The Crow Trap

Chapter Twenty-Nine.

They were in Baikie’s again. Waiting. There was the same smoky fire, the familiar furniture covered in dust, the moth-eaten fox leering out of the smudged glass case.

But now they sat, as self-conscious and wooden as actors in an amateur production, so the room seemed different. A stage set for a gothic thriller. A two-hander. They stared at each other waiting for something to happen, to move the action on.

A young policewoman had been detailed to sit with them and she tried her best to lift the mood. The drizzle had turned into a downpour. She looked at the rain sluicing down the windows and said cheerfully that she’d been lucky to get a job indoors. She didn’t envy the rest of the team who were still out on the hill. She had a date that evening with a bloke who was drop-dead gorgeous and she couldn’t think what her hair would look like after a day out there.

Rachael turned politely to answer her but unexpectedly, from the kitchen, they heard another voice, quite different, hard and authoritative.

“Don’t give me that crap, Joe. Just bugger off and see to it.” Joe must have obeyed the order immediately, to be already on his way outside because the next question came in a shout.

“In here, are they?”

So prepared, Anne and Rachael turned to watch her come in. She was a large woman big bones amply covered, a bulbous nose, man-sized feet.

Her legs were bare and she wore leather sandals. Her square toes were covered in mud. Her face was blotched and pitted so Rachael thought she must suffer from some skin complaint or allergy. Over her clothes she wore a transparent plastic mac and she stood there, the rain dripping from it onto the floor, grey hair sleeked dark to her forehead, like a middle-aged tripper caught in a sudden storm on Blackpool prom.

She dismissed the policewoman. “lea please, love.” Then she held out a hand like a shovel. Rachael stood up to take it and realized she’d seen the woman before. It was the bag lady who’d crashed into the chapel late during Bella’s funeral.

“Vera Stanhope,” the woman said. “Inspector. You’ll be seeing a lot of me. More of Joe Ashworth, my sergeant, but at the moment he’s out there getting wet. He’s still young. Less prone to arthritis.” She stared at Rachael. “Don’t I know you?”

“I was at Bella Furness’s funeral.”

“So you were. I never forget a face.” She smiled smugly. “One of my strengths.”

“What were you doing there?” Rachael asked.

For a moment the inspector seemed affronted that Rachael had the temerity to ask. “That was personal. Nothing to do with this business.” Then, although she didn’t seem to be a woman who minded being rude she added more kindly, “I knew Bella from years back.”

“How did you know her?” “Like I said,” Vera’s voice was brisk, ”s personal. And your chum’s lying up there with a string round her neck. More important now, wouldn’t you say, to sort that out.” I’m not sure, Rachael thought. She had been shocked by Grace’s death but in this new detached state she didn’t feel any personal loss.

Certainly she didn’t think of the zoologist as a ”. Grace had drifted into their lives at Baikie’s with so little emotional contact that it was hard now to think of her as ever having been alive. It was almost as if her death was inevitable, as if she had been progressing towards it since her arrival.

She realized that Vera Stanhope was waiting for an answer.

“Yes,” she said. “Of course.”

She looked at Anne. Usually she would have expected a smart flip response to that sort of remark, but Anne seemed uncharacteristically upset and continued to stare into the fire.

“Who was the last person to see her alive?” Vera asked.

Now Anne did raise herself to speak. “Me,” she said. “I suppose.” She paused. “Rachael was at a meeting in Kimmerston. Grace went into the field. I stayed here to catch up on some paperwork. Unless she met someone else while she was out… “

“Is that likely?”

“It depends where she went. One of the Holme Park keepers might have seen her from the hill. Or a hiker. Sometimes she walked all the way to Langholme.

There’d be more chance, I suppose, of someone bumping into her there.”

“What time did you see her?”

“Lunchtime. One, half past.”

“Is that when she went out, or did she come back to the cottage to eat?” “No,” Anne said, ‘ didn’t do eating much. She went out early and came back to leave the details of her afternoon walk. It’s a Health and Safety thing.”

Vera Stanhope had taken off her plastic mac and hung it over the glass case which held the stuffed fox, but she remained standing. Anne had seemed to be directing this conversation to the uneven hem of the inspector’s dress, but now she looked up into Vera’s face and asked abruptly, “What time was she killed?”

Vera gave a laugh which turned into a choking cough. “God knows. We don’t. Not yet. And we might never be able to tell with any certainty, especially if she hadn’t eaten. The scientists don’t work miracles whatever they have you believe.”

“She was found so close to Baikie’s that she must either have been on her way out or her way back,” Rachael said. “Do you think she realized she was in danger and was trying to reach the cottage…?”

No one answered. Vera continued in her matter of fact way. “Could she have been there all afternoon, without anyone seeing?”

“Quite easily. Even if she was near to the footpath. Midweek and in this weather there’d not have been many walkers.” Rachael turned to Anne. “You didn’t go that way? You were talking about sampling near the mine.” “No. I was in all day. Like I said, I thought I’d tidy up the paperwork.”

“You must have been out shopping,” Rachael said then stopped, realizing she sounded inquisitorial, the school prefect again, realizing too that the inspector might make more of it than she should. She continued lamely, “I mean the stuff for the casserole, the wine.”

“Oh yeah, but that was earlier. In the morning before Grace came back.”

“We might be able to tell from Grace’s notebook about what time she was killed,” Rachael said. “Was it with her?”

Vera ignored the question. “How would that help?”

“She was doing timed counts. She would have written down the time the last one started.”

Vera sat down in the armchair. She pulled it closer to the fire. The mud on her feet had already begun to dry in grey streaks. Today she had with her not a collection of carrier bags but a large briefcase.

The leather was so soft and old that the shape had gone and the straps had curled and it looked like a postman’s sack. She took out a hard-backed notebook and jotted down a few words.

She crossed her legs giving Rachael a glimpse of white lardy flesh and leant forward with her elbows on her knees. Her face took on a more serious expression. This is it, Rachael thought, this is where the real questions start. But Vera Stanhope, despite her earlier insistence that she shouldn’t forget Grace lying strangled on the hill, began to talk about herself. And she told it like a fairy story so Rachael wasn’t sure if it was true.

“When I was a little girl,” she started, “I used to come and stay in this cottage. Occasionally. My dad would bring me. There was only my dad. I never knew my mum. She died giving birth to me. It’s not a nice thing to grow up with, that. As if being born was a crime. An act of violence at least. You could say that I had an interest in crime right from the start. My profession was chosen for me.” She knew she had shocked them, but she smiled roguishly. She knew she had them hooked. Rachael thought she wanted to disconcert.

“Connie Baikie lived here then. Large, loud Connie. More like an actress than a scientist. A real drama queen. I don’t know what stories you’ve heard about her. They’ll all be true. She was famous, you know, at the time. As well known as Peter Scott. My father adored her. He was a naturalist too. Only an amateur but well respected. He was a schoolmaster by profession. I can’t think he was much good at it. I knew from experience that he found children tedious and his real love was always natural history.

“So. Picture the scene. Imagine the situation. A middle-aged man landed with a small child. A frail child who suffered from allergies: asthma, eczema. Psychosomatic, no doubt but real enough at the time.

Did he allow that to cramp his style? Of course not. He was an obsessive. Until I was old enough to be left alone I was dragged along too. I walked miles round here, many of them. I learnt to keep quiet and stand still.

“Then, occasionally, there were the wonderful weekends when we were invited to stay at Baikie’s. There was music and dancing on the lawn.

Chinese lanterns and big fires, sweets and biscuits and other grown-ups to make a fuss of me. Ladies in silk dresses and fur coats wearing exotic perfume. Even the talk of plants, butterflies and animals seemed more exciting here. Whatever Constance Baikie was, whatever she became, she could put on a good show… “

She stopped abruptly and looked up at them. Her tone and mood changed.

“I expect you think I’m odd,” she said. “Eccentric. Even that I’m dragging up my past for effect. That’s not the case, and if I do have a reputation for eccentricity, I have one too for getting results. You couldn’t have got anyone better.” She paused. “This isn’t my party piece, I don’t trot it out for everybody. I’m telling you, so you know I understand what goes on here. And I haven’t lost touch. You mustn’t think that. I lived with my father for forty-five years. Lived with the lists and the notes and the sketches. He died a year ago, but I’m in the same house. The scientific journals still drop on the doormat every month because I haven’t got round to cancelling them and sometimes I read them. Some of it must have rubbed off. I never shared his passion but at times I come close to understanding it.”

She leant back in her seat and closed her eyes. There was such a long silence that Rachael thought she had fallen asleep, imagined she and Anne sitting there for hours, too embarrassed to move. Then still with her eyes closed Vera said, “So explain what you’re doing here. I want to know all about the project and where Grace Fulwell fitted into it.

Tell me about the survey so far. What you expected to find and the results you’ve achieved. By the time we leave this room I’m going to know as much as you do about the lass. You’re going to pass on everything she told you. About her work, her friends, her family.

Everything.” There was a pause, then Anne said, with a brief return of the old spirit, “That’s all right then. That’ll not take us very long. And I thought we’d be here all day.”

Chapter Thirty.

That day Rachael and Anne came under varying pressure to move out of Baikie’s. First, in an unprecedented show of marital devotion, Jeremy arrived to fetch Anne home. That at least was what he said he was doing there.

It was late afternoon when he arrived but the rain and the low cloud made it feel like a winter’s evening. The fire had been lit all day and they had the lights on. Vera, exasperated, Rachael thought, by the paucity of the information she had gleaned, had passed them on to her sergeant. In one of the unnatural coincidences which marked the day Rachael recognized him as Joe Ashworth, the timid young man who had been sent to Black Law on the night of Bella’s suicide. As he talked to them he looked occasionally out of the uncurtained window. All he said was, “Strange, isn’t it, without street lights?” But she could tell the emptiness made him uneasy.

He had with him a copy of the notes which had been taken from Grace’s notebook. The notebook itself hadn’t been released.

“Inspector Stanhope thought they might mean something to you,” he said.

“It seems fairly obvious to us. The last count was taken between ten and twelve.”

“And those are grid references,” Rachael said, pointing over his shoulder. “If you check the map you’ll be able to find out where she was counting.”

They spread a large-scale ordnance survey over the floor. Anne followed the blue squiggle of the burn with her finger, stopped at the edge of a settlement marked by big black squares. “She must have walked as far as Langholme,” she said. “The Skirl runs right at the bottom of my garden there. Look, there’s the Priory. But there were no counts for the afternoon.”

And then, almost as if speaking of the Priory had conjured him up, Jeremy appeared in the room, shepherded by a constable in uniform. He stood just inside the door and Anne saw him as the others must have done. A small man, dapper and balding with the round, scrubbed face of a newly bathed baby. Although he wore jeans and a striped cotton shirt he gave the impression of smartness. To Anne and her friends he’d always been something of a joke but recently she’d sensed something else about him. A desperation which might have aroused her pity if she’d let it.

It was to fend off the possibility of pity that she mocked him now.

“My God. What on earth are you doing here? I wouldn’t have thought you’d know the way.”

He looked hurt, reminding her of some of the small boys in her father’s school, the ones who cried in secret and wet the bed. Then, to her relief, the moment passed and he camped up a show of righteous indignation, looking round slyly to check he had the others’ sympathy.

Actually, I have lived in Langholme longer than you. Just because I don’t feel the need for a daily romp over the hills doesn’t mean I don’t know my way about. And, if you must know, I came because I was worried.”

She responded with the same bantering tone. “That’s not like you, Jem.” Then added more seriously, “How did you find out what happened?”

“Because the phone’s been ringing every half hour with people offering condolences. It’s all over the village that you were the victim.”

She felt a terrible impulse to giggle, a hysteria which had been building up all day. “How did you know that I wasn’t?”

“I didn’t at first, did I? But at least I knew there were three of you. Apparently no one else did.” “Oh, Jem,” she said, “I am sorry.”

“The vicar’s wife brought a cake this afternoon. By that time I’d phoned the police and found out you were safe.” He paused. “She took the cake away.” Anne thought he would have enjoyed the role of bereaved widower. People coming around and making a fuss. He’d always loved funerals. And she was insured. Her death would have solved all his financial problems. Perhaps when he phoned the police to find out who the victim was he was disappointed to be given someone else’s name. Perhaps that explained the slight air of wistfulness, the edgy uncertainty.

“What are folks in the village saying now?” Joe Ashworth asked.

“What do you mean?”

“There must be some gossip. Do they know who the girl is?”

“Don’t be silly,” Anne interrupted. “That’s why he’s here, isn’t it, Jem? To find out those juicy details. He’s worse than an old woman at gossip. Who suggested it?

Ethel Siddon from the post office?” But even as she spoke she thought that for once gossip wasn’t uppermost in his mind.

“No!” He was indignant again. He said in a quiet tone, almost pleading, “I’ve come to take you back to the Priory where I can look after you. You can’t stay here with a madman on the loose.”

“You cannot be serious. You, look after me? Whoever put that nonsense in your head? You can’t have dreamt it up for yourself.”

“For tonight at least,” he said. “We need to talk about it.”

“No.” Because then she thought the murder was just an excuse to get her home. If he wanted to talk, it would be about his own problems, some scrape he’d got into. Jeremy would need a serious incentive to play the part of protective male. To spite him she went on wickedly, “Why don’t you tell the truth, Jem? You’re frightened of being in the Priory on your own.”

There was a flash of panic. The schoolboy summoned to the head teacher study. She thought, What are you scared of? She almost fell for it and agreed to go, then the old irritation returned. She’d agreed to be his wife, for Christ’s sake. Not his nanny. That had never been the deal.

“Won’t you come back with me?” “No,” she said lightly, ‘ course I won’t. I’ve still got work to do.

But you run off to London if. you scared. I won’t mind.”

“I can’t do that. I’d worry about you all the time. It wouldn’t be any fun at all.” But he brightened at the prospect. She’d given him an escape route.

“Did you know Grace Fulwell?” Joe Ashworth asked.

“No.”

“You never met socially?”

“No.” Now he seemed impatient, eager to leave.

“Were you at home yesterday?”

“All day. I work mostly from home.” But what do you do? Anne thought. Your schemes and your plans. What do they add up to?

“Miss. Fulwell was surveying the burn at the bottom of your garden. A slim young woman in waterproofs and walking boots. Did you see her?”

“Of course not. I’m not like my wife, Sergeant. I don’t enjoy energetic exercise for its own sake. I don’t go onto the hill.”

“Could you see the burn from the house?”

“Not at this time of the year when the trees are in leaf.”

“From the garden?”

“Possibly. But the garden is Anne’s domain. I never stray out there.

Except perhaps on a hot sunny evening with a glass of Chardonnay before dinner.”

Chapter Thirty-One.

Edie wasn’t so easily fobbed off as Jeremy. Rachael ran through the rain to Black Law to phone her, prompted by Jeremy’s talk of inaccurate gossip. She didn’t want Edie to hear in the local news that a female conservationist had been strangled on Black Law Moor.

When Rachael told her what had happened Edie didn’t immediately suggest that her daughter should move home. Her style was more subtle than that.

“Of course you’ll take your own decision,” she said.

“Of course.” The sarcasm had become a habit.

“But I was going to suggest that you come home for a few days anyway.”

“Oh? Why?”

“I’ve tracked down Alicia Davison. The head teacher Bella worked for in Corbin. If you were staying here for a while we could go to see her.” She paused. Rachael would not respond and Edie went on, “If you wanted me to come too that is. You might prefer to see her on your own.”

“I can’t come home. Not yet. Anne’s determined to stay and I can hardly leave her on her own. Besides, there’s the report. It’s not finished.”

“You could finish it here.”

“No. I’ll have to stay.”

The police must have been in touch with Neville Furness, because they had taken over the ground floor of the farmhouse. Rachael was using the phone in Bella’s bedroom. Suddenly from downstairs came the sound of smashing crockery, then explosive laughter and good-natured jeers.

Vera Stanhope shouted for silence. Rachael had never known so much noise in Bella’s house, but thought Bella might have liked it. She would have made sandwiches for them all, dried out their clothes.

“Edie?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you come out here? Anne and I have decided to work as a pair on the last of the surveys. It would be useful to have someone to check us back in. To be an extra back-up. And we could still go out to see Miss. Davison.”

“I could cook,” Edie said. “Clean. That sort of thing.”

“No need to go overboard.” As far as Rachael could remember there had always been a cleaning lady to muck out at Riverside Terrace despite Edie’s socialist principles. It was hard to picture her in rubber gloves.

“It’s late night shopping at Tesco’s. I’ll stop on my way over.”

“I’ll come out to the road to meet you. You’ll never find it on your own at night.”

“Mm.” She hardly listened to the directions, too preoccupied with her shopping list. Preoccupied too, Rachael thought, with planning a therapeutic strategy to get her daughter through the trauma of another bereavement.

On the way back to Baikie’s Rachael saw that Peter Kemp was there. Even in the gloom she recognized the flash new Land Rover parked by the tractor shed.

Him too, she thought. Someone else to persuade us to pack our bags and run away. I suppose it wouldn’t do his reputation as an employer much good if he lost any more staff.

He had made himself quite at home. He perched on the arm of the chair where Anne was sitting, his long legs stretched towards the fire. He could have owned the place. A bottle of whisky, which he must have brought with him, stood on the mantelpiece and he had a glass in his hand. When he saw Rachael, he stood up and made to take her into his arms, but she moved awkwardly out of the way.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

“I was summoned.”

“What do you mean?”

“An inspector called… ” He paused, expecting recognition of the reference. When Rachael frowned impatiently, he continued. “Inspector Stanhope. A strange woman. Do you think she’s quite sane?”

“She asked you to come here at this time of night?”

“Not exactly. Look, you might have told me what had happened to Grace… ” And that was the nearest to any expression of sympathy they got from him. ‘… The inspector wants to see all her employment records. I explained we were a small informal organization and Grace was employed on contract but she insisted. I’ve dug out everything I’ve got.” He took an envelope file from his briefcase and fanned out three or four photocopied sheets. Rachael recognized the application form for post of temporary survey worker, a reference from the Otter Trust in Scotland, simple salary details a bank account number and home address.

“Couldn’t you have dropped them at the police station at Kimmerston?”

“I suppose I could… ” he smiled at her like an adult humouring a truculent child, and poured her a whisky ‘… but she said she was here and it was urgent. Besides, I wanted to see how you two were getting on.”

“They’ve not let us onto the hill to get on with any work so there’s nothing new to report.”

“I didn’t mean that.” Then he realized she was joking. “Of course not. I mean, how are you?” “Shocked,” she said. “What did you expect?”

“What are your plans?”

“To complete the report.”

“Is that wise?” Anne had before he could complete the question. “We’re not being scared off, if that’s what you think. We’re not running away to give the developer an open field.”

“Is that what you think is going on here?” It was Vera Stanhope, standing in the doorway in the shadow. She must have let herself in through the kitchen. For a large woman she moved very quietly. Rachael supposed she’d had practice stalking animals when she’d been taken into the countryside by her naturalist father. It sounded as if she’d been bullied into standing very still and listening.

“Well,” Vera demanded. “Do you think Grace Fulwell was killed as a corporate act of intimidation to frighten you away before you find anything of significance? Something which might persuade the Department of Environment inspector to stop the development?” “No,” Rachael said. “If there’d been anything special here we’d have found it already.” She looked at Anne for confirmation. “Don’t you think so?”

“Probably.”

“But there is a chance that you’ve missed something.” Vera walked further into the room and stood with her legs apart, looking round at them. For a moment Peter stared at her. Rachael saw a second of horror and, watching, thought: he’s only used to women who take some trouble with their appearance. Even I did that for him. Then the professional charm took over and he stretched out his hand and introduced himself, offered her whisky, which she accepted with a huge Cheshire cat grin. When she repeated her question it was to him, as if she had acknowledged him as the expert.

“Well, Mr. Kemp, do you think these girls have missed something?”

“I suppose there’s always that chance but I doubt it. You won’t find better field workers anywhere than Anne and Rachael.”

And Grace? She was good too?”

“She came highly recommended as you’ll see from the reference in the file.”

“The file, yes. It was very good of you to bring it.” She looked up from her glass. “Were you out this way any time yesterday, Mr. Kemp?

Checking your survey perhaps? Making sure your workers weren’t slacking?”

The sudden question surprised him. “No, I spent all day in the office.

Meetings, as my secretary will tell you.”

“Then we won’t need to take up any more of your time, Mr. Kemp. Thank you for coming over.”

He seemed uncertain how to handle this summary dismissal.

“You might as well leave the whisky,” Vera went on. “No doubt the lasses will be able to use it.”

As she walked him towards the outside door he muttered something which Rachael couldn’t make out. They heard the roar of the diesel engine as he drove up the track.

Vera refilled their glasses and made herself comfortable. Rachael expected some comment about Peter but none came.

“Of course you must make up your own minds what you do next,” Vera said, repeating almost exactly Edie’s words and meaning, as Edie had done but I’d much prefer it if you do what I want you to.

“We’re not leaving,” Rachael said. She wondered how many more times it would have to be said.

“I’m not suggesting that you should.” Vera bared her teeth in a grin.

“I’m not in any position to limit your access to the hill, except where my men are working, or to restrict your movements in any way.”

“But… “

“But my superiors are concerned about your safety. What would the bosses know? They spend their time in centrally heated offices, the sort of man who wouldn’t venture onto the Town Moor without a compass and a stick of mint cake. They can’t understand what you’re doing here anyway. All they think is two girlies on their own in the wilderness with a lunatic on the loose. You appreciate my difficulty.” She grinned and continued. “I’ve been told to get you to clear off. You’re in the way, an unnecessary distraction. And if any thing… ” she paused ‘… untoward was to happen to either of you the press would have a field day.”

She drained her glass and stared pensively into the fire for a moment then went on briskly. “So let’s take it as read, shall we? I’ve told you to piss off and you’ve refused, so now it’s your responsibility if you get into bother. You can’t sue the Chief Constable.”

“Why are you so keen for us to stay?” Rachael asked. She could read forceful middle-aged women and knew that was exactly what Vera wanted.

“I can’t see there’s any danger,” Vera said briskly. “There’ll be men crawling around the hill for weeks. You’ll be safer here than in the middle of town. Why jeopardize weeks of research when it’s not necessary?” “No,” Rachael said. “There must be another reason.”

Vera shot her a look. “You forget I’ve come to these hills since I was a kid. I don’t want a quarry here any more than you do.”

For a moment Rachael was convinced, then it came to her that Vera Stanhope was ambitious, in the same way that Peter Kemp was ambitious.

She was desperate for the investigation to succeed.

“There’s more to it than that.”

“Let’s just say that I don’t feel it would be beneficial to my investigation if your project was abandoned.” At first Rachael thought Vera was implying that she and Anne were suspects, that she was worried they would escape if they left the hill.

Then she saw there was another explanation. “You think the murderer might come back when he sees we’ve not abandoned the project. You want to use us as decoys.” Like the crow, she thought, in the trap.

Vera appeared profoundly hurt and shocked by the suggestion.

“I couldn’t do that,” she said. “The Chief Constable would never countenance it.”

But she bared her large brown teeth in another grin.

Chapter Thirty-Two.

The next day they saw little of Vera Stanhope and still the cloud was so low that there was no point trying to go out to count. By the evening Rachael thought that another day trapped in Baikie’s would drive her mad and she agreed to Edie’s suggestion that the following morning they should visit Alicia Davison, retired headmistress of the school where once, according to the papers left at Black Law, Bella had been a teacher. Edie disappeared into Black Law to make phone calls.

“I don’t like leaving you,” Rachael said to Anne, ‘ with the police still around.”

“That’s all right. I want to go into Kimmerston anyway to see a friend.”

A man, Rachael supposed, though the next morning when they set off at almost the same time there was no sign of it. No make-up or perfume.

No smart clothes stashed into a rucksack to be changed into later.

Overnight the weather had changed. There was still a haze over the moor but it was warm and still. Edie had managed to contact Alicia by phone and was pleased with herself. “I said we were researching local history. Alicia assumed it was about Corbin School. Apparently it was closed in the mid seventies. She got a bigger headship and went on to make quite a name for herself.” She was driving and paused while she concentrated on passing a tractor.

“She sat on an advisory panel on primary education and was considered quite an expert on rural schools. She published a book on it. She never left the classroom though. I suppose she’s one of those sad old spinsters who can only make relationships with small kids.”

Rachael was tempted to ask what had happened to sisterly solidarity.

Edie too was a spinster who’d taught for most of her life. But she kept quiet. It was a relief to be away from Baikie’s and she couldn’t face a row.

When Miss. Davison let them into her house it was clear she was far from sad. She was tiny, very quick and bright. Neither did she give an impression of age. She wore a grey velour tracksuit and new white training shoes and had just returned, she said, from her weekly yoga session in the village hall. Her new enthusiasm was tai chi but she liked to keep up her yoga too. As one got older it was good to keep supple.

She lived in a small development of smart new bungalows on the edge of a tidy village close to the Al.

She led them through the house rather apologetically. “When I retired I dreamed of a stone cottage and a large garden but I saw that it wouldn’t be practical. I’ve too many other interests. This suits me very well. We’re all of a certain age here in Swinhoe Close. Mostly couples of course, but they seem not to mind including me. And there’s one widower who’s very chivalrous.” She spoke quickly with sharp, staccato phrases which came out like the repeated rhythm of bird song.

“Do sit down. We’ll have the coffee presently, shall we? You don’t want to talk about me. You’re here to find out about the school. It’ll be an interesting project. I suppose you live in Corbin. You didn’t say.”

