelling aliens from a distant galaxy.

“That Carol Vasey,” echoes Sylvia.

“There’s more,” I whisper to her. “When I said ‘a packet’ I meant it. I’ve seen the solicitor’s letter. If my arithmetic’s correct Carol’s now richer to the tune of a cool quarter of a million.”

Elvis Presley might have walked up to the counter, with Glenn Miller and Lord Lucan a few steps behind him.

“A quar...a...a quarter of a...all right, that does it. I’ll look after the bar while you’re gone. Try not to be too long. I’m supposed to be picking Janice up at half-eight. Well, get your skates on!”

“Can’t you just phone her?”

“You think she’ll have kept the same number? Have a bit of common.”

“Why the sudden panic, Sylv? So there’s a bit more gossip and innuendo flying about. She’s got two hundred and fifty thousand excellent excuses for ignoring it. If I was her, this time tomorrow I’d be on a plane to Acapulco.”

“Because Helen Sutton died the same night as Bob Hodgson, that’s why. Heart attack, it said in the Herald. But you hear all sorts in this trade. Like Bob’s wasn’t the only body those kids found on Carr House Sands the next day.”

“Jesus...you think she might have drowned as well? But that would mean–“

“I’ll have a word with your Ms Latimer after breakfast tomorrow, tell her to keep all this under her hat for now. You be careful what you say an’ all, ‘specially to that Egerton and his pal when they get here, ‘cause I’ve a feeling they might be from one of the papers. Take it from me, we can do without a repeat of the bother we had with that lot when they descended on us last time.”

I set off along Marine Parade in an agitated frame of mind. Could Helen and Bob have been lovers? Had Carol resolved to do away with her rival by luring her onto the breakwater, only to lose her husband in the ensuing fracas as well?

...the late Helen Dorothy Sutton, who died on December 3rd...

Whatever happened, it took place just over a week after Ruth stole my body.

And it had the effect of leaving a nice little nest egg to a woman who lives only five miles from where the theft was carried out.

I wanted a diversion. It appears that my wish has been granted.

By five to eleven I’ve ushered the last customers outside, turned off the pumps, washed the glasses and ashtrays, wiped down the tables, counted the takings — never an onerous duty on a Tuesday — and developed an unshakeable conviction that if the device Ruth used on me were ever to be mass-produced then it should become enshrined in law that every male drinker spend one night, because that’s all it would take, working as a barmaid in a small provincial hotel.

After delivering my message to a darkened house with a front garden so overgrown I was afraid to glance at the upstairs windows in case I glimpsed Miss Havisham outlined there in her tattered, yellowing wedding dress, I returned to the Gladstone in time to relieve Sylvia from the ministrations of the skeleton, who proceeded to regale me with the history of his mother’s gallstones and followed this captivating account with an even more thrilling description of the surgical techniques necessary to remove them, his eyes never once moving from my bust. Before I was able to call last orders civilisations had risen and turned back to sand, continents had split apart, and mountain ranges had been worn down to shields.

I carry a glass of Coke and a packet of salted nuts into the lounge, then settle on the sofa to watch the second half of The Old Grey Whistle Test. Crossing one denim-clad thigh over the other, I’m about to light up when headlights flare in the car park.

Egerton and his chum, who I’d completely forgotten about.

I raise my eyes to heaven. It’s been that sort of evening.

Sod it, they can wait. I don’t care if they’ve got my body tied up on the back seat, I’ve earned this cigarette.

The sound of someone repeatedly pressing the buzzer on the reception counter makes me reconsider. If Norah has to come down from the flat to answer it they’ll hear her in Tierra del Fuego.

Sighing like a fifteen year old dragged away from the telephone to tidy her room, I rise from my seat and clump into the foyer. Through the open front door, the imperious silhouette of a Rolls-Royce dominates the forecourt.

Sylvia has these two down as reporters? The job must pay a damn sight more than most people think.

“I say, hope we’re not keeping you from your beauty sleep? Egerton’s the name. J G Egerton.”

No mention of the Robert Wyatt album Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard. Oh well, there’s always tomorrow…

“Yeah, I remember Sylv saying.”

“Dashed bad form arriving at such an ungodly hour, I know. I’m sure you’ll accept there were extenuating circumstances.”

The figure spouting this bullshit is in his middle twenties, tall, lithe and bursting with the self-confidence a privileged upbringing instils as second nature. He’s wearing an expensive double-breasted light brown suit, a blue silk tie and authentic Italian shoes. His dark hair is slicked back and tied in a loose ponytail, concealing none of the engaging, some might say roguish smile he hopes will persuade others he’s ready to deal with them as equals.

What he’s doing slumming it in a dive like Northcroft is anyone’s guess.

“No problem,” I assure him, aware that Sylvia is due back from her soirée within the next few minutes. “I’ve only just closed the bar. Uh, you can still have a drink...provided it’s not on draught.”

“I don’t think we will. Fact is, we’ve both been up since the lark. Left the metropolis for deepest Somerset, called HQ to report ‘mission accomplished’ and received orders to head north without further delay. My fiancée’s all in, poor thing.”

“Your fiancée? Sure you want two singles? I know for a fact there’s a double free till at least Friday.”

“Better not, my dear. I can tell you’re as broad-minded a young fillie as they come, but in our line of work we’ve found that some of the smaller establishments are run by those with a hankering for, shall we say old-fashioned values. Wouldn’t do to upset the apple cart, if you get my meaning.”

Young fillie? One more crack like that and you’ll be a gelding, old bean. I’ll chew them to bits while your lady love looks on.

“What line of work would that be?” I ask him as I go behind the counter to open up the register.

If there’s an answer I don’t hear it. The woman standing in the doorway is a good ten years older than her betrothed, yet she has a numinous, all-pervading presence that renders her age irrelevant. The light green beret pinned to the net covering her short, russet curls, the turquoise suit with the padded shoulders and pencil skirt, the single row of pearls, the seamed stockings and the lustrous black high-heeled shoes wouldn’t shame a Milan catwalk, whilst her make-up might have been applied five minutes ago in a Parisian beauty parlour so exclusive Jacqui Onassis has to pull strings and call in favours just to get on the waiting list for an appointment. But it’s her eyes I find most fascinating of all, for they exude a femininity that’s practically primeval. This is someone for whom any man with bones in his wrists would gladly scale Everest, brave the arid wastes of the Sahara, sail the Pacific single-handed and hack his way from one end of the Amazon jungle to the other if he thought there was the slightest chance that by doing so he’d be given permission to prostrate himself at her feet and spend the rest of his days in silent worship.

But not me. Not any more.

Moving with the poise of a film star and the refinement of a long-reigning monarch, she walks up to the desk. When she speaks, her voice is the sound chocolate might make if it could talk as it was melting.

"Bon soir, mademoiselle. Je m’appelle Yvette de Monnier.”

“Enchanté,” I reply.

“A quelle heure servez-vous le petit déjeuner?”

“De sept heures et demi á  neuf heures. La salle á  manger est lá , á  droit de l’escalier.” I reach behind me for the keys to rooms 4 and 5. “Votre chambres sont au premier étage. Si vous voudrez me suivre...?”

I show her upstairs while Egerton fetches their luggage from the Rolls. Only when both of them are installed in their rooms do I switch back to thinking in English.

In layman’s terms, if she was good at something then so are you.

I knew Ruth spoke fluent French, but not that she was more or less bilingual. How come that didn’t appear in her file?

What else haven’t you told me about her, Suki?

I don’t suppose it matters, not in the great scheme of things.

I close the register and return to the lounge for the last few minutes of my programme. It’s true what they say, life never stops surprising you.