“Yes. Yes. Oh, do please be quick. I hate to be rude, but they absorb dreadfully if you leave them too long.”
“Thomas Lynley. New Scotland Yard.” As he spoke his full identification, he realised that it was the first time he’d done so since Helen’s death. He blinked at this knowledge and the quick but fleeting pain that it brought him. He showed his identification to the woman. He said, “Niamh Triglia? Formerly Parsons?”
She said, “Yes, that’s who I am.”
“I need to speak with you about your husband. Jonathan Parsons. May I come in?”
“Oh yes. Of course.” She stepped back from the door to admit him. She led him through a sitting room largely given to bookshelves, which were themselves heavily given to paperback books interspersed with family photographs and the occasional seashell, interesting stone, or piece of driftwood. Beyond this, the kitchen overlooked a small back garden with a patch of lawn, neat flower beds bordering it, and a leafing tree in its centre.
Here in the kitchen, the crab cakes were managing to produce an impressive disorder. Hot oil splattering onto the cooktop largely characterised the chaos, followed by a draining board covered with bowls, tins, wooden spoons, a carton of eggs, and a coffee press whose liquid was long since gone and whose remaining grounds looked as if they’d been forgotten ages ago. Niamh Triglia went to the cooker and flipped the crab cakes, which produced a new burst of splattering. She said, “The difficulty is managing to get the breadcrumbs to brown without dousing the entire mixture with so much oil that you feel as if you’re eating badly done chips. Do you cook, Mr…. It was Superintendent, though, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” he said. “As to the superintendent part. As to the cooking, it’s not one of my strengths.”
“It’s my passion,” she confessed. “I had so little time to do it properly when I was teaching, and once I took my pension, I threw myself into it. Cookery courses at the community centre, programmes on the telly, that sort of thing. Problem is the eating bit.”
“Your efforts don’t please you?”
“On the contrary, they please me far too much.” She indicated her body, which was fairly shrouded by her apron. “I try to cut the recipes down for one person, but maths was never my strong suit and most of the time I make enough for at least four.”
“Are you alone here, then?”
“Mmm. Yes.” She used the corner of the egg turner to lift one of the crab cakes and examine its degree of brownness. “Lovely,” she murmured. From a nearby cupboard, she took a plate, which she covered with several layers of kitchen towel. From the fridge, she took a small mixing bowl. “Aioli,” she said, dipping her chin towards the mixture. “Red pepper, garlic, lemon, et cetera. Getting the balance of tastes just right is the issue with a good aioli. That and the olive oil, naturally. Very good e.v.o. is essential.”
“I’m sorry? Evio?” Lynley wondered if this was a style of cooking.