Rachael prepared to explain but Miss. Davison didn’t seem to expect an answer. “I arrived at Corbin in the early sixties but the building hadn’t changed, not really, since the turn of the century. My first headship. I didn’t quite know what to expect. There was one large room with a curtain down the middle. The infants sat on one side of it and the juniors on the other. There were fifteen of each when I arrived and I’ve never taught a bigger bunch of monsters. They’d been without a head for a term and allowed to run wild. The place was heated, if that’s the appropriate word, by a coke boiler in one corner, which bellowed out smoke and sulphur fumes. And on my first morning a family of bats fell out of the roof and onto my desk. The boys threw them at the girls. The girls screamed. I thought I’d come to a madhouse.” She smiled and Rachael thought she’d enjoyed every minute.

“Was Miss. Noble teaching with you then?” Edie asked.

“No,” Miss. Davison said sharply. “That was later. Why do you want to know?”

“We are actually very interested in Miss. Noble.”

Quite suddenly her friendliness turned to hostility.

“So that’s what this is about. You’re not here about the school at all. What are you? Reporters? Why can’t you leave the poor woman alone after all this time. Out you go. My friend lives next door. If you don’t leave quickly I’ll get him to throw you out.”

Rachael was horrified at the prospect of being forcibly ejected by an elderly widower. She didn’t understand the change of mood, wondered for a moment if the woman was mad.

“Bella’s dead. Miss. Davison,” she said. “I was a friend of hers. I’m still a friend of her husband’s. I found your name in some of her papers. We thought you’d want to know.”

Since they had arrived there’d been conversation. Now suddenly the place seemed very quiet. It was an unusual room for an older woman, uncluttered, decorated in strong warm colours. No television but an expensive CD player and on a desk a personal computer. Glass doors led to a small garden bordered by a honey-coloured stone wall. One of the glass doors was slightly open and they heard the hum of traffic, children shouting.

“Playtime,” Miss. Davison said. “Here, at least, we’ve saved the village school.” Then, “I didn’t know Bella was dead. But how would I? We lost touch years ago.”

“I put a notice in the Gazette about the funeral.”

“I don’t suppose many came,” Miss. Davison said. “I’d have been there if I’d known. But I don’t read the Gazette. It’s drivel, isn’t it?

And I find myself looking out for news of the children I’ve taught which somehow seems pathetic. As if I’ve never moved on.” She looked at Rachael. “Was Bella ill for long? I wish I’d visited. I should have made more effort to find out what happened to her.”

“Bella wasn’t ill,” Edie said. “She committed suicide.”

“No!” They could see now how she must have been as a teacher. Firm, decisive, unwilling to put up with nonsense despite the gentle manner and the trilling voice. “I don’t believe it. Not now. It was all forgotten.

Then I could have believed it. Understood. But now she’d have no reason.”

“I can assure you that it was suicide,” Edie insisted triumphantly.

This was her trump card. “My daughter found the body.”

Rachael squirmed. “That’s why we’re here,” she said. “We need to know why. I was close to Bella but she never spoke about the past. I hoped you might be able to help me come to terms with it.” God, she thought. I sound just like my mother.

Alicia remained suspicious. “You didn’t know anything about the court case?”

“Nothing.”

“It was in all the papers. You live in Kimmerston, don’t you?”

“Like you,” Edie announced, ”ve never bothered much with the local press.” Alicia looked at them with continued suspicion. “Bella was convicted of manslaughter. She killed her father.” Still watching Rachael’s face, she added more gently, “So you really didn’t know?”

“I had no idea.”

Bella, why didn’t you tell me? Rachael cried to herself. I feel such a fool.

“Bella came to me straight from college. She was enthusiastic, energetic, full of ideas. The infant teacher before her was elderly, close to retirement. She was little more than a child minder She read stories, let the children play, sang songs, but as for teaching… ‘.

she shrugged. “I tried to suggest new ways of working but she refused to listen.

“Then Bella came and everything changed. I started to like my work again. We bounced ideas off each other.

We achieved more in the two years she was there than I’ve done in any other school. I thought she was enjoying it too.” “She used your name,” Rachael said. “That’s what she called herself before she married Bella Davison. Some sort of tribute, do you think?”

“I think I let her down. Then and later.”

“What happened?”

“Her father was a local businessman, a butcher. He owned a couple of shops and a slaughter house. Wealthy in local terms. Used to getting his own way.”

“And a councillor,” Rachael said.

“Oh yes, a councillor. Alderman Noble. He had fingers in lots of pies.” She paused. “Forgive me. I might be a spinster but you mustn’t think I dislike men in general. Alderman Noble I disliked intensely, though I never met him.

“Bella left home to go to college and said it was the best thing she’d ever done. There was a younger son who was sucked into the business and the same was expected of her. She was supposed to work in the office, to put on an apron and help out in the shop when they were busy. But Bella refused. She’d always wanted to teach.

“Then her mother died and suddenly she was expected to give up everything, her career and her new friends, to go home and care for him. He bullied her into it.”

“Was he ill?”

“He was fat and idle,” Miss. Davison retorted. “I suppose that’s one form of illness.”

“Why did she do it?” Rachael asked. “She was independent. She’d left home once. She didn’t need his approval.”

“Things were different then.”

“No,” Edie said. “Not that different.”

“He was a bully. At first I think he convinced her that he was dying.

Then he convinced her that she was fit for nothing better than running around after him. I met her six weeks before she killed him and I hardly recognized her. I told her that I’d find her work, that she could pay someone to care for him, but she’d lost all her energy and her confidence. She said she’d never be able to tell him. She couldn’t face the row. She’d always been frightened of him. Now perhaps we’d think she’d been abused. Then it wasn’t so unusual.” She spoke bitterly. “A natural respect for one’s elders. Something to be admired. It might have been the sixties but we didn’t see much of rebellious youth in Kimmerston.

“She was charged with murder. She admitted killing him. She hit him on the back of the head with a bronze statue a monument apparently to one of his prize bulls. She said it was the nearest thing to hand but it seemed appropriate. He’d come to look very like one of his beasts.

Then she phoned for the police and waited for them to turn up. She was found guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. A period of insanity, her barrister said, caused by the stress of caring for a sick man. Though she was the sanest woman I’ve ever met. She was sent to a special hospital in the south, then came back to St. Nicholas’, the big psychiatric hospital near the coast, to prepare for her release.”

“Did you ever visit her?”

“I couldn’t face it. Isn’t that a terrible thing to say? It wasn’t Bella I couldn’t face but all those other poor people. I suppose I was afraid. She wrote to me when she was first transferred to St. Nick’s.

She didn’t ask me to visit but I’m sure that was what she wanted. Why else would she write? I let her down again. I’m not quite sure what I expected. Some nightmare image of bedlam perhaps. Howling lunatics and chains and straitjackets. I knew rationally it wouldn’t be like that but still, I couldn’t bring myself to go. I did write to her but it wasn’t a warm letter. Not very encouraging. I’m not surprised she didn’t get in touch when she was released.”

She stopped abruptly. A bell rang in the distance. In the school yard playtime was over. “You said she was married. Was she happy?”

“Very,” Rachael answered. “She must have met Dougie soon after she left hospital. He employed her to look after his elderly mother.”

“Is that what she worked as? Some sort of care assistant? After the way she’d felt about looking after her father?”

“I don’t suppose she had much choice,” Edie said dryly. “There’d hardly be a queue of schools waiting to take her on as a teacher. She had no friends or family to turn to. What else did she know?”

“Anyway, it worked out well.” Rachael thought Edie was being too hard on Miss. Davison. She understood her reluctance to get involved.

“Dougie was a farmer. She loved the hills, loved him. A few years ago he had a stroke but that didn’t make any difference to the way she felt about him.” “What happened then?” Miss. Davison demanded.

“What do you mean?”

“Something must have happened. Why else would she kill herself?” “I don’t know,” Rachael said. “That was why we arranged to see you. I needed a reason. We were close friends.” “Yet she never told you about the conviction.”

“Nothing.” “Would she have told her husband?”

“Probably not.” If Bella hadn’t felt able to confide in her, Rachael thought, she wouldn’t have told anyone else.

“So perhaps the past came back to haunt her. Or someone from it.”

At first Rachael didn’t understand what she meant and it was Edie who said, “She was threatened with exposure, you mean?” She considered the idea. “She’d created a new identity. Perhaps she’d even come to believe it. Then she met someone who recognized her. Someone who threatened to tell Dougie; even worse, to tell the authorities. She’d killed one elderly dependent man. Could they take the chance of allowing her to look after another? She couldn’t face the questions, the publicity.” Edie looked at Rachael. “It’s certainly one explanation.”

Rachael agreed that it was. But Bella had been a fighter. She still believed there was more to her suicide than that. And if Bella had this secret in her life, perhaps there had been others.

Chapter Thirty-Three.

As Anne drove to Kimmerston she told herself she was being a bloody fool. At this of all times, she should keep her distance from Godfrey Waugh. The relationship was complicated enough, and now, if Godfrey were to become a suspect in the murder investigation… She had never been into Godfrey’s office. His secretary wouldn’t recognize her and it occurred to Anne that she could breeze in and demand to see him.

Today, though, she wouldn’t have the nerve to carry it off.

These thoughts, and others, had kept her awake for most of the night and when she parked by his office she still wasn’t sure what she would do.

It was mid morning. The mist had cleared and it was already very hot.

Godfrey had his offices in a functional concrete block which had been built in the 1970s, close to the river on the outskirts of the town, an attempt by the council to attract employment. Anne waited, and watched the cormorants standing on the staithes in the river.

At twelve o’clock a stream of women came out of the building to eat their sandwiches by the river. The Borders Building Society had their headquarters there and the women wore identical navy skirts and patterned polyester blouses. They lay on the grass and pulled up their skirts as far as was decent to expose their legs to the sun.

Still Anne waited. She had parked so she could watch the main entrance, and though the car was like a greenhouse she didn’t go outside to sit with the others on the grass. Here she felt hidden. She hadn’t committed herself to anything. She could still pull back from confronting him, from saying, “Tell me, Godfrey, what did happen out there on the hill between you and Grace Fulwell?”

Then he was there, standing on the step just outside the big swing doors as if the bright sunlight was a surprise. He walked, head bowed, hands clasped behind his back, along the road towards the town centre.

She slid out of the car and followed, not stopping even to lock the door. He would be going into Kimmerston to buy lunch. There would be a cafe or sandwich shop which he used regularly. She would go in after him, as if by chance, and she’d say, “I didn’t know you came here too.”

Instead he stopped before he reached the shopping area. In the angle formed by two main streets was the parish church, St. Bartholomew’s.

The churchyard was separated from the roads by low stone walls and where they met at the corner was a wooden lych-gate; sheltered by its wooden roof was a drift of pink confetti. Godfrey went through the gate, scuffing the confetti with his feet.

Even then Anne assumed he was looking for food because that was still in her mind. The church at Langholme occasionally held open house, provided soup, bread and cheese and sent the proceeds to a third world charity. She thought something like that was happening here, though there were no posters inviting passers-by to lunch and nobody else was about. The sun and the chase down the noisy road had confused her.

But she followed him in, expecting to find bosomy ladies in flowery aprons, stalls set out at the back of the church with a tea urn and thick white china cups. The buzz of parish gossip. Instead there was silence.

She had hesitated for a moment in the deep shadow of the porch. It was cool there. In the corners more confetti had been blown. A big wedding had apparently taken place the weekend before. Then she pushed open the studded door. Sunlight streamed through the stained glass above the altar, down the aisle into her eyes. The church was still decorated by the wedding flowers huge white and gold blooms on each window in crystal vases, and the crystal reflected the coloured light too.

At first she stood, embarrassed, thinking that she’d interrupted a service and that people were staring at her as they’d all stared at Vera Stanhope when she crashed into the crem chapel in the middle of Bella’s funeral. Then her eyes adjusted to the light. She saw that she and Godfrey were the only people in the building and Godfrey hadn’t even noticed her coming in.

He was sitting near the front of the church in a pew close to the aisle but he didn’t seem to be praying. They had never discussed religion.

She wondered if perhaps that was an explanation for his jumpiness, his change of moods towards her he had moral qualms about adultery. But now he looked more like someone waiting for a bus than facing a spiritual crisis. He glanced nervously at his watch. Perhaps he had arranged to meet someone but then surely he would have turned occasionally to check the door and still he hadn’t seen her. Even when she walked down the aisle towards him and her shoes must have made a sound on the stone floor he kept his eyes firmly fixed on the front of the church.

She slipped into the pew behind him and said conversationally, “I never took you for the religious type, Godfrey.”

“Anne.” He spoke before turning to face her and when he did, she couldn’t tell whether or not he was pleased to see her.

“Or perhaps you’ve got something to confess.”

“What do you mean?” “Four days,” she said lightly. “And you’ve not been in touch. Don’t tell me. Let me guess. You’ve been busy.”

He didn’t reply.

“Why did you rush off like that when you’d been on the hill?” She couldn’t keep up this jokey tone any longer. “Why didn’t you come into Baikie’s to say goodbye?”

“I was upset,” he said at last.

“What about? Being caught with your pants down? Or had something else happened to upset you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I need to know what happened on the hill that afternoon.”

He twisted his watch face so he could see it. The strap was loose.

This was a nervous gesture she hadn’t noticed before. That and his continued silence got under her skin so she shouted, “For Christ’s sake, I’m asking you if you killed Grace Fulwell!”

She sensed her voice fill the church, become muffled by echo in its corners, in the high boat-shaped roof.

“No,” he said. “Of course I didn’t kill her.” There was a trace of irritation in his voice which reassured her more than the words.

“Have the police been to see you yet?” she asked.

“Why would they?”

“Because of the quarry. They think Grace might have been killed because she’d discovered something which would stop the development going ahead.”

“God, who dreamed up that theory?”

“The inspector in charge, a woman called Stanhope.” “You told her it was ridiculous?”

“I haven’t told her anything.” She spoke slowly, giving the words extra weight.

He looked up from his watch. “So she doesn’t know I was there that day?”

“No.”

“I wasn’t sure what to do. There’ve been television appeals asking people to come forward, anyone who was near Black Law. I was going to go. I could say I was doing a site visit. Then I thought if you hadn’t told them I was there it might look strange. I suppose I could say I didn’t go into the house. I could say I went straight onto the hill. What do you think?”

“For Christ’s sake, Godfrey, I’m not your mother.”

“No, no, I’m sorry.”

“Did you see Grace?”

“Only in the distance. She walked too fast for me to catch her up.”

“Did you see anyone else?” “No.” She thought she had sensed a slight hesitation, then decided she had imagined it. His panic was making her rattled too.

“There doesn’t seem much point then.”

“But my car was parked in your yard. I drove down the track. Anyone might have seen it. What will the police think if someone else reports it before I do?”

“How should I fucking know!”

He looked as shocked as if she had hit him. He had never liked her swearing. Memories of the other times calmed her a bit.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But it is your decision, you know, it has to be!”

“I’ve been worried about it.”

“So have I.”

“I mean how would it look?”

Keep your cool, girl, she thought. “You mean if Barbara found out that you’d been sneaking away for illicit picnics in the hills?”

“No,” he said impatiently. “Not that. The press hasn’t got hold of the quarry angle yet but it’s only time. You can image the headlines.

Conservationist killed on site of proposed new development. The planning process is slow enough. I need this project to go ahead.” He paused. “If only I could be sure the police won’t find out.” “Well, I’ve told no one. Grace can’t. I suppose there’s an outside chance that the murderer saw you but he’s hardly likely to go blabbing to the police that he was on the hill. So unless you’ve told anyone, how will Inspector Stanhope ever know?”

There was a moment’s silence and she added, “You haven’t talked to anyone, have you, Godfrey?” “No,” he said. “Of course not.”

She looked at him closely but didn’t push it.

“So?” she asked. “What are you doing here anyway?”

“It’s quiet. I come here sometimes when I need to get out of the office.”

“Not religious then? No hang-ups about adultery? I wondered.”

“No hang-ups at all about you.”

He stood up, straightened his tie, looked again at his watch. “I suppose I should get back.”

“Should I slip out through the vestry door so we’re not seen together?” He smiled. “I don’t think there’s any need for that.”

But outside the church, standing in the shadow of the lych-gate, he hesitated. “I suppose you’re parked in town.”

“No. By your office. I was waiting for you. How else could I know you were here?” “Perhaps,” he said awkwardly, ‘ all, we shouldn’t be seen there together.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Neville Furness is in today.”

“So?” “I told you he saw us coming out of the restaurant together. I can’t afford talk at this stage.” A sudden thought occurred to her. “You didn’t tell him about coming out to Baikie’s on the afternoon Grace died?”

“No,” he said. “Of course not.” But Anne didn’t believe him. He’d felt the need to confide in someone and Neville was his right-hand man, his guru, if Barbara was to be believed. “You walk on,” he continued.

“I’ll follow in a few minutes.”

“I thought you were in a hurry to get back to the office.” She felt like a spurned adolescent, ridiculous, desperate. She put her hands on his shoulders. “When will I see you again?”

He disentangled himself gently. “I don’t think that would be wise.”

Her head spun in disbelief. “What do you mean? For fuck’s sake, not very long ago you were talking about marriage.”

“Nothing’s changed,” he said earnestly. “Not in the way I feel about you.”

“But?”

“Until they’ve caught this murderer, until things are more settled, perhaps we shouldn’t meet.” The words came out in a rush, and when he saw her face he added, “For your sake, Annie. I don’t want you implicated.”

She turned and started off down the street. She couldn’t bear to break down and plead with him. But after a moment she stopped and shouted back, “Tell me, Godfrey, is that you talking or Neville Furness?”

He didn’t answer and she continued to walk away, expecting him to follow, to catch hold of her, or at least to call after her. When there was no response, hating herself for being so spineless, she stopped again. He wasn’t even looking at her. He had gone back through the lych-gate and through the gap she saw him standing in the churchyard and staring down at one of the graves where a bunch of white lilies had been laid.

Chapter Thirty-Four.

Vera Stanhope kept the women in Baikie’s informed about the progress of the investigation in a way Rachael couldn’t believe was usual in a murder inquiry. At first she was grateful for the stream of information. She was reassured by the bulky form of Vera, sitting in Constance’s old chair, legs wide apart, hands cupped around a mug of coffee, talking. If the inspector didn’t trust them she wouldn’t pass on all these details, would she?

They learnt, for example, that Grace had died within a couple of hours of leaving Baikie’s at lunchtime. It wasn’t only the absence of afternoon counts in the notebook. The pathologist had come to the same decision.

And in one short session Vera told them more about Grace than they had gleaned in weeks of sharing a house with her. The melodramatic story of abandonment, the string of foster parents and Edmund’s alcoholism seemed at odds with the pale and silent woman they remembered.

“Poor girl,” said Edie, because Edie too was allowed into the discussions. She and Vera Stanhope got on surprisingly well. She spoke regretfully, as if Grace’s death had denied her the opportunity of working with a subject ripe for counselling. That, at least, was how Rachael saw it.

Vera seemed surprised that Anne didn’t know more about the Fulwell family secrets. It was evening, still warm. The door into the garden had been left open and as bats dipped and clicked outside she probed the subject.

“Didn’t you know there was a younger son at Holme Park? Even I know that. You must have heard. There must have been talk in the village.

A wayward alcoholic whose wife committed suicide. God, the gossips would have had a field day.”

“If she killed herself when Grace was a baby it must have happened at least twenty-five years ago.” Anne seemed detached, un bothered “I hadn’t even met Jeremy then.”

“Was he here?”

“Oh, Jem’s been in Langholme for ever.”

“But I know what these villages are like,” Vera insisted. “People still talk about the war as if it ended last week. Even if Edmund never came back to Langholme they would still have remembered he existed, speculated about what had become of him.” “Not in my hearing,” Anne said lightly. “It’s not as if the Fulwells mixed socially with the rest of us. Robert didn’t come into the Ridley Arms for a pint on Friday nights. Lily never joined the women’s darts team. She made a thing about her kids going to the village play group but I bet she never took a turn on the rota to wash out the paint pots or muck out the sand pit There was always a nanny to do that. The Fulwells live in splendid isolation in the Hall. Nothing has really changed for generations. The villagers are involved as employees tenant farmers, estate workers but the private lives of the family don’t really have any impact. It’s still very feudal. You must know that. We all have our proper place.”

“So you didn’t know Robert had a brother?”

“I think I might have heard that there was a brother, working abroad.” “Who told you that?”

“God, I really can’t remember, Jeremy probably. Does it matter?

Presumably, if he’s such a black sheep it was a story the family put about.”

“But you hadn’t heard anything about the wife’s suicide or an abandoned child?”

“No, but it’s not something they’d be proud of, so they’d hardly spread it about.”

“How are they playing that part of the story now?” Vera asked.

“What do you mean?” “As you said, it doesn’t show the family in a good light. I mean, allowing Edmund’s child to be fostered rather than caring for her themselves. What sort of a spin are they putting on it?” She seemed rather proud of the political jargon.

“I don’t know. I’ve been here, haven’t I, except for one day out at Kimmerston. I haven’t had much of a chance to listen to gossip.

Besides, I’m not a member of the ladies’ darts team myself.”

All these questions convinced Rachael that Vera’s apparent indiscretion in passing on information about Grace’s background, information which would probably soon appear in the tabloids anyway, was a tactic. It was her way of taking the investigation forward. So she came to regard Vera’s visits with suspicion. Each session was some sort of test and Vera was trying to catch them out.

The next day Vera came in when they were eating lunch. Anne and Rachael had been on the hill surveying one of Rachael’s squares. It had been a good day. Outside Anne lost her pose of cynic and entertainer and Rachael found her company restful. They’d stood on the moor together and watched a goshawk fly out of the forest to swoop onto a young grouse. On the way back to Baikie’s they’d passed the crow trap. Inside a different bird was hopping and flapping and pecking at the corn, but neither of them mentioned it.

It wasn’t much of a lunch. As Rachael had suspected, Edie hadn’t really taken to the domestic life. She had begun with enthusiasm but become bored very quickly. She had brought with her a pile of novels and seemed set on making her way through them. A great opportunity to catch up on some reading,” she told Rachael. Cooking got in the way.

And then she took a great interest in the young police officers who were now conducting a fingertip search of the marshy land close to the burn. She knew all their names and occasionally Rachael heard her give advice about girlfriend troubles, sympathizing about the stress of the job.

This time Vera had come to tell them that Edmund Fulwell had disappeared. Edie offered her a bowl of reconstituted minestrone soup, which she accepted and she sat with them at the table, eating it with great noise and relish between questions.

“Does he know that Grace is dead?” Rachael asked.

“Oh yes. We traced him quite quickly from the information your boss brought that first night. He lives and works out on the coast. He’s got a job as chef in a flash restaurant there and lives in a flat over his work. At least he did. God knows where he is now.”

“What happened?”

“Of course we went to tell him Grace was dead as soon as we found out where he was. I sent young Ashworth. He’s good at the compassionate bit. If we’d known more of his history at that point perhaps we’d have been more circumspect. At least we could have arranged for someone to keep an eye on him.”

“What did Joe Ashworth make of Grace’s father?” Edie asked.

“Well, he had no idea he was going to do a runner. Edmund was shocked of course, angry, guilty, but that was only what you’d expect.”

Edie nodded. “The classic symptoms of bereavement.”

“Oh, Mother!” Rachael muttered under her breath. “Do shut up.”

Vera continued, “He even carried on going into work. His boss is a friend, Rod Owen. I think they were at school together. Somewhere in the south where you sign up at birth. Mr. Owen told him to take off as much time as he needed, but he said he preferred to be working. It gave him something else to think about, company I suppose. And he said while he was creating in the kitchen he couldn’t be drinking. Ironic really, considering what must have happened later.” “I thought you didn’t know where he is now?” Rachael said.

“We can guess,” Vera said crossly. “Knowing his past. I’ve seen his medical records.”

“Bouts of alcoholism, you said,” Edie probed delicately.

“Mother!” Rachael shouted. “You can’t expect Inspector Stanhope to tell us what’s in the man’s medical records. They’re confidential.”

“Not the details of course.” Edie was unabashed.

“I think,” Vera said, ‘ the years his drinking has been a symptom of his illness, not a cause.” Then, quickly, looking at Rachael, “That’s my own interpretation. I couldn’t possibly divulge… “

“No,” Edie agreed. “Of course not.”

“I went to see Mr. Owen yesterday. We had a long talk. He was kind enough to give me lunch. He said it wasn’t up to Edmund’s standard of cuisine but it was certainly acceptable to me… “

Anne had been wiping the last of her soup with a piece of bread, apparently taking no notice of the conversation. Now she interrupted suddenly. “What’s the name of the restaurant where Grace’s dad works?”

Vera was put out to be stopped in mid flow. “The Harbour Lights.

Why?”

“Nothing. I’ve eaten there a few times. The owner introduced me to the chef. Grace’s father. I can’t even remember what he looked like now. A coincidence, that’s all.”

They all stared at her but she seemed not to notice and lapsed back into a brooding silence.

“What did Mr. Owen tell you?” Edie asked the inspector.

“Well… ” Vera gathered herself up for a juicy revelation. Rachael was embarrassed by the conversation. Vera and her mother could have been two old ladies huddled for a gossip at the back of a bus. She wished she had the strength to walk out and leave them to it, but she was curious too. “Apparently he’s had bouts of depression for years, even before his wife killed herself. That’s why Owen wasn’t too surprised when Edmund disappeared this time. It’s his standard response to stress to walk out and drink himself into oblivion. Of course we’re looking for him in case he does something stupid. In the past he’s threatened suicide. He ended up in St. Nick’s for a couple of months when Grace was at school.” “Oh,” Edie said. “I wonder… ” Then thought better of it and broke off.

