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him. Then he, the corp, told us that we couldn’t help her now and we should get into the lorry and go and get Sir Percy, ’cos he’s the magistrate. Bobby kept going on about the Germans were invading us, that a parachutist must have got her. I started to get the shakes myself when he said that.” She shuddered. “Was it a Jerry who done her in?”
    “I don’t think so, Rose.”
    “Where’d you take her?”
    “We have to do a post-mortem. She’s at the mortuary.”
    “We’ll be able to bury her, won’t we?”
    “Yes. As soon as the investigation is complete, we’ll release her body to her family.”
    Rose shifted restlessly. “Them don’t give a sod. But Elsie always wanted a fancy funeral. We talked about it once. ‘I want black horses and plumes, Rose,’ she says. ‘And sad music.’ ‘Oo, listen to ’er,’ says I. ‘Only the good die young, Elsie. And that means you’re going to live to be an old lady.’ ” Rose stretched out her arm and showed him the bangle. “Elsie gave me this for my birthday. I ain’t had nothing like it before.”
    Tyler nodded. “She was your best mate, wasn’t she?”
    She looked at him. “What happened, mister?”
    “I don’t know yet.”
    Rose got out of the seat and started to walk around the room. She tugged at a couple of the cabinet doors, which were locked.
    “Do they think we’d steal any of these books, for Christ’s sake? Look at them, they’re all old. Who the hell would want them?”
    Tyler just murmured. There were probably some expensive first editions in those bookcases. Finally, Rose returned to the tea trolley and poured some more tea for herself.
    “Do you have any idea who might want to harm your friend, Rose? Did she have any enemies?”
    Rose shook her head immediately. “I wouldn’t say enemies. Not enemies. ’Til you get to know her, she can … she could come across as a bit rough, but only ’til you got used to her.” She turned the bangle. “She had a heart of gold.”
    “Everybody liked her then?”
    “Yeah. She was very popular. She didn’t get along too goodwith the warden, but I think that was Elsie’s fault more than anything. Miss Stillwell is a stickler for the rules and Elsie didn’t like that. She was what you’d call a rebel. When we first moved in, the furniture in the bedrooms had been removed and the worst junk had been put in. Some of it was falling apart. God knows where they’d got it. Elsie complained to the county office and they came and made Lady Somerville get in better things. The rest of us would have put up with it, but not ’er.” Rose smiled, enjoying the memory.
    “Outside of the hostel, how did Elsie get along with people in general?”
    “Good. She was a hard worker and the old codgers got to respect her.” She helped herself to another biscuit. “Mr. Morgan didn’t much care for her but that was his own bloody fault.” She gave a bit of a grin. “We was working his farm last month and it was so bleeding hot we all decided to take off our shirts. It was our Elsie’s idea, naturally, but we were out in the fields all by ourselves, so we thought, why bloody not. Then along comes Mr. Morgan. He had already been pestering some of the girls, making comments about their bottoms, getting in a sly touch now and again. He took a poke at one of Sylvia Sumner’s knockers, saying how big it is. And they are, but she’s only seventeen and she was upset by what he did. So anyway, his eyes got like bleeding saucers when he saw us half naked. I mean, we all covered up, but Elsie was fit to be tied. She just went over to him and said we were fed up with his behaviour. If he didn’t stop, she was going to tell everybody what he was doing. His wife is a bit of a tartar so she wouldn’t like that. He was gob struck and practically went down on his knees begging us not to. Elsie said as how we’d keep silent on the condition he treated us all to a round of shandies and a slap-up lunch at the