“What?” demanded Vera.

“Nothing,” Edie replied. “Nothing, I just… ” She stopped and seemed to change tack completely. “When we were out the other day Rachael and I went to see Alicia Davison.”

Rachael glared at her furiously. They hadn’t discussed telling Vera about the trip.

“Who’s she when she’s at home?” Vera asked.

“She was Bella’s head teacher “Ah.” There was a pause. “So you know about the court case.” She turned to Rachael. “I couldn’t tell you, could I? Not my place if Bella hadn’t.”

“What was your involvement?”

“I was in uniform, new to the job, taken along as the statutory WPC in case Bella Noble broke down in tears and the blokes didn’t know what to do.”

“Did she break down?”

“No.”

“Why did you go to her funeral? It must have been one case out of thousands.”

“I always felt for her. We were about the same age, in similar circumstances. I lived with my father. He wasn’t ill and he probably wasn’t as much of a bully as Alderman Noble but there were certainly times when I felt like hitting him on the head with a brass statue.”

“Did you keep in touch with her?”

“No, but I saw the notice of her funeral in the paper and thought I’d go along to pay my last respects.”

“But you must have known she was married,” Edie said. “How else would you have recognized her name in the Gazette?”

“She sent me an invitation to her wedding. Out of the blue, to the station. I don’t know why. Perhaps she had no one else to ask.” She shrugged. “And you get close to people in times of high drama. Perhaps that was it.”

“Did you go?”

“Yeah. I spent a quarter of an hour at the register office, signed my name and wished her luck.”

“Who was the other witness?”

“A dark young man. The husband’s son by a previous marriage.”

“Neville Furness,” Edie said.

The inspector grinned. “Did you ever think about taking up police work, Mrs. Lambert? You’d have made a bloody good interviewer.” “Miss.,” Edie said automatically. “It’s Miss. Lambert.”

Vera grinned again. “Like that, is it?”

“Did you know that Bella spent time in St. Nicholas’ hospital in preparation for release?” “No,” Vera said. “I wouldn’t have known that.”

“It would be interesting to find out if she was there at the same time as Edmund Fulwell.”

“Unlikely I’d have thought.”

“But if she was… “

“If she was, so what?” Vera was brutal. “Bella killed herself. Grace Fulwell was strangled. Another coincidence.”

Chapter Thirty-Five.

The coincidences were too much for Anne. She dug away at them, sifted them like the soil in her quadrat. Godfrey had been a regular at the Harbour Lights restaurant where Edmund Fulwell cooked. They were, she knew, more than passing acquaintances. At one of their illicit meetings Godfrey had admitted to a hangover. This was unusual for him.

“So how did you come by that?” she’d asked, amused.

He’d told her he’d arranged to meet a business contact at the restaurant. The client hadn’t arrived and he, Rod and Edmund had ended up having a bit of a session. At this session hadn’t Edmund mentioned a daughter? Godfrey hadn’t said. But he had stormed out of Baikie’s chasing Grace up the hill. And she had died.

Anne was sitting in the garden at Baikie’s as she was thinking this, sheltered by the cottage from a cool easterly breeze. Now the trees were in full leaf and the view down to the Skirl was obscured. The survey was almost over and they had time to relax. Rachael had final visits to make to two of her sites and Anne had one quadrat to check in detail the one nearest to the mine working. She was saving that as a treat.

Once their own work was finished Rachael wanted them to complete Grace’s report on the otters. She thought it wouldn’t take long but Anne thought it was more complicated. She’d never trusted Grace’s results.

Squinting her eyes against the sun Anne could see above the trees to the hill. The team who’d been searching there had gone but Vera and Joe were still camped out in Black Law with a small team of detectives.

They’d made themselves at home there. Joe Ashworth had stuck photographs of his son all over the kitchen wall.

This afternoon Rachael and Edie were in the farm too, talking to Vera Stanhope, bending her ear about something. Bella probably. Rachael had an obsession about Bella, seemed to think the two deaths were connected. And Edie egged her on. Anne thought Edie was a hoot. She couldn’t understand why Rachael complained about her. She wished her mother had been half as sympathetic.

Anne was sitting in a canvas striped deck chair The bar was wedged in the lowest notch so she was lying almost horizontal and dozing when she heard footsteps on the path which led from the yard where they parked their cars, round the house to the front garden. She struggled to sit upright, felt suddenly nervous, vulnerable. All around her empty landscape stretched to the horizon. She hadn’t heard a car but perhaps she’d been more deeply asleep than she’d realized. There was no one within shouting distance despite all Vera’s claimed precautions. Edie and Rachael wouldn’t be back from Black Law yet. In the brief moment of scrambling to her feet she wondered if it might be Godfrey. Perhaps he’d decided to tell the police, after all, that he’d been here on the day Grace died. Perhaps he’d come to see her.

But it wasn’t Godfrey. Once she was standing she could tell that from the footsteps which were light and hurrying. It was Lily Fulwell, trying for some reason to be friendly.

“This really is the dinkiest little house.” She backed onto the lawn, looking the house up and down. “I’ve seen it from a distance during shoots but I’ve never actually been here. Robert has, of course.

Connie held house parties and occasionally he was invited for dinner.

Perhaps she hoped to convert him. She hated shooting. He was very young, hardly more than a boy, but I think he was in love with Connie.

She was such a character.”

“Was Edmund invited too?”

“I don’t know.” She gave a nervous laugh. “Before my time. You’d have to ask Robert. Probably not. Edmund was several years younger.” She paused. “I expect you’re wondering what I’m doing here.”

They were both standing awkwardly. Anne nodded to the deck chair “Why don’t you sit down?”

So Lily was sprawled, at a disadvantage. Anne sat on the grass beside her.

“Perhaps you’d like some tea.”

But Lily had her speech ready prepared. She shifted her position of gravity so she was leaning forward towards Anne, her bum poking back through the canvas.

“I just wanted to say how shocked we were. About the murder. And to say if there’s anything we can do. I mean anything.” “It’s a bit late,” Anne said, ‘ Grace.” Immediately she thought that at one time she’d have been chuffed to bits just to have her here.

“Ah,” Lily said. “That’s another thing. I wanted to explain about Grace.”

So this is it, Anne thought, remembering Vera’s words. This is where we get the spin.

“You do know that it all happened long before I married Robert,” Lily said earnestly. “I mean I wasn’t involved in any way at all.”

“Of course.”

“And Robert actually didn’t have much say in the matter. The old lady was still alive then. You never met the old lady.”

It wasn’t a question. Lily had done her homework. Robert’s mother had died before Anne moved to Langholme. Still a response was expected.

“No.”

“She was formidable, a real tyrant. Robert was scared of her, you know. Can you imagine being that scared of your own mother?” She paused, lowered her voice, spoke confidentially. “I don’t think she was terribly stable. I wouldn’t say anything to Robert of course he’s very loyal but I wonder sometimes if that’s where Edmund’s problems came from. They do say, don’t they, that mental illness is genetic.”

“So it was Lady Fulwell who banished Edmund from the ancestral home?”

“I wouldn’t put it quite like that.”

“How would you put it?”

“Edmund was never easy, you know. Even as a boy. Robert’s told me all about him. Today we’d say he had some sort of disorder or syndrome.

Then, they didn’t know what to do. He was expelled from school, from several schools. The only person who had any sort of control over him was a woman Robert’s mother employed in the kitchen. She was quite unsuitable as a nanny but that was how she ended up because no one else would put up with him. She was half gypsy by all accounts and not very hygienic. The family found it terribly difficult. I mean, of course one loves one’s children equally but it must have been hard to feel any affection for Edmund. In those days he didn’t seem to be good at anything. Except getting drunk in the Ridley and chasing farmers’ daughters.”

Fraternizing with the plebs, Anne thought. That wouldn’t have gone down very well.

“Besides, he wasn’t thrown out of the Hall. He moved into one of the estate houses because he wanted more independence. More privacy.

Actually I think Robert was generous to him. He lived in that house rent free, and it was space one of the workers could have used. And he never exactly contributed to the running of the business.”

“Was Grace’s mother a farmer’s daughter?” “No,” Lily said slowly. Then: “Didn’t Grace mention any of this?”

“Nothing. I didn’t know you were related. I made a joke out of it.”

“She didn’t tell you even then?”

“No.”

“I wonder why she was so secretive.”

“Perhaps she was ashamed of you, so she didn’t want to admit the connection,” Anne said lightly. “You’re not exactly popular, you know, among conservationists. You’re selling a valuable habitat for development.” She paused, saw Lily gather herself for the old defence about protecting the family’s heritage and added hurriedly, “So, who was Edmund’s wife?”

“She was called Helen.” Lily gave a nervous giggle. “Actually she was the rector’s daughter. Very Lawrentian. Though Robert’s convinced Edmund only seduced her to make his mother cross. She was pregnant of course when they married. Only just pregnant. It didn’t show. And desperately in love. According to Robert, Edmund was very dashing in a wild unkempt sort of way. She thought she could look after him, stop him drinking. She thought she’d make him settle down.”

And did he?”

“He did for a while, surprisingly. He became almost respectable. They bought a little house near the coast. Helen thought he should move away from Langholme and make a fresh start. It was all very suburban.

He even had a job of a sort. He and a friend opened a restaurant.”

“The Harbour Lights.”

“So Grace did tell you about that.”

“No, I’ve eaten there. I’ve met him. Without realizing of course who he was.”

“Ah,” Lily said. “I heard he went back to Rod when he stopped travelling.”

“I take it the suburban dream didn’t last.”

“Oh, it did for a while. A couple of years. The family thought it was the making of him. They liked Helen. She was a docile little thing.

They had her to stay at the Hall after the baby was born. And later. I wonder if Grace remembered her visits there. Perhaps not. She would have been very young.”

“So what happened?”

“Edmund had an affair. I don’t know who the woman was. I’m not even sure Robert knew. Helen took it very seriously. I suppose being brought up in the rectory had left her with old-fashioned ideas.” “Very suburban,” Anne said.

Lily didn’t pick up the sarcasm. “It was rather. It’s usually possible to find a way of working around these things.”

Does that mean you have affairs, Anne wondered. Or perhaps Roberts does. Perhaps Arabella the nanny has taken his fancy. He could easily go for the younger woman. He married Lily when she was still a child, though I’m hardly one to judge.

“But Helen committed suicide,” she said. Like Bella, she thought, but not like me. You wouldn’t catch any man driving me to that.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

And Edmund ran away.”

“I think actually he was very upset by what had happened. He did love Helen in his own way. And the child.”

“But not enough to look after her.”

“Men don’t very often, do they, even these days.”

Nor do women of your class, Anne thought. You pay people to do that.

And how much effort did my parents put into caring for me?

“Didn’t Robert’s mother feel any responsibility for Grace?”

“She was quite ill by then,” Lily said evasively. “She really didn’t feel up to it.”

“Would it have been that much of a drag to have a child in the house?” Anne asked. “It’s a big place. She needn’t even have seen her.”

Lily turned away from Anne and stared towards the horizon. “It wasn’t only Grace, was it?” she said.

It took Anne a moment to realize what she was getting at. “You mean that if Grace made her home here, the family might have to accept Edmund back too.”

Livvy nodded, pleased that she hadn’t had to spell it out. “He was terribly troublesome.”

“Has he been troublesome lately?”

“What do you mean?”

“The police say he’s disappeared. I wondered if he’d turned up at the Hall.”

“Good God, no, we’re the last people he’d turn to. He never got on with Robert and I don’t know him.” She paused. “Grace turned out well, didn’t she, despite everything. I mean, I understand she had two degrees. Edmund must have been proud.”

“She wasn’t very happy,” Anne said.

“No? Oh dear.” But the expression of regret wasn’t convincing. Lily’s mind was elsewhere. With an agility that Anne envied, she extricated herself from the deck chair “Look, I must go. The boys are home from school for the weekend and we have such little time.”

“Thank you for coming.” It had, after all, been very interesting.

Lily was her confident self again. “No problem. Do get in touch if there’s anything. I mean it. Any time.”

Anne walked with her to the yard and watched the Range Rover drive up the lane. When she returned to the garden Vera Stanhope had materialized in the deck chair She sat, bare legs stretched ahead of her, eyes half closed as if she’d been there for hours. She sensed Anne approaching and turned to face her. Her shifting weight made the canvas creak like sails in a storm. Anne imagined it ripping and Vera falling in a heap on the grass.

“What did you make of that then?” Vera asked.

“How much did you hear?”

“Everything,” Vera said with satisfaction. She moved again and nodded towards the open French windows. “From there. I saw the car pass the farm. Thought it might be interesting.”

“Was it?”

“Very. I think I can remember her Robert, you know, at those parties Constance gave. My father dragged me along. We’d be more or less the same age. But Edmund?” She seemed lost in thought.

“She is much younger than Robert,” Anne said.

Vera grinned. “I’m not past it. Not yet. I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“I’m sure you will.”

“Do you know if Lily Fulwell met Grace while she was living here?”

“Neither of them mentioned a meeting, but then Grace didn’t say much about anything.” Anne hesitated. “I saw her once on the estate, looking at the workers’ houses on the Avenue. I suppose she was curious to see where her father had grown up.”

Vera remained recumbent, beached on the deck-chair. And I’m bloody curious,” she said with a surprising intensity, ‘ find out where the bugger’s got to now.”

Chapter Thirty-Six.

While Vera sat in the sun Rachael was in Black Law farmhouse trying to convince Joe Ashworth that Bella’s suicide and Grace’s murder were related. The sergeant was polite but unconvinced.

The inspector doesn’t think that’s a profitable line of inquiry,” he said. He’d made them tea, offered chocolate digestives but he was quite firm. “You should know her well enough by now to realize you’ll not shift her once her mind’s made up.”

“OK,” Rachael said. “So, what if it’s got nothing to do with murder, but Bella was being threatened before she died? Blackmail. She met someone who recognized her, or someone from the quarry found out about the manslaughter conviction and put pressure on her. That would be a criminal case, wouldn’t it?”

“It might be but there’s no evidence of that. No complaint. Not our business.”

“But it could be our business, couldn’t it?” Edie asked. “I mean, if we were curious about what happened to a friend we could ask some questions. Inspector Stanhope couldn’t object to that.”

“She wouldn’t like it.”

“It wouldn’t be as if we’d be treading on any toes. As she’d dropped that line of inquiry anyway.” “God,” he said. “Save me from forceful women.”

That was all the encouragement they needed to trace Bella’s younger brother, the boy who had gone straight from school into his father’s butchery business. It seemed that Alfred Noble’s meat empire must have collapsed because there was no shop of that name left in Kimmerston.

There was only one butcher left a smart establishment with a large delicatessen section which catered for visitors to the holiday cottages in the National Park. The owner remembered the Nobles. “They had three shops once. Must have been worth a fortune.”

“Did the business go bust?”

“No, he sold up just in time. Before the supermarket was built and people started getting faddy ideas about nuts and bean sprouts. It must have been after the old man died.”

“He?”

“The son. Charlie.” The butcher turned away to provide a quarter of ham off the bone and some Brussels pate for a well-dressed woman with a southern accent. He was persuading her of the quality of his homemade sausage and Edie had to shout to get his attention. “Do you know where the son is now?”

Rachael cringed, but he completed the transaction and then replied, “He and his wife run the stables on the way out of town on the Langholme Road. He bought it years ago from the profit on the business.” He looked at his shop. Empty again of customers. “It was the most sensible thing he could have done. Do you know the place I mean?”

They knew exactly. It was set back from the road in a river valley surrounded by mature woodland. They passed it every time they drove back to Baikie’s.

They arrived at the stables in late afternoon. The place was overrun by girls in their early teens who had come straight from school. They seemed to be everywhere. They were humping bales of straw, pushing barrows of muck, hanging over stable doors to pat ponies’ heads.

“I always wanted to ride,” Rachael said. “You wouldn’t let me.”

“I never thought it was you.” Edie was dismissive. “Precious little madams with their jodhpurs and their gymkhanas and their pushy mums.”

She looked around, taking in the Range Rovers in the car park. “It doesn’t seem to have changed.”

I’d have loved it, Rachael thought. I wouldn’t have minded the snobbiness or having the wrong clothes.

The girls gathered round an instructor, clamouring for their favourite horses. She was a large young woman wearing a shapeless T-shirt. She shouted out names and the girls melted away. Rachael wandered across the yard to watch them tack up while Edie accosted the instructor.

“We’re looking for Mr. Noble.”

“Can I help? If you want to book lessons… “

“No.” Edie gave a little laugh to show how ridiculous that idea was.

“No, it’s personal.”

“Oh.” The woman had probably been told to keep punters away from the boss and was still reluctant. “He’s probably in the house. I know his daughter’s there.”

The house was of stone, long and low, closer to the river, separated from the road by a large indoor school and the breeze-block rows of stables. In front of it was a cobbled yard where a BMW was parked. The door was opened by a girl of about eighteen. She had glasses on her nose and a copy of Chaucer in one hand. She spoke with the rudeness of most adolescents.

“Yes?”

“Could we speak to your father, please?”

“If it’s about riding you should see Andrea in the yard.”

“No,” Edie said. “It’s not about riding.” She spoke pleasantly. She had spent her career with rude adolescents and knew better than to let them wind her up. “If he’s busy we could talk to your mother.”

“God, she won’t want to see you. She’s got a dinner party tonight and she’s locked in the kitchen.”

“Your father then.”

“I think he’s in the study. I’ll see.”

They watched her disappear into the shadow, bang on a door and yell: “Dad, there are two women to see you. I think they’re selling or JWs.”

He was dark, angular. Rachael could see the resemblance to Bella but he was lankier, thinner faced. She had been expecting someone athletic and weather-beaten but he looked more like an absent-minded academic.

“Yes?” He was cross about being interrupted, only slightly less rude than his daughter.

“We’re not selling anything, Mr. Noble. And we won’t try to convert you. My name’s Edie Lambert. This is my daughter, Rachael. She was a friend of your sister’s.”

“There must be a mistake. I don’t have a sister.” He began to close the door.

“Not now, Mr. Noble,” Edie said gently. “But you did until recently.”

“What are you saying?” “We’re not reporters, Mr. Noble. As I explained, Rachael was a Mend of Bella’s.”

He seemed to come to a decision. “I don’t want to talk here,” he said quietly. “Wait outside.” He went back into the house and they heard the shout, “Lucy, tell your mother those people from the Tourist Board have arrived. I’m taking them over to the cottages.”

On the opposite side of the cobbled yard was an older stable block, grey stone, single storey. There was evidence of recent renovation. A pile of paint tins stood outside. There was a small skip full of rubble. He led them towards the block chatting as if they were who he had claimed them to be.

“We’d wanted to expand the business for some time. In the summer we cater for a lot of tourists beginners who want to go for a ride into the hills, even for full-days treks. We thought it would be a good idea to provide quality self-catering accommodation too. We’ve just raised the capital to convert these.” He paused at the door, still split like a stable’s. “This is where we started off. There was no office or indoor school then. It’s taken years to grow the business to this point.”

He showed them into a kitchen with a quarry-tiled floor, separated from the living space by an oak breakfast bar.

“Very tasteful,” Edie said.

“There are four self-contained cottages.” By now he seemed convinced by his own fiction.

“When did you last see Bella?” Edie asked.

“The day before she killed my father.”

“Not the same day?”

“No, I didn’t see her before I went to work. I couldn’t face breakfast with Father. I still have nightmares about those family meals.” He paused. “I didn’t blame Bella, you know. You mustn’t think that. If I’d been with him all day I’d have killed him.”

“But you didn’t go with her to court?”

“I was supposed to be there. A witness.”

“For the prosecution?”

“I didn’t volunteer! I suppose I could have refused but I was only nineteen. I did as I was told. And in the end I wasn’t needed. They changed the charge from murder to manslaughter and Bella pleaded guilty to that.” He paused. “I went to the secure hospital to visit her but she wouldn’t see me. Perhaps she thought I’d betrayed her by agreeing to appear for the prosecution. I had to come all the way home.” He walked through the living area and sat down, beckoning the women to follow. “Is Bella dead? Is that what you meant before?” “Yes,” Edie said. “Hadn’t you heard?” “I told you. I didn’t hear anything of her. She didn’t answer my letters and eventually I stopped writing. So far as I knew she was still in hospital but if she’d died there I suppose they would have informed me. I was down on all the forms as her next of kin.”

“She left hospital more than ten years ago. She married a farmer Dougie Furness of Black Law.”

“She lived at Black Law Farm?” He gave a sad little laugh. “I lead treks past there every summer. I might even have seen her in the distance. She must really have hated me not to have got in touch. She knew where I was. I wrote and told her when I bought the stables.”

“I think she just wanted to start again. New life, new identity.”

“I suppose I can understand that. Sometimes I just feel like running away.” He smiled. “All this money and investment scares me. My wife’s the business woman, though you wouldn’t think it if you met her.”

“But you started the stables soon after your father died. Your wife wasn’t involved then.”

“Then it didn’t seem like a business. I enjoyed horses so I bought a stable. That was all there was to it.”

“Why did you sell the butcher shops?”

“I hated being a butcher.” Charles Noble was looking out of the small window towards the river. “Father knew I hated it. I wanted to stay on at school. I had dreams of being a vet. I envied Bella for getting out.”

“But then she came back.”

“Yes. Poor Bella.”

“It sounds almost as if you hated your father too.” “Oh, I did,” Charles said. “I always had.”

There was a clatter of hoofs on cobbles as Andrea led her party of girls out on their ride.

“A week after the court case I was approached by a local businessman who made me an offer for the shops and the slaughterhouse. He wasn’t interested in keeping the butchery going. He wanted to develop the property and the land. I could probably have stuck out for more but I signed at once.” Charles paused. “He knocked down the slaughterhouse and built that office block by the river. He must have made a fortune over the years but he paid me enough to buy this place and that was all I wanted.”

“Was the business yours to sell?”

“Father left it to me, if that’s what you mean. There was a will. And I was a junior partner. The old man wouldn’t have liked it, but it was legal.”

“What about Bella?”

“She wasn’t involved in the business but I put the profit from the sale of Father’s house into a separate account in her name. She knew what I was doing. I wrote to tell her.”

“Did she ever use the money?”

“No, it’s still there.”

“Weren’t you ever tempted to use it yourself?”

He blinked up at Edie, hurt. “Of course not. I hoped one day she’d get in touch.”

“Her husband’s disabled. He needs constant nursing care.”

“So perhaps I could help with that.” He considered the idea, seemed pleased. “I should have made more effort to persuade Bella to see me but I was very young. The whole business with Father had been horrible. Not just the way he died I told you I could understand that.

But all the publicity that followed. I felt hounded. Everywhere I went people were talking. I suppose I turned into a bit of a recluse.

Horses were less complicated.

“Then I married and Louise, my wife, thought it would be foolish to get in touch with Bella. I’d told her about the case but she couldn’t really understand what led up to it. Her attitude was why get mixed up in it all now when people have forgotten about it. Bella could find me soon enough if she wanted to.”

“And she definitely didn’t try to contact you recently?”

“No. I wish she had.”

“If she had tried to contact you but got through to your wife instead, would Louise have passed on the message?”

“Of course.” But despite the reply he seemed uncertain. “What are these questions about?”

“Bella committed suicide, Mr. Noble. We think she was troubled. No one at Black Law knew about the manslaughter charge. She was living under an assumed name when she met Dougie Furness. It occurred to us that someone might have discovered her secret, threatened her with exposure.”

“And that’s why she killed herself?”

“We think it’s possible.”

“I wouldn’t do that to her.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t. But can you think of anyone from that time who has suddenly appeared in the area again. A friend of Bella’s. Someone who might recognize her.”

He shook his head.

“You’ve not told Bella’s story to anyone?”

Actually, I don’t often think of her now.” He looked at them over thick glasses, demanding their understanding. “Isn’t that a terrible thing to say?”

“What about your wife? Could she have mentioned it to one of her friends?”

“I don’t think it’s really the sort of thing they discuss at the Conservative Ladies’ coffee mornings.”

“If you remember anything which might help would you mind giving me a ring?” Edie said. “It’s my home number. I’m not often there but there’s an answering machine.” She lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “You see, Rachael found the body. It was a terrible shock. I really think that only finding out what led up to the suicide will help her come to terms with it.” Good God, Edie, Rachael thought. You were doing pretty well until then.

Chapter Thirty-Seven.

That evening Edie stayed in Kimmerston. There was a meeting of an educational pressure group to which she belonged and of course she felt she was indispensable. Rachael thought anyway that the isolation of Baikie’s had been getting her down. She thrived on constant phone calls, friends dropping in to weep on her shoulder or to drag her into Newcastle for a fix of culture. Anne had sometimes been up for a discussion about a play or a film, but her contribution often stopped after a discussion of the leading male’s anatomy.

In the kitchen at Riverside Terrace Edie had thrown together a meal and tried to persuade her to stay too. Rachael refused she’d brought her own car specially so she could get back and she didn’t want to leave Anne on her own.

“Well, you will take care, darling, won’t you?” Rachael took no notice of this. Edie’s mind was elsewhere. She was already planning her speech. And she’d never been much concerned for Rachael’s physical safety. While other parents stressed out about safe deliverance from parties Edie had been partying herself, assuming rightly that Rachael would have the sense to make her own way home. Edie had been bothered about more difficult things relationships, anxieties, how Rachael felt.

Now though, standing at the top of the steps to see Rachael off, Edie repeated her warning. “I mean it. Don’t stop for anything and keep all the car doors locked. And when you get into the cottage make sure everything’s bolted there too.”

So suddenly Rachael was acutely aware of a danger she had never considered before. If even Edie was worried then she should take special care. Because of this jitteriness she stopped for petrol on the main road although she still had a quarter of a tank, enough to get her to Baikie’s and back several times over. When she tried to start the engine again nothing happened. She’d had a dodgy starter motor for months but hadn’t had the time or the money to get it fixed. Usually all it took was pressure on the bonnet to tilt the car to unstick it but this time, though she and the woman from the petrol station bounced and rocked it, nothing happened. And of course the AA took hours to get out to her, although she played the card of being a woman on her own.

While she was waiting she phoned Black Law and told Joe Ashworth she’d be late. They weren’t to worry. And if Edie phoned they should explain what had happened.

“I was just about to go home,” he said. “There’s still someone here to keep a look out for Mrs. Preece. And the inspector’s about somewhere.

But if you like I’ll hang on so I can come down the lane with you.” She was tempted to agree. Then she thought of his wife, waiting for him. She’d have prepared a meal for him. Perhaps she’d even kept the baby up so Joe could give him a bath. And she remembered her first meeting with Joe Ashworth on the night Bella died. He’d been amazed by the work she did, astonished that a woman could survive on her own in the hills. She could hardly ask for an escort back after putting him right about that.

“Nah,” she said. “Of course not. Besides, I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

It was midsummer in Northumberland and still light at ten o’clock as she sat outside the garage drinking cans of coke and waiting. By the time the car was fixed and she’d driven through the new tubular steel gate onto the hill it was midnight and black. When she got out of the car to open the gate she left the engine running and even then she fumbled with the catch in her haste to pull the gate open, because she was so worried that the car would stall.

The battery must have been low because the headlamps didn’t seem to give out much light. At first she tried to go as quickly as she could but she had to slow down because she was hitting the bank and catching her exhaust on the biggest of the ruts.

A sheep ambled into the track in front of her and she braked sharply and sat, petrified for a moment, staring into its bemused amiable face before realizing what she was looking at.

This is crazy, she thought. Don’t panic. Relax. Think of something else.

So she tried to concentrate on what she and Edie had been doing that day. It wasn’t too late for her to have riding lessons, was it? Just because it wasn’t the sort of thing a right-on mother encouraged her child to do. And she thought of Charles Noble, who’d loved animals too when he was a boy, so much that he’d wanted to become a vet. Yet he’d been forced instead to watch the live cattle and sheep herded from the trucks after market and be turned into meat. His father’s death had saved him from that. It had given him a chance to buy the stables.

Charles Noble had much more of a motive for killing his father than Bella had.

She was so excited by this new idea, so thrilled as she pictured dazzling Edie with it, that when she first saw the headlights coming out of apparently open countryside directly towards the passenger door of her car, she wasn’t frightened. She just thought, “I wonder who else can be out at this time of night?”

This only lasted for a second. Then she got her brain into gear and began to work out what was happening. The car was coming towards her down the forest track, the track she had taken by mistake on her first drive to Black Law that season. She knew that the track dwindled into a footpath so the car must have been parked there. It surely couldn’t be a walker who’d left a vehicle there while he spent a day in the hills. Not at this time of night. Had someone been waiting, sitting in the car, watching for her headlights through the trees? Or had they expected to have the place to themselves and been more surprised by her approach than she was by theirs?

She reached the junction before the other vehicle, then looked in her mirror to see which way it would turn. If it was being driven by country kids on an illicit joyriding trip in their parents four-wheel drive or lovers wanting romance under the moonlight, it would turn back now towards the main road and the town. But it turned the other way and began to follow her.

All right then, she told herself. There’s still no need to panic. It must be one of the police officers. Out on surveillance perhaps. Or Joe Ashworth’s sent someone to keep an eye out for me. Deliberately she tried to slow down. She was nearly at Black Law. She was approaching the ford. If she drove at this speed into the water she’d flood the engine, the car would stop and she’d look a fool. But if anything the car behind came faster. The driver had turned up the headlamps to full beam and when she looked into the mirror she was blinded. She couldn’t see the passenger or any details of the car.

She was almost at the ford when it hit her. Her neck jerked backwards and for a moment she lost control of her steering. Instinctively she stuck her foot on the accelerator to pull away from it. The car jumped forward down the bank, hitting the water at an acute angle, bonnet down like a dive. Water sprayed the windscreen so she could see nothing.

The engine hissed and steamed and then it stalled. She turned the key but nothing happened. She heard the burn eddying around her and in the distance the purr of the other car at idle.

She craned her head to look behind, expecting all the time to feel the crash of another impact. She could see nothing but the hard white light of the headlamps. She turned the ignition again but the engine was quite dead.

Into her mind ridiculously, came the image of the steward on a flight she’d once taken to the States. He had stood at the front of the plane, demonstrating, with elaborate pantomime, the brace position. She put her feet firmly on the floor of the car, where water was already seeping, and bent forward with her arms protecting her head. Behind her suddenly she heard the roar of the other car’s engine. As powerful as a jet.

Nothing happened.

The engine noise increased but instead of releasing its energy to shoot down at her the car screeched backwards. At this point the track was wide. There was a place where vehicles could turn if the ford was too deep to cross. The car backed into that and screamed away. Rachael listened to it disappearing into the distance. Then everything was quiet except for the sound of water lapping around the wheel arches.

Still sitting with her arms around her head she began to tremble.

She sat for twenty minutes before she accepted that she would have to walk back to the cottage. She turned the key over an dover again but the car wouldn’t go. By then her feet were soaking and she was cold.

There were three options. She could wait until morning when Joe Ashworth or one of his cronies would come along. She could hope that Vera Stanhope would still be awake and would send out a search party.

Or she could take the risk of walking. She knew it would be a risk.

The car had driven away down the lane but it could have parked again in the forest track and the driver could have returned on foot.

What prompted her to action in the end was an urgent desire for a pee.

No way was she going to sit there all night and wet her knickers. She unlocked the driver’s door and got out, having to push against the flow of water. There was a thin sickle moon which gave a little light. She looked once back up the track but she could see no shadow and she heard no footsteps. She didn’t want the inspector to see her in such a state. But she couldn’t make the last few yards to the cottage. She couldn’t face going past the open barn where she’d found Bella. She banged on the farmhouse kitchen door and when it wasn’t immediately opened she pushed it and almost fell inside.

Vera Stanhope was sitting in the rocking chair where Bella had often sat. There was a beer can on the table beside her. She was reading a pile of papers. She wore spectacles, which Rachael had never seen before, attached to a chain round her neck. Besides the pen which she held in her fingers like a cigarette, a pencil had been tucked behind one ear.

Why doesn’t she ever go home, Rachael thought. Isn’t she happy there?

Then she began to cry. Vera got to her feet, took a fleecy jacket which had been folded over the back of the kitchen chair, and put it carefully around Rachael’s shoulders.

Chapter Thirty-Eight.

When Rachael got up the next morning Vera had already turned up at Baikie’s. She stood in the kitchen with a piece of toast in one hand and a mug of Anne’s filter coffee in the other. Even coming down the stairs Rachael could hear her eating.

So Vera had spent another night at Black Law. Another night working.

What drove her? Ambition again. A fear of failure. Or perhaps, like Rachael, she didn’t have much to go home to. A husband or lover had never been mentioned and it was hard to imagine the inspector in domestic comfort. An evening curled up on the sofa watching telly wouldn’t have fitted in with the image at all.

“We didn’t catch them,” Vera said. “I thought you’d want to know.”

She’d left the kitchen door open and the room was flooded with sunlight.

“Nice day,” Rachael said. “I should have got up early. I could have got my survey finished.”

“Plenty of time for that surely.”

“There’s still Grace’s stuff to check.”

“All the same. No rush.”

She doesn’t want us to leave, Rachael thought. She wants us here. The crows in the trap. She wants it even more than she did before. Last night the decoy worked. Besides, if we went, there’d be no excuse for her to stay. She’d have to go home too.

“I thought we might get them,” Vera went on. “There was an outside chance they’d still be in the area.” “Not they,” Rachael said. “There was only one person in the car.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, but I don’t know why. An assumption perhaps. No, when he drove off there was a shape in silhouette. Only the driver.”

“Man or woman?”

“I couldn’t tell.”

“Not by the size?”

“No. It was all too quick. A blurred shape. That was all.”

“There was a patrol car on the Al,” Vera said. “It searched the lanes around Langholme, but there was no one driving like a maniac. No one at all except a lad on a motorbike and a local woman on her way home after visiting her mother. Which means he didn’t panic. He had the sense to lie low somewhere until the morning.”

Rachael poured herself coffee from the Pyrex jug. It was still hot.

“Where’s Anne?”

“Upstairs getting ready to go out in the field.”

“I’d better be quick then.” “Like I said, there’s no rush, is there?”

“I don’t want to be here any longer than I have to.” “No,” Vera said. “Last night would have put the wind up anyone.” It was said in a matter of fact way but it made Rachael defensive.

“Look, I’m really sorry I was such a fool last night.

If I’d left my car as soon as the other vehicle drove off you might have caught it at the other end of the track.”

“I doubt it. Not if it was driving as fast as you say.”

“I suppose not.”

“Have you remembered anything else overnight?”

“Nothing. It was a powerful saloon. That was all I could tell.”

“Colour?” “White. Pale anyway. Not metallic.” She paused and added bitterly, “Pathetic, isn’t it? That was probably the person who killed Grace. If I’d made more effort, got the registration number, you’d have been able to trace him.”

“Can’t be helped,” Vera said breezily. “We might be able to trace him anyway.”

“How?”

“I’m going to make some more toast. Fancy some?” She cut two thick slices of bread, put them under the grill and lit the gas. The matches were damp and it took some time to get a flame. Rachael, watching, thought it added to the performance. Vera wanted her audience on the edge of its seat.

“Go on,” she said, playing along.

“Well, it’s always been a mystery how our chap pie got onto the hill.

At first we thought he walked from Langholme, but that’s miles and we’ve talked to everyone who lives in the place. No one remembers a strange car parked that day. He couldn’t have driven all the way down the track because Mrs. Preece was here and she didn’t see anyone. But if he’d parked down that forest path no one would be able to see the car from here, from the farmhouse or even from the main track. As soon as he drove down that dip he’d be hidden by trees. It’s all conifers there and planted really close together.” Vera was getting more excited. “We had a team searching the hill of course but we didn’t deploy them that far into the forest. A mistake. My mistake. I’ve looked at the map again and the path goes on through the trees and comes out near the mine workings.” “Close to the crow trap,” Rachael said. “I know it.”

“I’ve had Joe Ashworth up there sniffing about.” The inspector bared sepia teeth in a malicious grin. “He’s not a happy bunny. I called him back here at first light.”

“That wasn’t very kind.”

“Don’t give me that. He had all evening on the nest. I could have called him in last night but I waited. Compassion itself, that’s me.

And I let him back to the farm for breakfast. He’s back in the forest now though, waiting for the forensic team.”

“Has he found anything?”

“Enough to put a spring into an old detective’s step. Last night certainly wasn’t the first time the car had been along there. The path’s sandy. There are some nice tyre tracks. And what looks like traces of paint where the car turned.”

“What colour’s the paint?”

“White. Why?”

“I went along there by mistake the night I found Bella’s body. I didn’t attempt to turn but I made a hash of reversing. Paint from my car could be all over the place. My car’s white.”

But Vera seemed determined to maintain her good humour. “We’ve had rain, snow and gales since then, haven’t we? I’d have thought any traces you’d left would have disappeared weeks ago. But we’ll have to do a test. That’s the brilliant thing about scientists. They’ve got tests for everything. Not so many answers but lots of tests.” She pulled a piece of bread from the grill and inspected it. It was the colour of weak milky tea. She turned it over and replaced it.

“You should get a toaster in here. I’ve got an old one knocking around the house somewhere. I’ll donate it. My contribution to Natural History.” She looked at Rachael as if she expected gratitude for the generous gesture. “We pulled out your car. It’s in the nick in Kimmerston. More tests. There might be paint on the back bumper if the burn hasn’t washed it off. Will you be able to manage until we get it back from the garage?”

“Edie’ll be back soon. We can share hers.”

“She’s arriving at about lunchtime. She phoned.”

“You didn’t tell her what happened?”

“Not in any detail. I’m too much of a coward. I thought I’d leave that to you. She’ll blame me of course.” No, Rachael thought. She’ll blame herself for once, which’ll be worse.

Vera Stanhope finished her toast and licked her fingers. “I hear you went chasing after Charlie Noble.”

“You know about that?” Rachael felt like a naughty school kid “Oh, you can’t keep much from your Auntie Vera.”

“We did ask Sergeant Ashworth if it was OK.”

“No problem. It’s a free country.”

“Do you know Mr. Noble?”

“I met him. He was living at home when the old man was killed. Why did you go to see him?” “We thought someone might have threatened Bella with exposure. We thought that would explain her suicide.”

“Well, you thought wrong,” Vera said bluntly. “At least if you had Charlie in mind as blackmailer. It wouldn’t have been him. It would be far too horrid. Charlie’s always avoided anything horrid. That’s why he ditched butchery.”

“When did you last see him?”

“Not since the investigation.”

“That was years ago. He was hardly more than a child. He could have changed.”

“You’ve met him. What do you think?” “No,” Rachael said. “I don’t think he’s changed much.”

“I remember him very well. Surprisingly well after all these years.

Perhaps because it was the first serious case I had any part in. I remember we talked to him in his bedroom. His hidey-hole. The old man used to bully him and that’s where he escaped. Everything was very tidy. He had peculiar tastes for an adolescent. He collected books, first editions, all about animals. All wrapped in plastic covers. He looked like a school prefect though he’d been working in the business for a while by then. He kept saying it all must have been a terrible mistake, though even he couldn’t pretend he was very sorry his father was dead. I got the impression that once the trial was over it wouldn’t take him long to pick himself up. He certainly knew what he wanted and he wouldn’t find it too hard to believe that nothing as nasty as murder had ever happened.” “He said he tried to visit Bella in the secure hospital. She refused to see him.”

“Hmph.” Vera could have been mimicking one of Charlie Noble’s horses.

“I bet he didn’t try very hard.”

“Why didn’t Bella invite him to her wedding then? He was her only relation.”

“She’d hardly do that if she were trying to keep her conviction secret.”

“But she invited you,” Rachael said.

“She knew I could be discreet.” Vera smiled smugly.

“Something occurred to me on the way back last night… ” Rachael said tentatively. “You’ll probably think it’s stupid but… “

“You’re wondering if Charlie could have bashed his father’s brains out?” Vera finished.

“Well, yes.” She had thought this a brain wave and was disappointed.

“My colleagues aren’t all as bright as me, I’ll give you that, but they’re not daft.” “Of course not. I thought… “

“She confessed,” Vera said.

“I know, but Charles was only seventeen, wasn’t he, when his father died? Perhaps Bella was protecting him.”

“Her prints were on the statue. She was waiting in the same room when we arrived.”

“But… “

“He couldn’t have done it anyway,” Vera said. She chuckled like a seedy stand-up comedian about to give the tag line of a dreadful gag.

“He was in his father’s office at the back of the slaughterhouse. It was tiny, a portakabin. The place was packed because besides Charlie there was a manager, a secretary and a meat inspector from the Ministry of Agriculture. They all swear that he only left once that morning to go to the lav. He was only away for five minutes. Even if he’d had the bottle to kill his father he couldn’t have done it.”

“Oh:

“Nice try,” Vera said magnanimously. “What’s the next theory?”

“Not a new theory. The same one. About Bella’s suicide. I still think someone threatened her with exposure, told her she wouldn’t be fit to care for Dougie.”

“And who do you think would do that?” Vera had the air of a nursery teacher humouring a small child.

“There is someone. Dougie’s son Neville has benefited from her death.

He’ll be taking over the farm.” When Vera didn’t respond she went on, “You met him at Bella’s wedding.”

“Would he have known about her conviction?”

“He could have done. She’d kept a newspaper cutting, some details of her past in the farmhouse. He could have found them and followed up the leads in the same way that we did.” She paused. “He’s Godfrey Waugh’s assistant. He works for Slateburn Quarries.” “I remember him from the wedding,” Vera said. “A good-looking young man. I wouldn’t mind meeting him again.” She looked at Rachael through narrowed eyes. “You keep your neb out. No more playing private eyes. Leave Mr. Furness to me.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine.

After Rachael’s dramatic incident with the car on the track Vera Stanhope’s methods seemed to become even more unorthodox. She took to haunting Baikie’s. Rachael wondered, as their work was coming to an end, if this was a deliberate ploy to hold them up. Like a lonely host delaying the departure of dinner-party guests, she didn’t want the women to leave.

Anne had noticed the tactics too, was amused but slightly unsettled by the constant presence.

“Haven’t you got a home to go to?” she asked one night. It was late.

She and Rachael had been out since dusk, trying unsuccessfully to catch a glimpse of an otter, and had returned to find the inspector cloistered with Edie.

“Not much of one,” Vera said. And glared, daring them to ask any more.

“Do you take all your cases so personally?”

She didn’t answer that but began pacing up and down the living room. As always she was wearing sandals and they slapped against the soles of her feet.

“Look,” she said, “I’ve got to find Edmund bloody Fulwell. He can’t have disappeared into thin air. Someone must know where he is. I’d have expected him to turn up in a nick or in the casualty department by now’

Rachael was surprised. She had never seen Vera so intense. Perhaps Vera knew Edmund, she thought. They’d be of a similar age. Perhaps he was invited to Constance’s parties too. She might even have had a teenage crush on him.

Vera continued to walk and to mutter.

“Rod Owen says he doesn’t know where Edmund is and I believe him. He seems really fed up. It can’t be much fun doing all the cooking. I suppose Edmund’s holed up in some hostel or B & B, drinking himself silly. Or he could have run away abroad again. He’s run away before when things have got too heavy for him.”

Edie had been sitting in a corner, apparently reading. She set aside her book. “Would he be able to afford that?”

“Not on a chefs salary. But perhaps his family helped him out. You could see why they’d want him out of the way. They wouldn’t like Edmund wheeled out for the press, talking about his daughter. Very tacky. Very bad for family image. Not that they’d admit to anything of course.”

The pacing and the muttering had an element of performance. She wanted them to know she was worried and the way her mind was working, but Rachael thought she already knew what she was going to do. She stopped abruptly.

“I’ve tracked down Grace’s social worker.” Finally. You’d think she’d have come forward of her own accord, wouldn’t you?” She claims she’s been in France on three weeks’ holiday. Nice for some.”

“What’s her name?” Edie asked.

“Why?”

“I might know her. Lots of my friends work for social services.”

“Poor them.” Vera paused. “Poor you. She calls herself Antonia Thorne. She’s been married for years but didn’t get round to changing her name.”

Edie shrugged. “I don’t know her.”

“You could ask around. See what your friends make of her. She’s based out on the coast. I wasn’t very impressed. Sounds a real wimp. One of those voices that grate. But I’ve not met her yet, so I suppose I shouldn’t judge.”

“Heaven forbid.”

“She did say something interesting.”

Rachael sensed that now they were getting to the point of the amateur dramatics. “Oh?” she prompted helpfully.

“She said, “I wonder if Nan’s been told that Grace is dead. She’d want to know.” ‘

“Who’s Nan?” “That’s what I asked. A woman called Nancy Deakin. She worked in the kitchen at the Hall when Edmund was a kid, ended up looking after him because no one else could control him.” She looked at Anne Preece.

“Olivia Fulwell talked about her when she came round for that chat the other afternoon.” “I remember.” Anne smiled, mimicked Lily’s affectation: “Half gypsy and not terribly hygienic” ‘

“That’s the one.” Vera paused. “The social worker took Grace to visit her a few times. I’m not sure why. Couldn’t get to the bottom of that one. Antonia wittered on about the importance of a child being rooted in its own past. But it wasn’t Grace’s past, was it? Not really. By then Nan was camping out in an old caravan on the estate, much to the family’s embarrassment. They could hardly evict her after she’d brought up Edmund single-handed. Eventually they got her to move into the almshouses in Kimmerston. Robert’s a trustee.” “Very convenient,” Anne said.

“I bet Lily Fulwell’s not been to see her to tell her Grace’s dead,” Vera continued as if Anne hadn’t interrupted. They didn’t seem on visiting terms. Someone should go. It’s only decent.” She fixed her bulging eyes on Anne, who stared back.

“Me? Why?”

“Well, you’re almost a friend of the family’s, aren’t you?”

“Hardly.”

And you did know Grace.”

“Not very well.”

“Look.” Vera Stanhope seemed to lose patience with the subtle approach. “I’ll tell you how it is. I’ve had everyone I can spare out looking for Edmund Fuwell. If he’s drinking he’s on a bloody long bender. It’s starting to look as if he might have something to hide.”

“You think he killed his daughter?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what to think until I find him. Nancy Deakin looked out for him in the past. It just occurred to me that he might have gone to her again if he thought he was in bother.”

“Well, send one of your chaps round to ask.”

“Oh aye. And I expect she’d tell him! We don’t know much about Nancy but we do know that she can’t stand anyone in authority. I doubt if even I with all my charm could get much information from her. But you could go along as Grace’s friend. You could say that Grace had talked about her, that you thought she ought to be told what had happened. She might talk to you.” When there was no response she added, “Come on now. Give me a break. What do I have to do? Get down on my knees?” “No,” Anne said slowly. “We’ll go, Rachael, won’t we?”

Rachael was startled by the question. She hadn’t expected to be included. She felt like a child usually left out of games and picked suddenly for a team. She nodded.

Edie had returned to her book and still seemed absorbed. Now she spoke without looking up. “I don’t know how you get away with that sort of trick, Inspector Stanhope.”

Vera’s answer was sharp and immediate. “Because I get results, pet.

And in the end that’s what counts. That’s all the bosses want.”

Later that night when Rachael was in bed, but had the light on, still reading, there was a knock on her door. Thinking it was Edie she didn’t answer. Let Edie think she was already asleep. But the knock was repeated and Anne came in. She was wearing striped pyjamas with a drawstring and a fly. Some man’s. Left behind after a night of passion.

“Sorry,” Rachael said. “I thought it was my mother.”

“What is it between you and Edie? She seems OK.”

Usually Rachael would have shrugged, given an answer which meant nothing. And anyway Anne would be the last person she’d choose as confidante. But tonight she said, “Because she’s such a hypocrite.”

“In what way?”

“All the time I was growing up I was filled with the liberal party line. Openness. Trust. The need to talk things through. But when I asked her about stuff that was important to me the same rules didn’t apply.”

“What did you want to know?”

“About my father.”

“What specifically?”

“A name would have been a start.”

“Don’t you know anything about him?”

“Not a thing. And there’s no way of finding out. I checked.”

“Perhaps she had a good reason.”

“Like what? He was a murderer? A lunatic? I’m not even sure I want to get in touch with him, but I’d like the chance to make the choice.

I’m an adult. I don’t need protecting.”

“Maybe it’s no big deal. When I was a kid I’d willingly have disowned my old man, through boredom.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Not quite. I left home as soon as I could but I was there when he died. Why don’t you talk to her again? Explain how you feel.”

“She knows how I feel.”

“Don’t you think that here, on your own territory, it might be a bit different?”

There was a pause. “Perhaps,” Rachael said.

“Worth a try then.”

“Before we leave. Yes.”

“And tomorrow we’re off to do Vera’s dirty work,” Anne said.

“It looks like it.”

“She can’t really think Edmund killed his daughter.” She hesitated. “I was wondering if she was making up all that stuff about Nancy to put us off the scent. It seems as if it’s an elaborate game to her but she’s deadly serious. Do you think she knows who the murderer is but doesn’t have the evidence to make an arrest?”

“Are you saying she suspects one of us?”

“No… I don’t know… She and Edie are pretty thick. She hasn’t let anything slip to her?”

“If she had,” Rachael said bitterly, “Edie hasn’t passed it on.”

“Don’t worry about it then. Perhaps I’ve just got a suspicious nature.” Anne went out, closing the door behind her, leaving Rachael to wonder what the exchange had really been about. She switched off the bedside lamp and lay in the milky gleam of the midsummer night.

Through the open window came the sound of water rattling over pebbles.

Chapter Forty.

The almshouses were in the old centre of Kimmerston, reached by a narrow alley from the main street. They featured as postcards of the town and occasionally tourists wandered into the courtyard to gawp.

They were listed buildings and, although not practical for wheelchairs or zimmer frames, the courtyard was still cobbled.

Rachael and Anne arrived in late afternoon. It was very hot. In the distance there was the buzz of traffic, but the courtyard was deserted.

There was no noise from the grey stone houses.

Then a door opened and a small middle-aged woman emerged. She wore a striped shirt and jacket and held a shiny black handbag under her chin as she used both hands to pull to the heavy warped door and lock it.

She hurried across the cobbles, stiletto heels clattering.

“Excuse me!” Anne shouted.

She stopped, turned on her heels, looked at her watch in annoyance.

“Yes?”

“We’re looking for the warden.”

“You’ve found her but I can’t stop. There’s a trustee meeting and I’m late already.”

“We were hoping to speak to Nancy Deakin.”

“What do you want with her?”

“A chat, that’s all. She doesn’t get many visitors, does she?”

“That’s not my fault.” The warden was immediately defensive. “We’ve all tried but she’s hardly sociable.”

“Has anyone been to see her lately?”

“I haven’t seen anyone and she hasn’t said. But then she wouldn’t.

You’re welcome to have a go. Number four. Don’t drink the tea.” She turned and teetered on.

It was very bright in the courtyard and when the front door of the cottage was opened a crack, at first they couldn’t make out the shadowy figure inside.

“Miss. Deakin?” Anne asked. “Nancy?”

The door shut again. Anne banged on it with her fist.

“Perhaps we should go.” Rachael was embarrassed. She imagined people staring from the blank net-covered windows. Anne took no notice and hit the door again. “We’re friends of Grace’s,” she shouted. “Nancy, can you hear me?”

The door opened. Nancy Deakin was very old and here, inside this house, with its latticed windows and steep roof she looked like a witch in a children’s picture book. She wore a long woollen skirt and a black cardigan with holes in the elbows. She glared at them, then spoke in a series of splutters and coughs which neither woman could understand.

“Can we come in?” Throughout the visit Anne Preece took the lead.

Rachael thought the business at Baikie’s had mellowed her. At one time she would have refused to do Vera Stanhope’s dirty work, but here she was, her foot against the door so the old woman couldn’t shut it on them again.

Nancy felt in the pocket of her cardigan and brought out a pair of enormous false teeth, covered in black fluff. She put them into her mouth and bared the teeth like a caged animal.

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

She turned and led them down a passage into a small, cluttered room haphazardly furnished by junk. It seemed that she slept and lived in this room though there was no evidence that the house was shared by another occupant. A narrow divan was covered by a blanket of different coloured knitted squares. On a frayed wicker chair was a crumpled pile of clothes topped by a black felt hat. By the window, blocking out most of the light, was a birdcage on a stand. The door of the cage was open and a blue budgie flew over their heads and came to rest on the mantelpiece.

“Grace is dead,” the old lady said, more distinctly. It was as if talking was something she had to get used to.

“You know about it.” Anne sat on the divan. “We wanted to make sure.”

Nancy pushed the pile of clothes from the chair and sat on it. She leant back, her eyes half closed. Rachael stood for a moment just inside the door then felt conspicuous and sat on the floor with her back to the wall.

“What do you want?” Nancy demanded.

“Just that. To know you’d heard. We thought you’d want to be told.

Grace mentioned you.”

“When?”

“We worked together. Out at Black Law Fell.”

“Near to the Hall then.”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t suppose they invited her round. I don’t suppose Lady bloody high and mighty Olivia cooked her tea.”

“No,” Anne replied. “I don’t think they even knew she was there.”

“The ferret will always get the rat,” Nancy said cryptically. “If it’s got an empty belly.”

Anne and Rachael looked at each other. Sunlight slanted through the latticed window and through the bars of the birdcage, spotlighting the floating specks of dusk, an elaborate cobweb in the empty grate, the faded colours of a proggie mat.

“How did you know Grace was dead?” Anne asked.

There was another pause. Nancy looked at them, weighing them up.

“Ed comes to see me,” she said at last. “He’s the only one of them who does. The only one I’d let in.” “The warden said you’d not had any visitors recently.”

“Huh. What would that one know? Money and meetings. That’s all her job’s about. And chasing after her fancy man.”

“What about Grace? Did she ever visit?”

“She’s been away a lot. University. Walking. Sometimes Ed brought her.”

“Lately?”

The old woman shook her head crossly. “I didn’t expect it. She was young. She had her own life to lead. But she’s always written.

Wherever she’s lived she’s written me letters. And Edmund would read them when he came to visit. My eyes are bad. I can’t see to read no more.” She glared at them, defying them to contradict this explanation.

“Did you keep the letters?”

“Why?”

“Grace was a friend. We don’t have much to remember her by. If we could just have the letters for a while… It would be like talking to her, wouldn’t it? We’d bring them back.”

“I don’t throw much away,” the woman conceded.

“So we would be able to look at them?”

“I don’t know. I’ll think about it.”

She crashed the teeth together awkwardly and looked at them again, maliciously aware that they were frustrated by her indecision, challenging Anne to push the point.

But Anne asked, “When did Mr. Fulwell come to tell you that Grace was dead?”

“The day after it happened. He said he didn’t want me to hear about it on the news, though I wouldn’t because I always switch off when the news comes on the wireless. I only like the old tunes. But it was kind. He’s always been like that. He don’t own a car so his friend brought him.”

“Which friend? Mr. Owen?”

“Don’t know. Didn’t see. Didn’t ask him in. Only Ed.”

“Did you see the car?”

“Not from here.” Which was true, because all they could see through the window was the courtyard and an elderly man in stockinged feet who had pulled a kitchen chair onto his doorstep so he could sit in the sun.

“Did Edmund give you any details of what had happened?”

Nancy breathed down through her nose, pulling her lips back from her gums. “Of course not. He was upset, wasn’t he? And I didn’t ask.”

“Do you have any ideas?”

“What do you mean?”

“About who might have killed her.”

“No… ” She hesitated but decided not to continue.

“How did Edmund seem when he was here?”

“How do you think?” She paused again. “He was angry.”

“Did he think he knew who’d strangled her?”

“You’ll have to ask him that. Not that it’s any of your business.” She held out a long finger for the budgie to perch on. Anne leant over to stroke it.

“Could we see those letters?” she asked.

“No.” Nancy’s voice was firm.

“We’d like to find out a bit more about her.”

“Why?”

“I said. We were friends. We miss her. And they’re a valuable record of her life.”

“They’re in a box upstairs. I don’t manage the stairs very well these days.”

“I’ll get them.” Anne got up from the divan.

“No.” With a surprising agility Nancy stood up and moved to block the door. “I don’t want you nebbing round my things. You wait here. I’ll fetch them.”

They heard her banging about in the room above them. She seemed to be muttering to herself. Then a door shut and they heard her move heavily down the stairs. They went out into the passage to wait for her there.

She held in her hand not a pile of letters but one white envelope.

“This was all I could find.” She grinned so they would know she was lying.

“That’s very kind.” Anne took the letter and added, “Do you know where Edmund Fulwell is?”

“Home, I suppose.”

“No. No one’s seen him for days.”

“He’s always been a bit wild.” “If he gets in touch,” Anne said, ‘ should tell the police. They’re worried about him.”

“No need to be worried. He can look after himself that one.”

She opened the front door to let them out. Upstairs there was a movement, a noise. They stood still, startled, and stared up the gloomy stairwell. From the shadows the budgerigar flew over the banister straight towards them. It circled as if to make its escape through the open door then landed on Nancy’s shoulder. She stroked its beak and cooed.

Chapter Forty-One.

The letter from Grace was dated two years previously. The address was a small town in south-west Scotland. In the envelope along with the letter was a picture postcard showing the scene of a river and meadows with a church tower in the distance. Nothing was written on the blank side of the card but the picture was marked with a cross and Grace had written over it in biro, “This is where I camped last night.”

Rachael was moved by the picture and the scribbled note. Grace had been so odd in her last few weeks that Rachael had thought of her as a wraith moving among them causing disturbance and upset. This made her human, real. It was the sort of thing Rachael might have sent to Edie to keep her off her back.

Vera was there as they passed the card between them. She must have been waiting for their return because they had just lit the gas to make tea when they heard her thump on the kitchen door. She came in without waiting to be asked.

“Why did the old bat choose this one to give you?” she demanded.

Rachael had expected the inspector to be grateful because they’d returned with a trophy but she seemed more bad-tempered than she’d been since the beginning of the investigation. According to Edie she’d been in Kimmerston all afternoon.

“She probably chose a letter at random just to get rid of us,” Anne said. “She won’t admit it but I don’t think she can read.”

Vera, in truculent mood, had to contradict even this. “I don’t think so. Surely she’d keep them in some sort of chronological order and just take the one on the top. There must have been one since this.

Grace might even have written from here. Did she ever write letters?”

“I never saw her but how would we know?”

“Not much of a letter, is it?” Vera held up the single sheet between her thumb and finger. “Why do you think she bothered?”

“She probably thought of Nancy almost as family,” Edie said. “Perhaps she saw it as a duty, like writing thank-you letters to grandparents.”

“Go on then.” Vera dropped the letter on the table in front of Anne.

“Read it out.”

Anne looked round to make sure she had their attention and began to read, like a mother telling a bedtime story.

“Dear Nan, I went for a walk today to look for signs of otter and it reminded me of the walks you used to take me on when I was a little girl. I’m employed on contract here by the Wildlife Trust. They offered to find me somewhere to stay but I prefer to be on my own so I brought a tent and I’m camping in the field marked on the card. It’s a lovely spot. The Trust had a student doing the same work before me but he left suddenly and I haven’t been at all impressed by his results.

There was too much guessing and not enough counting so far as I was concerned. So that means I have to walk the parts of river he’s supposed to have surveyed to check his results. It would he a lot easier if everyone followed the rules. If you’ve been properly trained it’s not difficult. I hope you’re continuing to be well and you’re still enjoying living in Kimmerston. Perhaps when I’m next in the area I’ll come with Dad to visit.” Anne looked up. “It’s just signed Grace. Not love, or best wishes, or anything.” “Hardly riveting stuff,” Vera said. “And what’s the point of her writing if the old woman can’t read?”

“Edmund read it to her.”

“When did she last see him?”

“He went to tell her Grace was dead. He didn’t want her to hear from anyone else.”

“It sounds as if he was pretty rational then, at least.” Vera looked up at Anne. “Did you ask her where he was?”

“Of course. She claimed not to know.”

“Did you believe her?”

Anne shrugged. “She enjoys making mischief. I wouldn’t put it past her to lie.”

Vera pushed the letter away from her in disgust. “Well, that doesn’t tell us much, does it?”

“I’m not sure,” Rachael said reluctantly.

“What?” Vera growled. “Spit it out.”

“Anne and I have always been surprised by the results of the otter counts Grace took on the rivers in the survey area. It’s never been systematically studied before but counts in similar bits of the county have never come up with anything like her figures. Since she died we’ve retraced some of her walks. It looks as if the counts are wildly exaggerated. There was a possibility she’d made a mistake, but this letter suggests that she was aware of the danger of over-estimation so that doesn’t seem very likely.”

“Exactly what are you getting at?”

Anne Preece replied, “Either she was madder than we thought and hallucinated legions of otters marching over the Langholme Valley or she was telling porky-pies.”

“Why would she do that? She’s a scientist.”

“Scientists have been known to falsify records for their own reasons.”

“What sort of reasons?”

“Personal glory. Because they’ve been nobbled “Are you saying she’d been bribed by the quarry company to exaggerate her records?” “No,” Anne said. “Of course not. From the quarry’s point of view that would be completely counterproductive. Just the opposite to what they’d want. The purpose of the Environmental Impact Assessment is to see what effect the proposed development would have on this landscape.

It’s in the company’s interest that we find nothing of conservation value on the site. Then they can claim at the public inquiry that the quarry wouldn’t cause significant environmental damage. If the report claimed the biggest concentration of otters in the county they’d find it hard to make any sort of case for the quarry to go ahead. Otters are furry and cute. Every protest group in the country would be here waving banners.”

“So you’re saying she was nobbled by the opposition?”

“I’m not saying anything.” Anne was clearly starting to get exasperated. “I don’t know what was going through her head. But from the letter it doesn’t seem likely she was just mistaken.”

Edie had been listening to the exchange and asked, “Who is the opposition?”

Usually Vera seemed to welcome Edie’s contributions to these discussions, but now, still angry and frustrated, she turned on her.

“What the hell do you mean?”

Edie raised her eyebrows as if commenting on the behaviour of a spoilt child and answered calmly, “I mean, is there an organized opposition group? A campaign HQ? People in charge? And is there any evidence that Grace knew anyone involved in it? Or any of the other conservation pressure groups? Perhaps she falsified her records out of the mistaken belief that she was serving a cause she believed in.”

Vera was chastened. “I don’t know. We can check.”

“There’s a group of people in Langholme who’ve been fighting the development,” Anne said, ‘ I don’t think they’ve been particularly effective. And so far as I know they haven’t got any of the big pressure groups on their side yet. It’s more a matter of the locals worrying about a decline in house prices if there’s a massive quarry on the doorstep and lorries rumbling through the village night and day.

Typical nimby stuff.” “Besides,” Rachael, “Grace wasn’t stupid. I mean, I know you think she was a bit loopy when she was here, but she must have known that in the long term that sort of fraud wouldn’t work. The only reason EIAs are accepted in public inquiries is because they’re considered unbiased. If inspectors were to lose faith in them conservationists would give up any voice they’ve got in the planning process. Grace must have realized that.” “I think she hated doing it,” Rachael said. “Someone must have been forcing her to lie. You’ve read that letter. She was obsessed about getting things right. Perhaps that’s why she seemed so stressed out while she was here. She couldn’t bear the pretence. I can understand.

It would have driven me crazy too. I should have seen what was happening. She certainly needed to talk to someone.” “Aye,” Vera said. “Well, it seems she realized that.”

“How do you know?”

“I had a meeting with her social worker today. Ms. Antonia Thorne.

Funny sort of business that welfare work. Couldn’t do it myself. I always thought you had to be a heartless sod to be a cop, but it must be worse in that line. This woman had known Grace Fulwell since she was a baby, placed her with one set of foster carers after another until she found ones that would suit. You’d have thought she’d have some sort of feeling for the girl, affection even, but once Grace went off to university she washed her hands of her. Didn’t even send her a card at Christmas. You’d have thought she’d be curious at least, but apparently not. She said she’d forgotten all about her until she’d heard she was dead.” “I think,” Edie said, ”re trained not to get involved.”

“With a kid?” Vera shook her head. “It seems all wrong.”

“Anyway… ” Edie prompted.

“Anyway, when Ms. Thorne got back from her holidays in the sun there was a pile of mail waiting for her. She hadn’t looked at it when I spoke to her earlier in the week. One of the letters was from Grace. I suppose she had no one else to turn to. Sad, that.” She paused, lost in thought, and this time Rachael didn’t think it was for dramatic effect. “Grace said that something was bothering her. There was something she needed to discuss. Although she wasn’t still officially On the social services caseload would Ms. Thorne see her?”

“Oh; Rachael was almost in tears. “If she’d been there perhaps Grace would still be alive.”

“Couldn’t someone else in the office have dealt with it?” Anne asked angrily.

“It was marked personal. It wasn’t even opened.”

“Are you saying that’s why Grace was killed?” Edie asked.

“Ib prevent her from telling anyone that she was falsifying her otter records? I must say it doesn’t seem sufficiently important.”

“Motives for murder seldom are,” Vera spat back.

“In that case you need to know who put pressure on her to lie in the first place.”

“Oh, I think we know that, don’t we?” Vera said, resented the crowd at Holme Park? Who wouldn’t them to make a profit out of selling land to a development company? Edmund bloody Fulwell. And he seems to have disappeared like a mirage. Like all Grace’s bloody otters.”

Chapter Forty-Two.

Late that evening Peter Kemp turned up, powering down the track in his new white Land Rover. Rachael had phoned him from Black Law in a moment of panic. A couple of days before Grace’s death she’d passed on the preliminary otter counts. Now Rachael wanted him to know they were probably inaccurate before he made a fool of them all by going public.

Amelia, the debby wife with the big teeth, answered the phone. In the background there were voices, laughter. In explanation Amelia said, “Just a few friends round to dinner,” and Rachael thought she and Peter never seemed to be on their own together. She told Peter it wasn’t urgent, there certainly was no need to rush out to Baikie’s but he seemed glad of an excuse to leave.

Although it was ten o’clock when he arrived Rachael suggested they went out for a walk. She hadn’t forgotten the Sunday lunch in the house in Kimmerston and couldn’t stand the thought of Edie’s sneers. Besides, she hadn’t been on the hill all day and was feeling restless and caged in. Outside it was still light, though the sun was down and the colour had seeped out of the heather and the old bracken. They walked in silence and, without either of them appearing to decide where to go, followed the track through the edge of the conifer plantation to the tarn, high on the moor. The pool, surrounded by reed, was full to overflowing despite the recent dry weather, and reflected the last of the light. The sky was enormous, lavender and grey streaked with gold.

This was a mistake, Rachael thought. Better to be cooped up in Baikie’s with Anne flirting and Edie making snide comments, than here stirring up old memories. Because here she could forgive him the stolen work and the wife. It would have been easy to reach out and take his hand.

“Do you fancy a swim?” he said and that made things worse. It was a sort of joke, a reference to the old times when they were living on their own in Baikie’s and they’d come up here after a day in the field, laughing at the shock of cold water, the peaty mud squelching between their toes as they waded out to find somewhere deep enough to swim.

She was tempted to say “Why not?” She knew what he wanted. A bit of a fling. Confirmation that the old charm still worked. Someone to bitch to about Amelia and the drag of married life. But she wanted to forget about the case for an hour, the exhilaration of running into the tarn and the feel of his jersey as he held her. The contact that Grace hadn’t had.

“No,” she said, her voice light. “We’re not here to play.” Because pretending she could be close to Peter again was like Grace pretending there were more otters in the valley than the rest of the county. It was seductive but untrue and in the end would drive her barmy.

They stood looking over the tarn. There was no breeze, no distant sound of traffic, no aircraft. Occasionally a fish jumped silver then landed with a splash and a ring of ripples and the water lapped against the reeds, spilling out almost to their feet.

“Grace was lying,” she said.

“Are you sure? She was bloody good. Everyone said. Perhaps she picked up some clues you and Anne missed. I mean if it were true it would be dynamite.” “You’d have to write a paper,” she said.

“Right!” The sarcasm eluded him altogether.

“I am sure. Quite sure. And if you publish those results in their present form I’d come out publicly to question them.”

“All right. No need to get like that. We’re a team, aren’t we? I wouldn’t do anything without consulting you first.” She said nothing. He had convinced himself and there was no point arguing.

He went on, “Why did she do it?”

Anne thinks she was just mad. The inspector thinks her father put her up to it.”

And Edie, the great oracle. What does she think?”

“I’m not quite sure.”

“It’s not like Edie to keep her mouth shut.”

He sat on the grass and clasped his knees playing the schoolboy. He looked up at her. And what’s your theory? You’re the most observant person I know. You must have some idea.”

Rachael shrugged. “How well did you know her, Peter?”

“Not at all.”

“You must have met her before she started. Interviewed her at least.

You don’t employ anyone without an interview. Company policy. I should know. But she didn’t come into the office, did she? I would have remembered. It was supposed to be my team. Picked by me. Then I found out a mammal person had been appointed and I had to lump it.”

“But she was good, Rache. The best. I had to snap her up while I had the chance.”

“Where did you find her?”

“Scotland. She was working for a mate. I saw her in the field and I was impressed. There wasn’t any need for a formal interview. Look, I didn’t mean to put your nose out of joint.”

“But you rated her. After one meeting.”

“Sure, she was shit-hot.”

Rachael stood for a moment. “Tell me about the setup in Scotland.”

“She was working for the Wildlife Trust, the second year of a two-year contract. She was supposed to be coordinating volunteer counts but she wasn’t much good at delegation and ended up doing most of the work herself. Accommodation was provided for the contract staff but she didn’t use it. She was the only woman. Perhaps that was it. She started off camping then found digs in a farm.”

“Did you go to poach her for the Black Law project?”

“God no. I went because it was my mate’s thirtieth birthday party. She was there, but only briefly. Hardly the life and soul. The next day he arranged for her to take me out. She was coming to the end of the contract. We needed someone for the mammals at Black Law. It made sense.” He paused. “Look, I know I should have consulted you but, as I said, she was good. Ideal. She was interested in moving closer to home. She had no ties.”

“Like me then. Lonely, ripe for the old Kemp charm.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” But he seemed to take it as a sort of compliment.

“Did she fancy you? Come on, you must have been able to tell.”

It was his turn to shrug.

“I think Grace probably fancied you,” she insisted. “Most women do. At least for a while. Is that why she agreed to start with us?”

“You’re not jealous, Rache, are you?” The tone was teasing but deliberately hurtful.

She turned away as if she’d been hit and he spoke more gently. “Look, I didn’t try anything on if that’s what you mean. I’d just got married, for God’s sake.” “Oh,” Rachael said angrily. “I’m not accusing you of that. What does that matter?”

“Well then?”

“I’ve been trying to think who would gain by Grace’s exaggerated otter counts. And it wouldn’t do you any harm. It’d be a great kudos to discover the best otter patch in the county. Never mind a paper, there’d be a book in it, a TV film.”

“Are you joking? I’m being paid by Godfrey Waugh. That’s the last thing he’d want.”

“So you’d have a reputation for honesty too. Mr. Waugh seems quite an honourable man. Perhaps he’d welcome that. Peter the incorruptible.”

“Not so incorruptible if the fraud was discovered.”

“Then it would be Grace’s mistake. Not yours.” She paused. “I’m not saying you asked Grace to lie. But perhaps she did it to please you.”

“You’re mad,” he said. “I don’t have that sort of power. You’ve spent too long in the hills.”

“Yes, perhaps I have.”

She sat on the grass beside him, a gesture of apology. She’d never gone in for conspiracy theories, but still she couldn’t quite let it go. “It’s not true then?”

“No, it’s not true.”

She believed him. “I’m sorry.”

They sat for a moment in silence. The light was going quickly now.

They couldn’t see as far as the horizon. The hills were black smudges.

There was a hazy moon.

“That’s all right,” he said. “You’ve been under a lot of strain. But rumours like that could do me a lot of harm.”

“I know.” She continued carefully, “But you were here on the afternoon Bella died, weren’t you?”

He didn’t reply.

“Peter?”

She thought he was going to lie but he saw sense, probably realizing there would be more credit in telling the truth.

“Yes, I was around that day.” “Why didn’t you tell me when I asked you before?”

“Because it was none of your business.”

“Of course it was my business.” “No,” he said. “This time it wasn’t.”

“Why were you walking?”

“I’d been in the office all week, sitting around, eating lunches with clients. I needed the exercise.”

“That much exercise? Walking all the way from Langholme?”

“I didn’t walk from Langholme. I’d parked the car up the track into the forest and walked through to Black Law that way. I came back over the hill.”

“The inspector thinks Grace’s attacker parked his car there.”

“Well, I didn’t kill Grace. I couldn’t have done. For Christ’s sake I was in a meeting with you at the time.” She didn’t answer and he asked roughly, “Are you satisfied?”

“I want to know what you discussed with Bella.”

“Business, Rache. That’s what I’m about now. Not conservation.

Business.” He turned so his back was almost facing her. “So I can afford the pretty wife and the nice house.”

“Don’t you dare blame Amelia,” she shouted. A startled coot scuttled out of the reeds and flapped over the water.

“No,” he said quietly. “No, that wouldn’t be fair.”

She felt herself being seduced again by his sadness. She had to fight the urge to comfort him and tell him she’d make everything all right.

What is wrong with us? she thought. Why do we do it? Is this how Bella felt about her little brother? Men turn pathetic and we step in to sort things out.

“I have to know what you said to Bella.” She kept her voice firm. “I have to know if anything you said made her kill herself.”

“Of course not. What do you take me for?”

“What was it all about, Peter?” “I’ve told you. Business.”

“Did someone send you there?”

“What?” The question shocked him.

“Whose business were you discussing? Yours? Godfrey Waugh’s? Or were you there on behalf of Neville Furness? Doing his dirty work?”

Peter didn’t answer. He stood up and pulled her to her feet, then faced her with his hands on her shoulders. “You’ve got to leave this alone,” he said. “It’ll make you ill.”

“No.”

“You’re a mate, but sometimes you’re too fucking serious.”

He took her hand and set off down the hill. She followed, laughing despite herself, and they ran, hand in hand, Hansel and Gretel towards the lights of the cottage.

Chapter Forty-Three.

The next morning, after an early count, Rachael went to Black Law farm.

She wanted to tell Vera Stanhope that the survey would be finished in a week’s time. It was reassuring to have this time limit. A deadline for them all.

She tapped on the kitchen door and walked in. The kettle was humming.

It bubbled to a boil then switched itself off. In another part of the house a door shut. She didn’t hear footsteps but suddenly Neville Furness appeared in the doorway. The way he walked softly on the balls of his feet made her think of a big cat. Rachael recovered from her surprise first.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I was looking for Inspector Stanhope. I didn’t realize… “

“She’s not here.” She couldn’t tell what he felt about the invasion by strangers of what was now his home. “Nor the sergeant. They left early this morning to go to Kimmerston. They should be back at any time.” “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I’ll try later.” She was already backing out of the door.

“No! Please.” His voice was urgent. “I was just going to make some coffee. I suppose the police must have coffee in the place.”

“In the cupboard next to the sink.”

She stayed because she was curious. As he moved with a controlled energy about the kitchen, reaching up for mugs, squatting to lift milk from the fridge she tried to work out how old he was. Mid thirties but very fit. No grey in the dark hair. He wore jeans and an open-necked shirt. He turned suddenly to offer her a biscuit and saw her staring.

He smiled and she felt herself flush as if she was in the middle of a lecherous fantasy. There was a down of dark hair on the back of his hand and black hair curled from the cuff of his shirt. He smiled again. His teeth seemed very white.

Not a cat, she thought. A wolf. And I’m Red Riding Hood.

“Come through to the other room. It’s more comfortable.”

What big teeth you have, Grandma.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll not bite.”

He led her into the room with the French windows overlooking the overgrown garden and the view of the hill. Neville seemed too restless to sit still and after a moment got up to stand in front of the huge painting of the old mine workings.

“My mother did this,” he said.

“I know, Bella told me.”

“Did she?” He seemed surprised, pleased.

“We were good friends.” She wanted to stake an allegiance.

“I’m glad. She must have needed friends. It can’t have been easy looking after my father. All that work and no response.” “There was a response,” Rachael said sharply. “There still is… He understands more than people realize.”

“Oh?” He was polite but disbelieving. Perhaps it was an attempt to hit back at him when she asked, “Do you remember your mother?”

But he seemed delighted to have the opportunity to talk about her.

“Not very well. Nursery rhymes sung at bedtime. Some games. She loved dressing up. And they fixed a swing for me in the barn. I remember that. Swinging into the sunshine and back into the shadow.

Gran fussing because she thought I’d fall and my mother laughing. There was one party I was taken to at Baikie’s too. It must have been nearly Christmas, very frosty and cold. It was supposed to be a great treat, but Connie was so enormous that she terrified me. One of the smart ladies was wearing a fur coat and I cuddled into it, hiding. They all laughed.” He paced to the French windows and looked out over the hill.

“It’s not much, is it?”

No. But more than I’ve got of my father, she thought bitterly, and made up her mind that this time she would have to pin Edie down. She deserved to know her father whatever he was like. She’d put up with enough evasion. She’d have it out with Edie before they left Baikie’s.

As Anne had said, this was a good place to get it sorted. Neutral ground. It would be another deadline.

“I’m sorry.” She realized that he’d been speaking. “I was miles away.” “I said that Dad was heartbroken when my mother died. He didn’t take any interest in anything. I mean, he carried on with the farm work but I suppose that was some sort of release. It would tire him anyway so he could sleep. But he couldn’t take an interest in me. It was too much of an effort. Emotional, I mean. He’d given everything he had to my mother. I could tell even then. Kids can, can’t they? So I tried to keep out of the way.”

She had a picture of a boy, creeping around the house, shrinking into shadows, making no noise, and found it hard to reconcile with the image of this successful, energetic man.

“And your gran came to look after you?”

“Ivy, yes.” He turned from the window to face her. “Did Bella tell you about that too?”

“About you and Dougie and Ivy living together. Yes.”

“They were good times. We weren’t a conventional family but it worked OK. Dad found it easier when I was old enough to help on the farm. We had things to talk about then.” “Neutral ground,” she said, echoing her thoughts about her and Edie.

“Something like that.”

“Why did you leave?”

“I left first to go to school. It’s too far to travel from here to Kimmerston every day, especially in the winter, so the council run a hostel where high school kids can board during the week. I was lonely at first but I suppose it made me independent. Then I went away to college. Like you, I suppose. It’s what young people do.”

“Weren’t you tempted to come back?”

“Not then. I had other ambitions. Something to prove perhaps. Later, when Dad was ill and it would have been natural to take over the farm, Bella was here, doing at least as good a job as I could.”

“Did you resent her taking over?” It was an Edie-like question but he seemed not to mind. “A bit, I

suppose. Only natural, isn’t it? But I’d not have had the patience to care for him like she did. As I said, we weren’t that close. Because of Mum dying he could never be a touchy-feely sort of dad, even if it had been in his nature in the first place. I couldn’t imagine doing all those intimate things Bella took in her stride -feeding, bathing, you know. And I couldn’t imagine Dad wanting me to do it either. I suppose I could have taken over the farm, but I don’t think it would have worked, the three of us together. Now though… ” He had been talking almost to himself and, realizing suddenly that he had an audience, stopped abruptly.

“You’re not thinking of farming Black Law yourself?” She was astonished. The whole encounter had been a surprise. She had thought of Neville Furness as a businessman. Ruthless, ambitious. Working first on the Holme Park Estate and then for Slateburn Quarries, he was, so far as she was concerned, one of the bad dies who ravaged the countryside. A cartoon villain. It had been easy to blame him for Bella’s suicide, even to suspect him of Grace’s murder. Yet now he was talking so diffidently about his father, with such affection about the farm.

Watch out, girl, you’re being conned, she thought. What big teeth he has. A wolf in sheep’s clothing.

“It has crossed my mind to move back,” he admitted. “It’s either that or sell it and I don’t think I have the heart to do that. But I’ll have a look at the figures. Perhaps I’m not being realistic.”

“What about the quarry?”

“Oh, the quarry would go ahead without me. Or not, depending on the outcome of the inquiry.”

“I suppose you’d sell access to the site across Black Law land,” she said. “It would make more of a profit than sheep.”

“At the moment anything would make more of a profit than sheep.”

“Would you come to an arrangement with Godfrey Waugh?” she persisted “I don’t know. I still love this place. It wouldn’t be the same, would it, with a main road past the kitchen door, articulated trucks rolling past every hour of the day and night.”

Don’t be naive, she thought. Don’t get taken in. They all tell you what you want to hear. Remember Peter Kemp.

“Do you have any idea why Bella killed herself?” she asked suddenly.

“I feel responsible in a way.”

“Do you?” It was the last thing she had expected.

“I should have realized it was all getting too much for her. Looking after Dad, the farm. Something must just have given. At least… ” “At least what?” she demanded.

He shook his head. Some expression of distaste on his face prompted her to complete the sentence for him. “You were going to say that at least the violence was directed at herself and not at your father?” “Yes,” he said. “All right.”

“You knew about her conviction?”

“Of course.”

“When did you find out?”

So it was you, she thought. You made her kill herself. Somehow you found out and you couldn’t bear the thought of her looking after your father. But again his reply surprised her.

“It was years ago, before they were married. I was invited to tea.

This room was just the same. We sat here, drinking tea and eating walnut loaf and she said, “I think you should know. I’ve a conviction for manslaughter.” Quite calmly, as if it was a bit of news she’d picked up at the mart.

“Then I remembered the case. It was when I was a kid but it was all over the papers and they talked about it at school. Charlie Noble had been a pupil there a couple of years before. She’d told Dad the night before, had offered to leave at once if he wanted her to. Of course he said she should stay, but she insisted on telling me too.

“I said it was up to them, their lives. That was what they expected and I’d have wanted the same response from them if it was the other way round. But it wasn’t easy. I thought she was after a meal ticket.”

“She wasn’t like that.” But Rachael wondered how she’d feel if Edie took up with an ex-con.

“No. I realized that later. I’d have found it hard to like her anyway at the time. She wasn’t my mother. And my father seemed happy with her. Much happier than I’d ever been able to make him. I was probably glad of an excuse to disapprove.” He smiled. “I came to terms with it when my father was ill. It would have been churlish then to keep up the icy formality. I started to visit, to stay overnight occasionally.”

So Neville’s room really was Neville’s, Rachael thought.

“It was true what I told you at the funeral. We did get on very well at the end.”

“I’m glad.” But she wasn’t glad. She was jealous. How could Bella have confided in Neville Furness and not in her? And she wasn’t even sure she believed him.

In the distance there were voices. Vera Stanhope and Joe Ashworth had returned. Even from here Rachael could sense their anger and frustration. Doors were slammed. Vera swore. It seemed the meeting in Kimmerston hadn’t been a success.

“I want you to have something,” Neville said quickly. He looked at the door as if he expected Vera to burst in. “Something of Bella’s. She’d want that.”

“Oh, I don’t know… “

“Are you allowed away from this place?”

“Of course.”

“Come to dinner with me. Not tonight, there’s a meeting. Tomorrow.”

“I can’t,” she said. “My car’s at the garage.”

“I’ll pick you up. Of course.” He moved to the door. “I’d better see what they want with me.”

Then she realized that Vera had summoned him to Black Law for an interview. He hadn’t said he was there because he loved the place; that was the impression he’d given. She felt cheated. She had wanted to ask Vera what news she had on the car which had rammed her, but now she left immediately and went back to Baikie’s to work.

Chapter Forty-Four.

In the garden at the Priory Anne was weeding. She was wearing shorts and knelt on an old folded towel, standing up occasionally to stretch and move on to the next patch. The sun was hot on her back and shoulders. The weeds pulled out easily and she could shake off the sandy soil before throwing the ragwort and the groundsel into her barrow.

She had paid a man from the village to come into the garden every week to water and cut the grass but he’d done nothing else and the plants seemed to have thrived on the neglect. The place had a riotous tropical feel. There were large overblown blooms and under the fruit-net berries had ripened and dropped from bushes and canes, so as she crouched in the border she smelled decay as well as heady perfume.

And all the time she felt that the weeding was a futile gesture because she couldn’t imagine being in the Priory in twelve months. Left to himself Jeremy would either allow the place to become a wilderness or he’d invite one of his arty friends up from London to consider a landscape design. She imagined that they’d pull out all the plants and devise something minimalist and oriental with gravel and strange statues.

It was Edie’s idea that she should take a day off. Anne decided that she got on so well with Edie because, although she hardly liked to admit it, they were of the same generation. They were somehow less hung up than the youngsters with all their principles.

Anne had confided to Edie that the thought of leaving Baikie’s to return to her life at the Priory and Jeremy was making her panic. Of course she hadn’t told Edie about Godfrey but she had guessed about an affair that had gone wrong.

“The trouble is I haven’t really thought it through,” Anne had said.

“While I’m here I forget that there’s anything going on outside. I mean, I know we have to put up with Vera’s antics but that’s almost seemed like part of the survey. It’s all about digging around to find answers, isn’t it? But now we’ve got a date for leaving, well, I can’t put off making decisions for much longer.” Then Edie had said, “Why don’t you take a day off and go home? It might put things into perspective.”

Anne had taken the advice and while she squatted in the sun untangling the goose grass and the columbine, she had been trying to sort out the more difficult mess of how to spend the rest of her life.

“You have to decide what you really want,” Edie had said. Which was all very well except that she knew that what she really wanted was Godfrey Waugh and she still wasn’t sure whether or not he was a murderer.

At lunchtime Jeremy arrived home. He had interests of some description in an antique shop in Morpeth and had gone in, he said, to check that the manager had priced some new stock correctly. The manager was young and pretty.

“Roland has no idea,” Jeremy said. He stood on the flagstone path, very dapper in his Ralph Lauren shirt and his St. Laurent blazer, sweating slightly. He had to shout because he wouldn’t venture onto the grass in case his shoes got mucky. Anne refused to stop weeding to go to him. There was something reassuring about the rhythm of stooping and pulling and of seeing the ground clear in front of her.

“I mean, he’s a first-class salesman. I’ll give him that. But he knows nothing about the period.”

She wondered briefly which period but knew better than to ask. Jeremy liked to lecture.

“You’ll never guess,” Jeremy went on excitedly, hands flapping, a parody of himself. “We’ve been invited to a do at the Hall.”

That did make her stop. She stood up, felt the muscles in her shoulders pull, the tingle where the sun had caught the back of her legs.

“What sort of a do?”

“Oh, nothing really formal. Nothing really posh. I mean, I expect everyone and his dog will be there. It’s some sort of celebration for the youngest brat’s birthday. But Lily Fulwell did come here specially to ask.”

“You’re such a snob, Jeremy,” she said gently.

“Darling,” he said, “I can’t help it. Are you going to stop that now and come in for lunch?”

“If you like.”

“I can’t wait until you give up that dreary business in the hills.

Won’t it be wonderful when everything’s back to normal again?” She caught the anxiety in his voice and thought that Jeremy was probably panicking too. He wasn’t stupid and hated any change or disruption. He was a kind and funny man and she thought she would miss him. But it wouldn’t do to stay.

“What shall we have for lunch?” She couldn’t face a confrontation now, even about when they should eat. This was her day off.

“Oh God!” He was distraught. “I didn’t think. I meant to pick something up on the way back.”

“Let’s go to the pub,” she said, then smiled when Jeremy pulled a face.

Homemade leek pudding or jumbo sausage and chips weren’t really his taste. He didn’t feel at ease with the lunchtime boozers.

“Oh God,” he repeated. “All right. If we must. But I wouldn’t do it for anyone else but you.”

In the house he followed her upstairs, waited in her bedroom, shouting through the door to her when she stood in the shower. This is what it must be like, she thought, to have a clinging child who follows you everywhere. She heard his words sporadically through the sound of the water. At first it seemed he was talking about the Fulwell party again. The idea of being invited to the Hall had delighted him. She caught: “I suppose we’ll have to get it a present.”

But when she emerged, wrapped in a towel, she realized he was talking about something else.

“You will phone her, won’t you? I can’t face putting her off again.”

“Phone who?”

“The woman who’s been trying to get in touch with you. I just said.”

She was sitting at the dressing table rubbing the towel over her hair.

The sun had made it brittle and the roots needed doing. “I didn’t hear.” “Oh God, Jeremy, talk to yourself,” he said. He was sitting on the bed behind her. She saw his reflection in the dressing table mirror, put out but trying not to show it.

“I’m sorry. Can you tell me again?”

“A woman phoned for you several times. She presumed I could get a message to you. I didn’t like to tell her I hardly ever see you these days.”

“Sorry,” she repeated to keep the peace. She thought what right’s he got to make me feel guilty? He’s usually in London anyway. Then, because he was still sulking, she asked, “What’s her name?”

“Barbara something. She said you’d have the number.”

“Waugh?” she asked. “Barbara Waugh?”

“That’s it.”

“What did she want?”

“Oh, she wouldn’t tell me. I presumed it was girly stuff. You will phone her before you go back to that hovel in the hills?”

“I will, but not until I’ve eaten.”

He grimaced. “Come on then. Let’s get it over.”

She was tempted to take him into the bar where Lance, the young mechanic from the garage, would be eating boiled ham and pease pudding sandwiches with oily hands. A juke-box playing rock music tried to compete with Sky TV. Instead she took him to the lounge. There were only two other customers in the room, sitting at a table in the corner.

At first they were so engrossed in conversation that they didn’t see Anne and Jeremy come in. But Anne saw them immediately. It was Godfrey Waugh and Neville Furness. Godfrey had his back to her but she recognized him at once, the grey tweed sports jacket he wore when he was trying to be casual, the thinning hair. A glass of orange juice stood untouched beside his elbow. Neville was drinking beer and when he looked up from the conversation to take his glass, he saw her.

He must have said something to Godfrey, because although he didn’t look round he quickly drank the juice then he stood to go. Anne wondered what they could be doing here. Perhaps another meeting with the opposition group, another concession, another bribe? Neville nodded to her as he walked past, but Godfrey, staring straight ahead, would not catch her eye.

Jeremy was farting about with menus and showed no sign that he had noticed the men. She said, “Order me a G &T. I’m just going to the ladies’.”

She caught up with Godfrey in the car park. He stood with his keys in his hand by the side of his white BMW. Perhaps he’d wanted her to catch him up, had been deliberately slow, because Neville was already driving away. She thought though, as he looked in his wing mirror before pulling out into the road, that he must have seen them.

“I can’t stand this,” she said. “What do I have to do?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re saying it’s over between us then?”

“No,” he said. “No. Trust me. Not much longer.”

“When can I see you?”

“Soon.” He reached out and touched her face, stroked it from her forehead down her cheek to her chin. She felt the rough skin of his thumb and fingertips. “You will wait?”

“I don’t have much bloody choice.” To keep some remnant of pride she turned away before he did and stormed back into the pub.

The gin was on the bar, the ice already starting to melt in the glass.

“Are you all right?” Jeremy said. She must have looked pale. She felt weak and shaky.

“Fine, just too much sun.”

When she returned to the Priory, several gins later, Jeremy bullied her into phoning Barbara Waugh and she didn’t have the energy to resist. At least, she thought, I know Godfrey’s not there. The phone was answered by the child. Anne was thrown for a moment. She was never quite sure how to speak to children.

“Can I speak to your mother?” She realized she sounded abrupt, rude.

“Who shall I say is calling?” It was as if the girl had learnt to articulate the words at an elocution class.

When Barbara answered she was breathless. Perhaps she was worried that Anne would hang up before they had a chance to speak.

“I was in the garden. Such a beautiful day. I am so sorry to have disturbed your husband with my calls. He must think me very foolish.”

“Not at all.”

“I wonder if we could meet?” The voice seemed to break and she apologized again. “I’m sorry but I don’t know where else to turn.”

“Why not?” The gin had made Anne reckless.

“What about Thursday? Could you come here? Or if that’s not convenient I could come to you.”

This from Barbara who never went out. She must be desperate, Anne thought. “No, Thursday’s fine. And you’ll never find Baikie’s. I can come to you. In the afternoon?”

“Oh yes.” The relief was obvious. “You’ll be able to meet Felicity.

Come for tea.” At least, Anne thought, there’ll be homemade cake.

Chapter Forty-Five.

When Anne returned to Baikie’s that evening the effects of the gin were wearing off. She regretted having agreed to meet Barbara. She shouldn’t have let Jeremy persuade her to phone in the first place. The encounter with Godfrey had been unsatisfactory but it seemed he had plans. Perhaps having afternoon tea with Barbara would cock them up?

What would Godfrey think if he found out? And still she had come to no conclusion about what she should do when the project was finished.

The thoughts, jagged and unformed, danced in her mind as if she had a fever. She had spent too long in the sun and was restless and spoiling for a fight. Rachael was in the living room, working at the table. Her papers were in neatly symmetrical piles.

“Well?” Anne demanded. “Did you tell Stanhope what we agreed? We’ll stay until the weekend and no longer.”

Rachael looked up, but seemed preoccupied. “I couldn’t.” “You promised you wouldn’t go all weedy on me. An ultimatum we said.

You promised you wouldn’t let Stanhope intimidate you.” Anne flung her bag onto the sofa, releasing a faint cloud of dust.

“I didn’t. I didn’t even get the chance to talk to her. Neville Furness was there.”

“What did he want?”

“I’m not sure he wanted anything. I think Vera asked him in to answer some questions.”

“What about?”

“How on earth would I know?”

“He must be a suspect.”

“Perhaps. But Vera disappeared again this afternoon and Joe Ashworth wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“Neville was in the pub in Langholme at lunchtime with Godfrey Waugh.

Reporting back to his lord and master, I suppose.”

“Was he?” Anne seemed flushed and jumpy and Rachael wasn’t sure what to make of the information. At one time she would have been excited by this evidence of Neville’s perfidy. Now she was confused. She didn’t like the thought of Neville obeying Waugh’s orders. She pictured him suddenly on the hill working the sheep with a dog and found that image more pleasing. “It’s possible he won’t be working for Slateburn Quarries for much longer.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was talking about coming back to Black Law to farm.”

“Has he actually handed in his notice?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I bet he hasn’t. You weren’t taken in by that, were you?” She was pacing up and down, practically ranting. “It’s a knack he has. He tells people what they want to hear and then they trust him.”

“How do you know?”

Anne was still for a moment. “I’ve met other people who’ve come under the Neville Furness spell. Do you think Vera would drag him out here if he weren’t involved in the murder?”

They stared at each other. Rachael was embarrassed by her impulse to rush to Neville Furness’s defence. In the garden there was a burst of birdsong. Upstairs a cistern was flushed and they heard Edie’s footsteps in the bathroom, water running, tuneless singing.

“He’s asked me to dinner,” Rachael said. She could feel herself blushing.

“You didn’t say you’d go!”

Rachael didn’t reply.

“But you blame him for Bella’s suicide!” Anne cried.

“I know.”

“Well then. Are you crazy?”

“Perhaps I was wrong about Neville having put pressure on Bella. She told him and Dougie about her conviction years ago, before they were married.”

“And perhaps you’re deluding yourself.”

“No. Why would Neville drag the information up after all this time?”

“I don’t know. Because of the quarry. Because he wants to get his hands on the farm. Anyway, you only have his word for what Bella told him. Dougie’s hardly in a position to contradict. How can you know he’s telling you the truth?”

Anne had come up to the table and was leaning on it, her face very close to Rachael’s. Rachael turned away.

“I believed him. I didn’t want to, but I did.”

The effort of keeping calm made Anne’s voice shake. “Look, you’re contemplating going out on a date with a murder suspect.”

“It’s not like that. Not a date. It’s just to talk, to finish the conversation we started this morning.”

“Have you told Edie? I expect she’ll have something to say about it.

So will Vera, for that matter.”

“What’s that about Vera?” The voice resonant as a foghorn, made them turn. The Inspector must have been moving even more quietly than usual, or they were engrossed in their discussion, because she had appeared suddenly at the French windows like a character in a Whitehall farce. Her bulky form blocked out the last of the light. Rachael wondered how long she had been listening, then how many other conversations in this house had been overheard.

“Well?” Vera said jauntily. She looked tired but more cheerful. “Was somebody taking my name in vain?” She opened the door wide, but remained outside, leaning on the frame. She was wearing one of her shapeless floral frocks, with a bottle-green fleece jacket over the top. The jacket was zipped tight and the dress was pulled over her knees. Anne turned to her, demanding support.

“Neville Furness has invited Rachael out for dinner tomorrow night.

She’s agreed to go. I thought you might have something to say about it.”

Vera shrugged. “None of my business, is it?”

“But he’s probably mixed up in this murder.”

“Tut, tut… You can’t go about saying things like that. It’s speculation. He’s been helping us with our inquiries, that’s all. No question of any charge. He can see who he likes.” Vera nodded towards Rachael. “And so can she. She’s a consenting adult.”

“You’re deliberately putting her into a position of danger.”

“Don’t be daft. Whatever position she gets in, she’ll have put herself there. And she’ll not be in much danger when we all know who she’s with and where she’s going. Just because you don’t like the lad… “

Rachael listened to the argument conducted over her head. Again she felt she was part of a drama played out for the benefit of other people. Vera was clearly delighted by the development.

Rachael thought, It’s just what she wanted. Neville’s the crow and I’m the decoy. And Anne seems too passionate to be entirely objective.

Perhaps Neville’s been one of her conquests. She didn’t want to linger on that thought and broke into their conversation. “I’ve already said I’ll go.” “Why not?” Vera said jubilantly. “He can afford to buy you a good dinner.”

“He’s cooking at home.”

“Is he?” Vera gave a huge wink. She disengaged herself from the door frame, came into the room and shut the door. “You and me had better have a bit of a chat.”

“What about?”

“Your after-dinner conversation. I talked to Mr. Furness today but he didn’t give much away. Pleasant enough but very cagey. Find out if he knows anything about Edmund. He’s still probably in with the Fulwells, they might have told him something.”

“Why should I do your dirty work?”

“You won’t be,” Vera spat back. “You’ll be doing your own. You’re the one that started playing detective.”

“We’re leaving.” Rachael felt like a defiant child.

“Next weekend. At the latest. We’ll have finished our work by then.”

“Will you? So will we, I hope.” She left, almost noiselessly, the way she had come.

Rachael stood in the garden. Anne had gone to bed but Rachael seemed to have been infected by her febrile mood and didn’t think she would sleep.

The grass was damp. There was a lake of mist over the flat land by the burn but the sky was clear. She heard a noise behind her and turned, startled. “Christ, Edie, don’t sneak up on me like that.”

“You shouldn’t be out here on your own.”

“It’s a bit late to go all protective on me.”

“Perhaps.” Edie was wearing a cream wool kaftan, a garment she had used as a dressing gown for as long as Rachael could remember. With the mist in the background she looked like a character in a low-budget horror movie a priestess perhaps at a ritual sacrifice.

She stood at Rachael’s side.

“I heard you give Vera an ultimatum.” Christ, Rachael thought, is everyone in this house ear wigging

“I thought she should know what was happening. Our work will be finished by the end of the week. There’ll be no point in our staying.”

“I wonder if it’ll all be over by then. The investigation, I mean.”

“She seems to think so.”

“That’s what she’d like us to think.” “But you don’t?” Rachael asked. “I couldn’t stand it if he were never caught.”

“Why? Is revenge so important?” Edie’s voice was detached. She could have been undertaking academic research.

“No. Not revenge. But not to know… Don’t you feel the same?”

“I never met Grace. That makes a difference.” They stood for a moment in silence then Edie said, “In some ways I’ll be sorry to leave.”

“Before we leave-‘ Rachael came to an abrupt stop.

“Yes?”

“I need to find out about my father.”

“Another ultimatum?”

“If you like. No. A request, that’s all. Tell me about him.”

She expected the usual refusal, the party line. What do a few genes matter? Do you really need a father figure to give you an identity?

Why get taken in by the patriarchal conspiracy?

“Is it really important?” Edie asked gently. Another question in her survey of moral attitudes.

“Not knowing’s important. That’s what I meant about Grace. And it gets between you and me.”

“I didn’t realize,” Edie said. “I’ve been stupid. Obviously.”

“You did what you thought was best.” “No. I did what I thought was easiest.” She paused. “It’ll come as an anticlimax, you know. No great drama. Recently that’s what prevented me from telling you.”

“All the same.”

“I have been working up to it. It was finding out about Bella, I suppose. Wondering if you imagined your father as a murderer.”

“Is he?”

“Not so far as I know.” She smiled, put her arm around Rachael’s shoulder. Rachael didn’t pull away as she usually would have done. It would have been churlish when Edie was prepared to make concessions.

“If we’re going to talk, shouldn’t we go inside?” Edie asked. “It’s getting cold.”

Perhaps it was the word ” invested with all Edie’s special meaning? Perhaps it was the arm round the shoulder? But Rachael suddenly got cold feet. “You don’t have to tell me now. As I said, before we leave… “

Edie pulled away from her daughter, looked at her. “I was thinking it might be easier if I wrote it down,” she said. “That way I’d have my facts straight and you’d have something to keep.”

“Yes.” Rachael was grateful. She couldn’t face an emotional scene tonight. “Yes, I’d like that.”

They went into the cottage together. Edie closed the French windows behind them and pushed in the bolt. Halfway up the stairs she stopped.

“Tomorrow you’ll have to tell me all about Neville Furness,” she said.

“I want to know what he’s like.”

Chapter Forty-Six.

Neville Furness collected Rachael from the Riverside Terrace house in Kimmerston and Edie was there to see her off. This arrangement was agreed by Rachael but had been decided by Vera and Edie who were closeted together in the farmhouse for most of the morning.

Neville arrived exactly on time. Edie opened the door to him. Rachael had been flustered in her preparations, even more confused than she had been the day before. Did she want to attract this man or repel him? In the end she chose thin cotton trousers and a loose silk shirt. She brushed out her hair and stole mascara and eyeliner from her mother’s room. Edie invited Neville in and they stood together in the hall making polite conversation until Rachael hurried down the stairs. There was something very old-fashioned in the scene below her. Edie was wearing one of her long, drop-wasted skirts and Neville, dressed in black jeans and a white collarless shirt, with his bushy beard, could have been a character from Thomas Hardy. He should have been clasping a hat under his arm. And he greeted Rachael with suitable formality, standing at a distance from her, holding out his hand. The words he directed to Edie:

“I’ll make sure she gets home safely, Mrs. Lambert. This must be a worrying time for you.”

“Miss. Lambert,” she said automatically, but she smiled at him like a fond Victorian mamma, and stood at the top of the steps to wave them off. Rachael couldn’t tell whether or not the friendliness was an act.

Edie hadn’t confided the subject of her conference with Vera and Rachael had refused to be a part of it. Alerted by Edie’s threat that she wanted to know all about Neville, Rachael had avoided serious discussion even when they had driven together into Kimmerston. The conversation about her father hadn’t been mentioned again.

She was surprised by Neville’s home, which was modest, a terraced house close to the almshouses where Nancy Deakin lived. The houses fronted onto gardens, then a paved narrow path which separated the row from another similar terrace. Children were playing there and women sat in doorways watching them and shouting to each other.

There were deserted doll’s prams and roller skates. At the back of the row was an alley with dustbins, where he parked. There was a gate in a high brick wall into a yard, then a door into the kitchen. The walls of the yard had been whitewashed. It contained tubs of flowers and a wrought iron table and chairs.

The house was very tidy and she sensed it was always like that. It hadn’t been prepared specially for her visit. It was furnished with the simplicity of a ship’s cabin with fitted wooden storage boxes and drawers.

“A drink?” he asked. He seemed nervous too.

“White wine.”

In the living room a table had been set for two. There were candles and red linen napkins.

“Perhaps you would have preferred to go to a restaurant,” he said.

“No, of course not.”

“I thought it might be easier to talk here.” She was reminded of Edie, stifled a desire to giggle, felt gauche and graceless.

He left the room for a moment and returned with a jeweller’s cardboard box packed with cotton wool.

“I was looking for something of Bella’s. I thought you might like this.” He pulled out a silver locket on a chain. The locket was unusual, shaped like an old threepenny piece, engraved with tiny flowers and leaves. “It’s not very valuable. Victorian probably. She said it belonged to her grandmother.” He opened it to reveal the sepia photograph of a woman with the face of a donkey and dark, swept-back hair.

“I suppose someone must have loved her,” he said.

“I remember Bella wearing it.”

“You will take it?” He fixed it for her and as he fastened the clasp she felt the down on his hand on the back of her neck.

“What did Vera want of you?” she asked suddenly.

“Vera?”

“Inspector Stanhope.”

“Questions. She implied that the murder had something to do with the development of the quarry.”

“Did it?”

“Of course not.” At first the idea seemed to amuse him, then realizing she thought the response inappropriate, he was more serious. Like her, he seemed awkward, scared of striking a wrong note. “If anything, it makes things more difficult for the company. We need public opinion on our side. Any rumour that associates us with the death of a young survey worker will alienate it.”

“It’s still “our side” then?”

“I’m still employed by the company.”

“And so am I, indirectly. At least for a few more months. The fieldwork’s nearly finished. It’ll take me a while to finish the report but I don’t need to be at Black Law to do that.”

“What’s it like working for Peter Kemp?”

“Interesting.” It was her standard response to the question.

“And do you see your long-term future there?” She smiled. “Are you offering me a job?” It was an off the cuff remark but she wondered immediately if there was some truth in it.

Perhaps Neville had been set up by Godfrey Waugh to buy her off with a meaningless post within Slateburn Quarries environmental officer perhaps with thirty-five grand and a car. Though even if she accepted, what would it achieve? Anyway, the report would state that the quarry would cause little significant damage.

Neville shook his head. “If my plans go ahead I’ll be in no position to offer anyone work. I’ll be lucky if I can scratch together a living for myself.”

“I’ve been thinking recently that I might like a change,” she said.

“Perhaps I’ll try to move into the voluntary sector, one of the wildlife charities. The pay wouldn’t be so good… “

‘… but at least you wouldn’t have to consort with grubby businessmen.”

“Something like that.”

There was a break in the conversation. He lit the candles, invited her to sit at the table. She realized suddenly, with horror, that she hadn’t warned him she was vegetarian. Better to plough through a meal of dead animal than make a fuss at this stage. Or would she be sick?

That would be worse.

“I’m sorry.”

He was carrying a Le Creuset casserole with thick oven gloves.

“This is really stupid. I should have said. I don’t eat meat.”

“Nor do I much. Mushroom ri sotto OK?” Shit, she thought. I needn’t have opened my big mouth. He poured her another glass of wine.

“So what’s it like to work for Godfrey Waugh?” she asked, slightly desperate.

“Interesting.” She smiled politely. “No, I’d like to know. Power is always intriguing, isn’t it?”

There was a moment of silence. He paused with his fork halfway between his plate and his mouth. “Perhaps you’d better ask your colleague.”

“Which colleague?”

“Mrs. Preece.”

She looked at him, astounded. He wiped his mouth with his napkin and continued to eat. She couldn’t make out whether the indiscretion had been a mistake, a slip of the tongue, or deliberate, some kind of warning. Later she wondered even if it was the real reason for the invitation to dinner. She didn’t know what to say. At last she asked, pathetically, “Have you lived here long?”

Perhaps he sensed some criticism about the house or the neighbourhood because he sounded defensive. “Since I left the estate. That all happened in a rush. I had to find somewhere quickly. It suits me well enough though and I’m not here much.”

“Where did you live when you worked for the Fulwells?”

“They gave me a house, one of those semis at the end of the Avenue.

That was why I had to move so quickly when I resigned.”

“Why did you leave?”

He paused, tried to find the right words. “It was never a very comfortable working environment. I don’t think I’ve the right temperament for the feudal life.”

“What do you mean?”

But he shook his head.

“Did you ever meet Edmund, Grace’s dad?”

“Not when I was working on the estate. The family had dropped all contact with him at that point. I think they wanted to pretend he didn’t exist. But earlier, when I was growing up at Black Law, I saw him around. For us kids he was a bit of a bogeyman. Grown ups would say: “If you don’t behave you’ll end up like Edmund Fulwell.” Without really telling us what was wrong with him.”

“So you’ve no idea where he is now then?” She paused. “Look, I’m sorry. Vera Stanhope told me to ask.” The wine must have already gone to her head because the nervous giggle she had been stifling all evening came out. “Not much of a detective, am I?”

“Does she think Edmund killed his daughter?”

“I don’t know what she thinks.”

He piled plates and took them into the kitchen. They moved from the table. She sat on his IKEA sofa.

He opened another bottle of wine. Both started talking together. She gestured for him to continue.

“I’m sorry about this evening,” he said. “I’m not very used to this sort of thing. Too busy. Out of practice.”

“No,” she replied. “I’ve enjoyed it.” And realized she meant it.

He walked her home. He’d had too much to drink to drive. It wasn’t late. As he led her through the front door into the small garden two boys were chasing down the path between the houses, kicking a ball around in the last of the light. Through uncurtained windows she saw flickering televisions, kids sprawling on the floor with homework.

Neville seemed too solitary for this sort of communal living.

“When will you make up your mind about moving to Black Law?”

“Soon,” he said. “There are a few things to sort out.”

“Does Godfrey Waugh know what you’re planning?”

“No, I’ve only talked to you.”

At Riverside Terrace their pace slowed. She wondered if Edie was looking out for her from one of the upstairs windows. If so, it would be a novel experience for her. Edie, who had suggested a trip to the family planning clinic as soon as Rachael reached sixteen, would have welcomed boyfriends for breakfast, would have seen it as a healthy sign. Certainly, there would have been no need for stolen goodnight kisses on the doorstep.

“Will you come in for a coffee?” she asked.

“I don’t think so.”

And then, unexpectedly, he did kiss her. She felt his beard on her lips. A real kiss, but so quick and light that it could have been a friendly gesture of farewell.

She wanted to pull him closer to make it last, but he was already walking down the street away from her.

“When will I see you?” She shouted this without worrying that her mother might be watching.

He stopped, turned, smiled. “Soon,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.”

As she watched him walk very quickly down the street there was a movement in the shadow. It appeared to be a jogger in tracksuit and training shoes. He ran for a moment on the spot until Neville turned the corner then jogged down the street after him.

Chapter Forty-Seven.

When she turned away from Neville in the street and approached the house Rachael could see Edie in the basement kitchen, silhouetted against the Chinese paper lampshade, talking on the telephone. But by the time she had opened the front door Edie had finished the conversation. She appeared at the top of the kitchen stairs, obviously excited.

This is it, Rachael thought. The inquisition. Other people’s parents might be curious about their daughter’s dates, but their questions were usually limited to financial status, the decor of the intended’s home, marital status. Edie’s questions were usually more detailed and more difficult. She wanted to know what Rachael’s friends were really like.

She probed their relationship with their parents and had been known in the past, without ever meeting the man in question, to pass judgement on his stability, his ability to empathize and even on the possibility that he was a latent homosexual.

Today, however, there were no questions. Edie scarcely even acknowledged that Rachael had been to Neville’s home. Something else had caught her attention.

“Are you ready to go?” she said. “I don’t suppose we’ll need coats.

It’s still warm, isn’t it?” “I thought you might make me a coffee.”

“No, no.” Edie was firm. “There’s no time for that. It’s late as it is to go visiting.”

“Oh God, Edie. Where are you off to? Surely I don’t have to come.” It must have been one of Edie’s women friends on the phone, probably drunk, certainly weepy, demanding support, someone to drink with and these conversations always went on until the early hours.

“You don’t have to but I thought you might be interested.”

“Why? Who is it?” Rachael was absent-minded, still pondering Neville Furness. She told herself it was ridiculous to be imagining herself established in the kitchen at Black Law Farm after one fleeting kiss and an evening of stilted and awkward conversation. After Peter Kemp she should know better. Her judgement was crap.

“Charles Noble,” Edie said, triumphantly.

“Who?” For a moment the name meant nothing to her. She tried to dredge up memories of men Edie had taught with at college, gentlemen callers who had all been at one time potential fathers to Rachael.

“Charles Noble. Bella’s brother. He’s just rung. He’s been trying to phone me apparently but of course there was nobody here to take the call and he said he didn’t like to leave a message on the answer machine.” Rachael didn’t respond with sufficient interest and Edie shouted grumpily, “Well, are you coming?”

Charles Noble was waiting for them in the road. He’d already unlocked the high security gates which blocked the entrance to the stable yard.

The stables were lit by security lights and the shadow of the wire mesh fence was thrown across him like a cage. He was dressed in a grey tracksuit and Rachael was reminded of the jogger who had been waiting in the street outside her mother’s house.

They drove through the stables and up to the house, then got out of the car and waited for Noble to padlock the security gates once more and join them. Rachael had the unnerving feeling that she was being locked inside a prison compound and experienced a moment of panic. She hoped Edie had had the sense to tell Vera Stanhope or Joe Ashworth what she’d planned to do. Otherwise no one would know they were there. From the horse boxes came the sound of horses breathing and the rustle of crushed straw, the sweet smell of muck and leather.

“I don’t know why this couldn’t have waited until morning,” Noble said, before he’d even got to them. Rachael could tell he was already regretting his phone call to Edie. “Louise and I usually go to bed very early. We’re busy people.”

“So are we, Mr. Noble.” Edie was brisk, efficient. Good God, Rachael thought, she could be playing a detective in a TV cop show. She’d always had a weakness for watching them.

“You’d better come in then.” He, at least, seemed taken in by her air of authority and opened the front door to show them into a wide hall and on into a living room, which was tastefully furnished in a bland Marks & Spencer sort of way in terra cotta and cream. The long curtains were drawn and the table lights were still switched on, but the room was empty.

“Louise must have gone to bed,” he said unhappily.

“I know she’s got a hectic day tomorrow. She’s organizing a charity lunch. She’s very active with the Red Cross.”

“We’ll have to speak to her,” Edie said. “She did take the call from Bella after all.” Then, maliciously, “We’ll only have to come back tomorrow and we wouldn’t want to interrupt her if she’s having guests.

It might be embarrassing.”

“You couldn’t do that.”

“Oh, we could. Inspector Stanhope’s very interested in Bella’s suicide. You do remember Inspector Stanhope? She was one of the team investigating your father’s death.”

“Wait here. I’ll go and find her.”

Louise Noble was wearing silk pyjamas and a dressing gown, but hadn’t yet taken off her make-up. She was an attractive woman with high cheekbones and long curly hair, copper-coloured and tied away from her face. Rachael had been expecting someone worn out and stuffy like Charles, but Louise was in her early forties and rather nervy. As she followed him into the room, she lit a cigarette.

“I was on my way to bed,” she said, not aggressively but in explanation for the dressing gown. Throughout the encounter Rachael had the impression of a little girl playing at mums and dads. The lunches, the dinners, all these seemed to be endured because they were what you did when you were grown up. It was difficult to imagine her with a child of her own, or as the power behind Charles’s expansion plans.

“You’ll forgive the intrusion.” Edie sat down without waiting to be asked. “We’ll try not to keep you.”

“I really don’t see how I can help… ” Louise took a drag on her cigarette, set it carefully to rest in a glass ashtray. “I explained to Charlie… “

“And I understand.” Charles patted his wife’s hand.

“It wasn’t that I tried to keep secrets from him. I mean his sister didn’t really say anything very important. It was just that we’re so settled and so happy, the three of us. And I thought, well, she’d done that terrible thing to his father, it was probably just as well to forget all about it. If she intruded into his life again he’d only get hurt.”

She patted at her eyes with a tissue. The mascara didn’t smudge.

Charles took her hand. He was clearly besotted.

Louise turned towards him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know how I’d cope if you’d brought her here. What would I say to her? And then when you told me she’d killed herself, I didn’t know how to tell you she’d phoned… ” She looked up at Edie, wide-eyed, desperate for understanding. “I can’t see how it would have made any difference.

Even if Charles had phoned her back. Even if he’d gone to see her. I mean she’d already decided to kill herself, hadn’t she? Charles said she wasn’t the kind of person to do anything on impulse. So it would have happened anyway. It wasn’t my fault.”

Charles, stroking her hand, murmured again that of course it wasn’t her fault.

“When exactly did she phone?” Edie was firm but not unkind. It was the tone she used with spoilt pupils having to come to terms with the reality of the exam system.

“I’ve been trying to think, haven’t I, Charlie? You were at work. I was on my own here.”

“Where was your daughter?”

“Not here. Definitely not. Because if she’s in I always let her answer the phone. At that age their friends phone all the time and they talk for hours, don’t they, even if they only saw each other an hour ago. And then after I spoke to Bella I thought thank God Lucy’s not in because she’d probably have taken the call and then we’d have had to explain. She doesn’t know, you see, about Bella and Charlie’s dad.”

“Can you remember where Lucy was? That might help us to pin down a date.”

Louise sat for a moment, frowning, then her face cleared, a pantomime of enlightenment. “It was the school trip to Newcastle to see Macbeth in the Theatre Royal. I’d just come in. I’d taken down a car load and another parent was going to bring them all home. The school had arranged a coach but it had been double-booked and we’d all had to turn out at the last minute. I remember because I was so flustered.”

She beamed round at them, proud of the detail of her memory. It was almost, Rachael thought bitterly, as if she expected applause. Could she really be that childish?

“Good.” Edie nodded approvingly. “What date was that?”

“Oh God knows. It was months ago.”

“Would you have written it down? Lucy’s play, I mean?”

“Fetch the wall planner from the kitchen, darling.” Louise still appeared flushed with success. “It’ll be there!”

Charles returned with a large calendar. Each page was decorated with a photograph of a horse and there was a space for notes each day. He flipped the pages. “March the eleventh,” he said. “Lucy wrote it in.”

There you are then!” Louise cried. “If she’d wanted to talk to Charles she had a week to phone back. It was the nineteenth, wasn’t it, when she killed herself? But she never did.” “No,” Charles said. “She never did.”

“Now,” Edie interrupted calmly. “Now, we need you to remember everything Bella said, the exact words.”

Louise frowned again. She seemed incapable of thinking without screwing up her face. “She said, “I want to speak to Charlie Noble.”

Like that. Quite brusque. I was surprised because not many people call him Charlie. I thought it was someone wanting to book a ride. The stable office has a separate line but people still sometimes come through on this one. But she said it wasn’t about riding. It was personal.” Louise paused. “Those were the words she used. “It’s personal”. So I told her Charlie wasn’t here and asked if I could take a message. And then Bella said, “Who are you?” It sounded not rude exactly but as if she wasn’t used to making polite conversation, as if she wasn’t bothered what people thought.”

“And you told her,” Edie prompted.

“Yes, well, I couldn’t very well not. Not without being rude myself.”

The horror of being considered rude seemed suddenly to hit her again because she looked wildly round the room and said, “Hasn’t Charles offered you a drink or something. Really, darling… “

“What did she say then?” Edie broke in.

“She asked me if I could pass on a message to Charles. “Tell him it’s Bella and ask him to get in touch.” Something like that.”

“Did she say how Charles could get in touch with her? Did she give an address, a phone number?”

“I don’t think so.” Louise seemed uncertain. “If she had, I’d have written it down. You do, don’t you, automatically? Actually, it was a bit of a shock. Charles had told me about Bella but I’d never had any contact with her. I mean, speaking to a murderer. It’s bound to give you the creeps, isn’t it? So I might have missed something.”

“What did she say then?”

“She told me to tell Charles not to worry. “He’s quite safe.” I remember that because it seemed so bizarre. I knew he was safe, here with Lucy and me. I look after him. But she repeated it twice. As if I was some sort of idiot. Her attitude annoyed me actually. That’s probably why I didn’t tell Charles that she’d called. I mean, I don’t have to put up with that, do I?”

She looked round at them.

For a moment Charles seemed stunned. He sat with his mouth slightly open. Then he began to stroke Louise’s hand again.

“No,” he murmured. “No, of course you don’t, pet.”

Chapter Forty-Eight.

It was like the end of term. They were starting to pack up. In Baikie’s there were cardboard boxes half filled with books and papers.

Black plastic bin bags were filled with blankets which Rachael would take into Kimmerston to wash. At first Edie said she’d help tidy up and floated round ineffectually with a duster. Then she said significantly that there was something she had to write and disappeared upstairs. At least, Rachael thought, my father’s come in useful for something, even if only in providing an excuse.

Vera Stanhope seemed to resent the preparations for moving out. She had spent the night at home and turned up in the middle of the morning.

She prowled around Baikie’s, muttering to herself and poking the bags and the boxes, then summoned Rachael into Black Law to ask her about Neville. She was even ready to pass over tit bits of information in an attempt to persuade Rachael to talk.

“I’ve been following up Edie’s idea that Edmund Fulwell and Bella might have been in hospital at the same time.”

“And?”

“They were, briefly. They overlapped in the early eighties, just before Bella was released. They were on the same ward. I’m trying to track down any members of staff who might remember them both. It’s probably just a coincidence. It was years ago.”

“They might have kept in touch afterwards.”

“I suppose it’s possible.”

Vera was out of sorts. She had made Rachael coffee, but grudgingly, as if paying her back for her reluctance to stay on at Baikie’s indefinitely. Now she made it clear that Rachael’s suggestions were hardly worth considering.

“Well, we think Edmund put pressure on Grace to fight against the quarry proposal. That’s what the exaggerated otter counts were about.

Perhaps he still had influence over Bella and used it to persuade her to refuse access over Black Law land.” Rachael paused, considered.

“Though of course she would have done that anyway.” “Would she?” Vera demanded. “How do you know?”

“Well, she’d have hardly wanted a road just outside her kitchen window.”

“Perhaps she didn’t have any choice.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “I’ve asked an accountant to look over her books,” Vera said. “And talked to her accountant. Black Law’s in deep trouble.”

“Like every other hill farm in the north of England.”

“No. I mean deep trouble. She was within months of the bank taking over and making her and Dougie insolvent. She’d sold everything she could. The last Constance Baikie painting went last year. Her only hope of staying here was of doing some deal with the quarry company. And quickly. She couldn’t have afforded to wait for the planning process to go through.

Didn’t Neville mention that when you had your cosy chat last night?”

“He couldn’t have known.”

“Of course he knew. He’s been in charge of things, hasn’t he, since Bella died? You’re not telling me that he hasn’t had a quick neb through the accounts. He’s a businessman.” Like Peter Kemp, Rachael thought. That’s what he’d said the last time they’d met. That’s what I’m into now. Business. Not conservation.

Was that why Peter had come to Black Law the afternoon Bella killed herself? To do Godfrey Waugh’s dirty work? Offering her the final deal to keep her and Dougie on the farm? But she couldn’t face giving into him and killed herself instead.

“But she had access to money,” Rachael said suddenly. “When Charles Noble sold his father’s house after the murder he put the profit into an account for Bella. She knew about it. After all these years it would be worth a fortune.”

“Are you sure she knew about it?”

“Certain. He wrote to tell her when she was first sent to the secure hospital. He was trying to persuade her to let him in to see her.”

“Charlie told you that, did he?”

“Yes.”

“And you believed him?”

“I didn’t have any reason not to.”

“How sweet.” Vera got up, rinsed her mug under the tap, clattered it violently on the draining board and returned to the table. She leant over it towards Rachael.

“How did the evening go with lover boy?”

“It was very pleasant. Thank you.”

“Did you ask about Edmund Fulwell?”

“He hasn’t seen anything of him since he was a kid. The Fulwells never mention him.” “Bugger,” Vera said thoughtfully. “What else did you talk about over the After Eights?”

“His plans for the future.” Rachael paused. “He’s talking about resigning from the quarry, coming here and taking over the farm. Why would he do that if he knows the place is in hock to the bank?”

“Perhaps he’s done his own deal with Godfrey Waugh?” Vera said. She laughed unpleasantly. “Or perhaps he’s developed his very own chat-up line?” When Rachael still looked blank she added, “It’s obvious he’s trying to impress you.”

After lunch, in an attempt to escape Vera and her mother, Rachael went with Anne to gather in the wooden quadrat frames from her survey areas.

It turned out not to be much of an escape.

“How did it go last night then?”

She should have realized that Anne wouldn’t let it go. “Fine. We went to see Charles Noble. Bella tried to contact him the week before she died. His stupid cow of a wife didn’t pass the message on.”

“Not that. I know about that. How did it go with Neville?”

The sun was still shining. After spending a spring in the hills Rachael was fit. She moved easily, felt she could go on for miles at the same pace without discomfort. She loved the rhythm of movement and didn’t want to break it. They came to a thicket of gorse in full flower with its sweet scent of roasted coconut. After what Neville had implied the night before, Rachael had niggling questions about Anne’s relationship with Godfrey Waugh, but she wasn’t going to bring that up now. She might be thinking about Neville but she didn’t want Anne asking about him. She didn’t want words at all. All she wanted was to walk on against the breeze with the smell of gorse, damp peat and crushed heather, the sound of skylark, curlew and distant sheep.

“Well?” Anne asked.

“Fine,” she said again.

“Don’t you find him really spooky?” Anne went on. “For one thing he doesn’t have any friends, does he? Not that I could tell. You said there didn’t seem to be any of his mates at Bella’s funeral.”

“So? I don’t have many “mates”!” She lengthened her stride, tried to pull ahead but Anne kept pace with her.

“I think he gets off on power, manipulating situations behind the scenes. You know your trouble, Rache, you won’t face up to things. It wouldn’t surprise me if he were still working for Lily Fulwell. The Fulwells are the people who’ll get most out of the quarry. And Neville’s definitely pulling Godfrey Waugh’s strings.”

“How do you know?” Now it was impossible to ignore the conversation.

Rachael stopped abruptly. She was wearing shorts and bent to massage the muscles in the back of her legs.

“What do you mean?” Anne stopped too.

“How do you know what’s going on between Neville and Godfrey Waugh?

Anyone would think you had some sort of inside information.”

That shut her up at last. She walked on without answering but for Rachael the walk was spoiled.

The final quadrat to be collected was in the lime spoil close to the mine building. From the hill they looked down on the site. With the grey block of the mine, the dark moss of conifer, the pale snake line of the burn, it was like looking down onto a map. They could see the curve in the burn where Grace’s body had been found. All the debris used by the police the blue and white tape, the plastic sheeting had been cleared, but it had been there long enough for Rachael to pinpoint the spot accurately. Neither of them mentioned it, even when they had to walk close by.

They couldn’t see the quadrat from the hill because it lay in the shadow of the engine house, next to the mill chimney.

“Someone’s moved it,” Anne said as they approached. The frame looked as if it had been kicked or tripped over. “It’s just as well the survey’s finished. That could really have cocked things up.”

“Perhaps it was the police?”

“No. They haven’t been here for days. Besides, I brought Vera up the day the investigation started and showed her what was going on. She told them to be careful.”

“A walker then.”

“Perhaps. Some ghoul interested in seeing where the murder took place.

Or a protester from Langholme wanting a closer look at the mine before it’s turned into Godfrey Waugh’s operations centre.”

“Or a ghost.” “I thought you were a scientist. Never had you down as a believer in the supernatural.”

“I’m not.”

“What’s with the ghosts then?”

“Nothing. A flip remark.”

“There must be more to it than that.”

“Occasionally, when I’ve been walking the burn I’ve had the feeling of somebody watching me. Or following. And I saw a woman once on top of the cairn.” “Who was it?” Anne asked. Rachael looked at her, thinking she must be taking the piss but she seemed serious.

“I don’t know. Couldn’t tell.”

“You must have an overactive imagination, pet. Living with Grace was enough to give anyone the willies.”

Anne crossed the culverted stream towards the square, stone room which had once held the engine which powered the mine. She turned back towards Rachael. Reflected fragments of light from the water bounced onto her face.

“Could it have been Grace?” she asked. “We never knew exactly where she was.”

“Perhaps.” Though Rachael knew it hadn’t been Grace she had seen by the cairn that day.

The room was almost intact. It had been roofed with corrugated iron.

At the mouth of the ragged rectangle where once the door had been, flowers had been laid hothouse blooms, white daisies and huge white chrysanthemums. They were perfect. They hadn’t started to wilt, despite the heat.

“It must have been a walker then,” Anne said, ‘ the spot of Grace’s death. Or near enough. That’s touching. Perhaps we should have thought of it.”

“There were flowers here before. The day the woman was on the cairn.”

“Your ghost again?”

“No.” Rachael was irritated. “Of course not.”

“Well, it wasn’t a ghost this time.” Anne had walked into the building. The floor was of bare earth covered by loose stone flags.

“Unless ghosts eat chocolate digestives.” Anne came back towards the door, holding up a biscuit wrapper.

“Perhaps that’s why Grace was never hungry. She pigged out on chocolate.”

“It couldn’t have been dropped by Grace. The police searched here and took everything they found away. It must be more recent than that.”

Anne had moved further into the room. She was poking in a corner with one of her marker canes. “I think someone’s been camping out. This looks like ashes. The remains of a campfire.”

“Wouldn’t we have seen the light?”

“Not from Baikie’s. Not if they stayed inside.”

“Someone’s been watching us then.” Rachael backed away from the building so she was standing in sunlight and had a clear view all around her. The crow, she thought. The driver of the white car. He’s been here all the time watching every move we make. He’ll know when the police are in Black Law. He can see the cars moving down the track. He can see us sitting in the garden or setting out for the hill. “Come on,” she called to Anne. “We should go.”

But Anne seemed unaware of any danger. She lingered by the entrance, looking in. “Unless this is where Edmund Fulwell’s been holed up.

Imagine him here, all the time, while Vera Stanhope’s been chasing round the country after him. Though you saw a woman, didn’t you?

Perhaps cross-dressing is one of his vices too.”

“The woman was weeks ago.” Rachael wanted to run back to Baikie’s, couldn’t understand Anne’s lack of urgency.

“But Edmund’s a boozer and there aren’t any cans or bottles. And if it was him, where is he now?”

Chapter Forty-Nine.

They found Vera in Black Law with her team. When they told her about their find at the mine she erupted into a violent and entertaining fury directed at the colleagues who stood around her.

“What’s wrong with you all? You’re professionals, aren’t you? We thought those women might be targets but nobody bothered to go and check the only cover for miles around. Are you scared of getting your feet wet? Happy that two women have to do your dirty work for you?”

Then she gathered up Joe Ashworth, climbed over the stile at the end of Baikie’s garden and strode up the path to the mine. From the cottage Anne watched them Laurel and Hardy in silhouette disappearing into the bright sunlight.

The incident left Anne amused but unsettled. She hadn’t expected Vera Stanhope to take a biscuit wrapper and a pile of ashes so seriously.

And why was Rachael like a cat on hot bricks? For the first time Anne felt unsafe. She wished she could wait for their return to hear the outcome of their investigation but it was her day for tea with Barbara Waugh and it wouldn’t do to be late.

Perhaps because of Vera’s response she told Rachael where she was going.

“Just in case,” she said, though she hardly expected Barbara and her daughter to hold her hostage in the gloomy and immaculate house in Slateburn.

Rachael looked at her strangely and again Anne wondered if Neville had said something about her and Godfrey.

In the sunshine the house looked as austere as it had before. The lawn had been mowed, the edges trimmed, the gravel raked. The door was opened by the child. Despite the heat she was dressed in a grey pleated skirt and a uniform sweatshirt. She was so tidy that she looked as if she was just setting off for school. Her white knee-length socks were unrumpled and stainless. Her black patent-leather sandals were shining.

“Come in,” she said. “Mummy’s expecting you.”

She stood aside to let Anne in, but seemed to regard her progress with disapproval. For a moment it occurred to Anne that even Felicity could have guessed about the affair, then she turned to wheel a large doll’s pram up the hall, and the idea seemed ridiculous.

God, Anne thought. Talk about paranoid.

In the kitchen Barbara was lifting scones from a baking dish onto a wire cooling tray. She seemed flustered. The kitchen was very hot.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m running a bit late.”

Felicity must have been playing there because besides the pram there was an attache case full of doll’s clothes, a real baby’s cup, bowl and spoon in blue moulded plastic on the table. Anne thought Felicity was too old to be playing with dolls. She was pale, lardy. She looked as if she could do with fresh air. What were the two of them doing on top of each other in this stifling kitchen? I suppose, she thought, if Godfrey and I get together we’ll have to have the brat to stay for weekends. She’ll get on my tits in an hour. I know she will.

“Felicity’s been helping me to bake,” Barbara said.

“Great!” Anne smiled at the girl, who simpered back.

Not an hour, she thought, five minutes.

“Why don’t you go upstairs and get changed,” Barbara said. Her voice had a pleading quality as if she was worried that the child would argue. Felicity did as she was told but at the door she stopped and pulled a face at her mother’s back.

“I’m sorry to have phoned you at home,” Barbara said. “You must think I’m very foolish.” The words were conventional enough but her voice was desperate. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m quite sane. I didn’t know who else to talk to… “

The sun was streaming through the window and the oven was still hot.

Anne felt faint, as if she was hearing Barbara in a dream. She tried to compose an appropriate response but the woman went on.

“I’ve tried to talk about it to Godfrey, but he’s been so strange lately. I suppose that’s worried me too.”

“In what way strange?”

“Tense, jumpy. He’s not sleeping properly. He often gets up and wanders around in the middle of the night. Sometimes he takes the car out. I worry that he’s so overwrought that he’ll have an accident.

He’s even started to get angry with Felicity and that’s never happened before.”

She seemed close to tears. She filled a kettle at the sink and plugged it in.

“I’ve suggested that he should go to see a doctor,” Barbara went on.

“How can he function like that? Never sleeping. Hardly eating. But he won’t listen. Not a medical problem he says. Things at work which he’ll soon have sorted.”

“What about you?” Anne asked. “How are you sleeping?”

“Not well. I have the feeling that everything’s breaking down all around me and despite my effort I’m not going to be able to hold it together.” She managed a smile. “Godfrey says I’m menopausal. He’s probably right. But then men blame everything on hormones, don’t they?”

“Have you thought of seeing a doctor?”

“God, no. I hate them.”

Barbara lifted the tray of scones onto a bench and began to wipe down the table with a violent scrubbing motion. Anne wished she hadn’t come. She didn’t want the responsibility. The woman was cracking up and she didn’t want to think that it might be her fault.

“Isn’t there someone you can talk to? Family? Friends?”

“Of course not. Why do you think I got in touch with you?” She stopped abruptly. “I’m sorry. That was rude. I don’t have any family and all my friends know Godfrey too.”

She made tea in a white pot. From the fridge she took out a plate of sandwiches covered in cling film and a Tupperware box of small cakes which she arranged on a doily-covered plate. The action seemed to calm her.

“I’ll let Felicity have hers on a tray in front of the television,” she said. “A treat.”

“Perhaps we could have ours outside?” Anne suggested. “It’s so hot.”

“Outside?” The idea seemed to horrify her. “Oh, I don’t think so. All those bugs.” She continued to lay the kitchen table with plates, knives and napkins. Anne moved her chair so the sun wasn’t shining directly into her eyes.

“What exactly is worrying you?” she asked gently.

Barbara concentrated on spooning jam into a bowl and seemed not to hear.

“Do you know,” she said. “After all this, that girl dying and the police at his office asking questions, Godfrey’s still determined to go ahead with the quarry.”

“I suppose there’s no reason why he shouldn’t. Certainly nothing in our report will stop it.”

Barbara stood quite still, the jam spoon poised in mid air over the bowl. She looked up at Anne with something close to despair.

“Neville Furness will have got his way then.” “I’m sorry,” Anne said, “but I don’t understand what Neville’s got to gain from it. I don’t understand why he affects you so much.” She paused. “You’re scared of him, aren’t you?”, Barbara nodded, but didn’t speak. Anne felt like shaking her.

“For Christ’s sake, why?”

“Because of what he’s doing to Godfrey.” “You said that when I was last here but it doesn’t make sense.

Godfrey’s the boss. There must be something that you’re not telling me.”

Barbara looked at her dumbly.

“Don’t bother then,” Anne said crossly. “It’s nothing to do with me anyway.” “No,” Barbara said. “I’ve got to tell someone.”

There was a movement in the hall which Barbara must have seen through the frosted glass door because she stopped. The door opened and Felicity came in. She had changed from her school uniform into pink shorts and a pink T-shirt. She was large for her age and the outfit didn’t flatter her.

“I’ve come for my tea,” she said.

“Of course, darling. I’ll put it on a tray. You can have it in front of the television.”

“I want it here with you.”

Barbara’s hands, setting the tray, started to shake. “Not today, darling. I want to talk to my friend.”

“Why can’t I talk too?”

“You can,” Barbara said. Anne thought she was showing remarkable restraint. “But not today. Here, I’ll carry it into the living room for you.”

They looked at each other for a moment. Felicity seemed to consider putting up a fight but thought better of it. She scowled and followed her mother from the room.

When Barbara returned to the kitchen the impulse to confide in Anne seemed to have passed. Anne wondered irrationally if the child had some evil influence over her. She poured tea, urged Anne to eat, as if the earlier outburst had never occurred.

“You were talking about Neville,” Anne said. “I don’t understand why he’s so committed to the project. What can he hope to get out of it?”

“Money, of course. That’s obvious. That’s why he left the Fulwells because Godfrey offered him a financial incentive. He’s easily bought.” The answer came readily but Anne thought there must be more to it than that.

“Does he need money that much?”

Barbara seemed confused by the question.

“Did you know that he’s talking about resigning from his job at Slateburn?” Anne said. She thought Barbara might be pleased by the information. Didn’t she want Godfrey out of Neville’s clutches? But it seemed to disturb her further.

“No! Where will he go?”

“He’s planning to take over Black Law farm.” “Godfrey never said.”

“Perhaps Godfrey doesn’t know.”

“How did you know?” Anne paused. “We have a mutual friend.”

Barbara was thrown into panic. “You won’t tell Neville that you’ve been here? That I asked to see you?”

“Of course not.”

But Barbara was almost hysterical. “I invited you because I wanted to ask you something specific. Now I don’t know that I can. If you’re a friend of Neville’s.”

“I’m not a friend of Neville’s.” God, Anne thought. Let me out of here. The sun had moved so it no longer shone directly into the kitchen but she felt as if she’d been locked up in the room all day.

“I can trust you, can’t I?”

“Of course you can.” Apart from the fact that I’ve slept with your husband and I’d shack up with him tomorrow if he gave me half a chance.

“The three of you working on the report, living together in the cottage. You must have been very close.”

“I don’t know,” Anne answered lightly. She had no idea where the conversation was leading. “When you’re living and working on top of each other like that it’s important to keep your privacy.”

“But the girl who died, you would have known where she went, who she saw?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Did she ever meet Neville Furness?”

“Not that I knew. Why?”

Barbara didn’t answer.

“What are you saying? That Grace and Neville had a relationship?”

Although there was a dishwasher under the bench Barbara left the table and filled the sink with hot, soapy water. Anne waited for a reply but Barbara was giving all her attention to the cups and plates.

Anne stood behind her. “Do you suspect Neville Furness of killing Grace?”

Barbara rubbed the dishcloth hard inside a cup. Although it must have been clean she didn’t lift it onto the draining board. She stood up to her elbows in suds.

“If you have any evidence that’s what happened you must go to the police. The detective in charge of the case is a woman, Vera Stanhope.

She’s very sympathetic. If you like, I’ll come with you.”

And how will I ever explain that one away if Godfrey and I get together, she thought.

“Barbara, are you listening to me?”

But if Barbara was listening she wasn’t answering. Felicity came in with her tray. Barbara, shaking the soap from her hands, turned round from the sink and said in her normal, mumsy voice, “Could you show Mrs. Preece out, darling? It’s time for her to go and as you can see I’m rather busy.”

Anne didn’t put up any resistance. She hoped never to see Barbara Waugh again.

Chapter Fifty.

The birthday bash for Olivia Fulwell’s youngest child was a cross between a church fete and an old-fashioned street party. As Jeremy had suspected, everyone and his dog was there. Anne wasn’t sure of the age of the child or even whether it was a boy or a girl. Whenever she’d seen it, it had been wrapped up in androgynous jumpsuits.

As they prepared to set off for the party Jeremy worked himself into quite a state. Through his antique dealer friend in Morpeth he thought he had found the perfect gift a jack-in-the-box with a grotesque carved head which sprang out of the box with a squeal. “Not terribly expensive,” he told Anne, looking up from the floor where he squatted amidst wrapping paper, ribbon and sellotape. “But classy, don’t you think? Better than the modern tat kids get given. Something that’ll stand out. But what’ll I put on the label? Are you sure you can’t remember the brat’s name?”

“Positive.” As if she cared anyway. The last thing she wanted to do was to put on a frock and make small talk to the in-bred representatives of the local aristocracy. And it had occurred to her that Barbara and Godfrey might have been invited. She wasn’t sure how she’d handle that. “Just put from Jeremy and Anne.”

“I suppose I’ll have to,” he said. Then, wistfully, “Do you think love from Jeremy and Anne would be a bit OTT?” He loved dressing up on occasions like these. His clothes, immaculately pressed, had been laid out on his bed hours before.

The whole event was set up outside. Even the toilets discreetly signposted were in the stable block so none of the local riffraff would actually have to set foot in the house. Anne thought that Olivia had been lucky with the weather. Soon it would break. Pale, sulphurous clouds drifted occasionally across the sun. It was very hot and humid.

The forecast had mentioned thunder.

The children sat at a long trestle-table covered with a paper cloth.

They wore party hats. There must have been crackers because they all had blowers and whistles which made a noise. All the play group were there which seemed terribly democratic, though as far as Anne could tell only two of the parents had been invited. One was a teacher and the other the wife of a tenant farmer. The children ate sausages, crisps and vivid orange jellies made in waxed paper dishes. The parent who was a teacher, a dowdy woman with hair already grey and flat shoes, hovered behind her offspring, muttering occasionally to no one in particular about BSE and E numbers. The child, apparently unused to such unlimited amounts of chemicals and sugar, ate ravenously, oblivious to her mother and the friends who tried to talk to her.

In the middle of the table was the cake, made in the shape of a character from the latest children’s cult

TV show and covered in violet icing. The name LIZZY had been picked out in Smarties. So, Anne thought, that solved the mystery of the child’s gender.

For the adults there were other trestles with a buffet and a bar. The food was standard catering fare no doubt Jeremy would he sniffy about it later. Around the park were dotted sideshows which would keep the children entertained so the adults could continue to chat and drink in peace an inflatable bouncy castle, a roundabout of galloping horses powered by its own generator, a man who swallowed swords and ate fire.

Despite the food Jeremy was enjoying himself enormously. He seemed to know instinctively which guests had money or titles. He homed in on them and camped up shamelessly for their benefit. The jack-in-the-box had been a great success. Lizzy, it was true, had burst into tears when the lid sprang open, but then she had seemed overwrought by the whole proceedings. Olivia had loved it. She had even taken him inside to ask his opinion of a painting which had recently taken her fancy at an auction. He seemed in seventh heaven.

When Olivia was inside with Jeremy, Anne found herself standing next to Robert Fulwell. He was a big man in his fifties. Broken veins in his cheeks gave him a florid appearance as if he spent most of the time in the open air or habitually drank too much. He could have stepped out of a nineteenth-century hunting print. Now though, he stood sipping orange juice, watching the proceedings with a baffled detachment.

“What a lovely party,” Anne said.

He looked her up and down. It was as if he were making up his mind whether she was worth expending words on. It seemed she was, but not many. “Lily’s idea.”

He wasn’t bad looking in a muscular, heavy sort of way. Perhaps he sensed her appreciation and reciprocated it, because he added, in a more friendly fashion, “I’d have been happy just to have the family.

Lily brought the boys home from school for the weekend again.”

“That must be nice.”

“Mmm.” He seemed unsure.

“What about the rest of the family?”

He set down his glass and picked up a chicken leg from the paper plate he was holding awkwardly in his other hand. When he bit into it Anne saw that his teeth were surprisingly small and sharp, like a fox’s.

“What family?”

“Doesn’t Lily have any aunts or uncles?”

“No one lives locally.”

“What about Edmund?” She wasn’t sure, even then, why she provoked the confrontation. Out of boredom perhaps. To make mischief. To spite Jeremy who seemed to find nothing demeaning in playing court jester to a load of nobs.

He returned the chicken to the plate, set it deliberately on the table.

For a moment she thought he intended to throw her out physically. He said calmly, “Who are you?”

“Anne Preece. I live at the Priory. We have met a few times.”

“Do you know Edmund?”

“I knew his daughter.”

“Ah, you’re one of the Environmental Impact Assessment team. I remember Lily mentioned it.”

“You’ve nothing to worry about,” Anne said. “We didn’t find anything of any significance.” “I never for a moment thought you would.” He stared out across the park, beyond the chasing children, to the hills. “I don’t care for the idea of the quarry myself, but needs must.” He looked back at her.

“What was she like, the girl?”

“Hardly a girl.”

He shrugged impatiently. Time passes, one forgets.” “She was screwed up,” Anne said. “She needed help.”

“Like her father then.”

“Did he need help?”

All the time, but not the sort, I think, that we could give him.”

“Has he come to you for help recently?”

“We’d be the last people he’d come to.”

But Anne heard the note of regret in Robert’s voice and she wasn’t so sure. Lily wouldn’t have stood for it of course but perhaps Lily hadn’t known. After the violent death of Edmund’s daughter, would Robert have been able to turn his brother away?

“The police are looking for him.”

“I know. They’ve been here. Some woman with a face like a sow.

Turning up whenever she feels like it. In the middle of dinner once.

As if a man would harm his own daughter. Edmund might have had problems but he’d never do that.”

He was distracted by Arabella, the nanny. She walked past wearing a white silk dress with a lace trim. It looked like a petticoat. There seemed to be no purpose in her movement apart from attracting his attention.

“Look,” he said. “I ought to go. Must circulate.”

Bloody fool, Anne thought.

lb entertain herself, as a sort of game, she began to wonder where Robert might have Edmund holed up. Not in the house. It was big enough to hide an army of younger brothers fleeing from justice, but Robert was frightened of Lily and wouldn’t want her finding out. He could have paid for his brother to stay in a guest house or hotel but recently Vera had gone public about looking for Edmund. His face had appeared on the television news and the front page of national newspapers. Wouldn’t one of the other residents have recognized him?

Where then?

She considered the accommodation on the estate, discounting immediately the mill house at the mine. Despite the fuss Vera had made Anne couldn’t really imagine Edmund camping out there. So far as she knew all the farmers were struggling to maintain their tenancies, so it was unlikely that there was an isolated and empty farmhouse where Edmund was lying low. Perhaps Robert had chosen somewhere closer to home?

At the end of the Avenue was a pair of semidetached houses. Anne had first realized Grace was loopy when she’d caught her staring at one of them. In one of the houses lived the keeper and his family. Janet, the keeper’s wife, was a keen gardener and Anne knew her well enough to exchange a few words in the post office, to borrow the odd seed catalogue. There were two teenage children, the bane of Janet’s life, with their loud music and unpleasant friends. But Anne thought the other semi had been empty since Neville Furness’s departure. The new agent was rather grand and had his own place. The houses were ugly but solidly built and there was no reason why Janet and her husband would hear a new neighbour, especially over the perpetual background noise generated in their own place.

Jeremy was in the middle of a circle of elaborately dressed elderly women. They were listening, entranced, to his stories. Occasionally one of them gave a peel of genteel laughter. Anne ignored them.

“Jem, I’m going back. I’m knackered.” The women tittered as if she were part of a double act.

“But you’ll miss the fireworks. You don’t want me to come?”

“No, of course not. Stay as long as you like.” “Have you said goodbye to Olivia?” “She’s busy. I thought you could do that for me.”

“Sure.” He was delighted to have the excuse to speak to Lily again.

“Sure.”

Anne slipped away from the crowd without being noticed. The children had finished tea and were running from one stall to another with a purposeless frenzy. They had become fractious and overexcited. On the bouncy castle boys were fighting, entangled together in a rolling ball of arms and legs, the smallest in tears. Still the adults took no notice, only shouting to make themselves heard above the noise.

Anne walked down the Avenue between the line of trees. The voices and the fairground organ faded. It was very still. Tiny thunder flies settled on her shoulders and her hair.

For once the keeper’s house was quiet. Presumably the family had been invited to the party. Anne looked both ways down the Avenue. There were no cars, no people. She opened the gate of the empty house and went into the garden. There were drawn curtains at the windows so she couldn’t see in. She tried to remember if they’d been like that when she’d been standing here with Grace. She knocked on the front door.

There was no answer and when she pushed it, it was locked. She walked round to the back of the house, to the kitchen door.

There were blinds at the kitchen window. Outside the kitchen door was a black plastic dustbin. She lifted the lid and saw empty cans of soup and beans, squashed cartons of orange and milk, beer tins. They smelled, but not as if they’d been there for months.

At the Hall they had started to let off fireworks. A rocket cracked and exploded above her head. She turned the handle of the door and pushed. It opened and she went in.

Chapter Fifty-One.

Rachael could hear the fireworks from Baikie’s. Although it was still light she could see the coloured stars exploding above the horizon. She had taken a mug of tea outside because the cottage seemed so hot and airless and there was something unsettling about the boxes and bags stacked in piles in the living room.

Once Constance Baikie had held state there. As cut off from the rest of the world as a ship in the middle of the ocean, she had looked on as people, dressed up in smart clothes, laughed and danced to the wind-up gramophone. Many of the players in the present drama had been present at those parties Robert Fulwell, Neville Furness, Vera Stanhope. Now the room looked like a transit camp. The next day the cottage would be locked up, the key replaced under the stone urn and it would remain damp and empty until a group of undergraduates turned up in the summer.

Edie was restless too. She would have gone back to Kimmerston that night, but Vera and Joe Ashworth had invited themselves to the cottage for a farewell drink and she didn’t want to miss out. And then she wanted to have things out with Rachael. She’d kept her word and written down the story of Rachael’s father.

“It’ll be an anticlimax,” she said again as she handed over the sheets of paper, covered with round, even writing. It had become her justification for not passing on the information earlier that it was a story so uninteresting that it hardly merited telling. “If you imagine your father as an Edmund Fulwell, a drunken adventurer travelling the world in search of sensation, you’ll be disappointed.” The last line, of course, had been rehearsed.

Rachael refused to read it while Edie was there, hovering, waiting for a reaction, so she set it on the grass next to her mug and lay back in the deck chair to watch the fireworks, pale flares in an increasingly overcast sky. As soon as Edie went inside she picked the paper up.

She only had time to read the first line I met your father on April Fool’s Day when she was interrupted by Vera Stanhope and Joe Ashworth.

Vera was wearing a dress of the sort of material turned into stretch settee covers and advertised in the Sunday papers. Joe looked as if he were there on sufferance. He followed behind and carried a wicker picnic basket. They had come round the outside of the cottage straight into the garden.

Inside the basket was a plaid rug which Joe spread on the grass for Vera to sit on, a number of plates covered in tin foil and bottle of champagne.

“Is there something to celebrate?” Rachael asked. Vera was in a peculiarly jolly mood and Rachael wondered even if there had been an arrest, if Vera had met the deadline she had set herself. She returned the sheets of paper, face down, on the grass. She didn’t resent the interruption, realizing with surprise that she even felt relieved.

“Connie always drank champagne,” Vera said. “It seems right to honour the tradition.” She added wickedly, “And Joe’s wife has made us a cake. Not quite the same, but a nice thought.”

“Sal makes a lovely chocolate sponge,” Joe said, seeming not to realize that he was being got at. Or too laid back to care.

“She’ll be glad to have you home a bit more often.” Edie came out through the French windows with glasses, another bottle of wine and bags of crisps on a wonky tin tray.

“She’ll be lucky,” Vera said. “Just because you lot aren’t here doesn’t mean we won’t be. She’ll still have plenty of time for her baking.”

“I wonder what Miss. Baikie would make of all this.” Rachael got up to move the deck chair to a more upright position.

“The murder? She’d have loved every minute. She loved a drama.” Vera seemed lost in thought. Rachael expected another reminiscence of visits with her father but none came. “Where’s Mrs. Preece?”

“There’s a party at the Hall.”

“Hardly decent.” Joe was shocked. “The lass hasn’t long been buried.”

“The upper classes don’t go in much for decency,” Vera said. “Well, we’ll not wait for her or this bottle’ll get warm. You do the honours.” She winked at the other two. “Being as you’re the only man.”

But he seemed dubious. “I’ve never opened champagne before. Not the real stuff.”

“Give it here then. Don’t want you spilling it.” She had the bottle between her legs, had begun to turn it carefully, when her mobile phone rang.

“Bugger it,” she said. “Get that for me, Joe.”

He took the phone from her cardigan pocket and flipped it open. After the first words he stood up and took it inside. Vera apparently felt no curiosity. She opened the champagne with a dull pop and poured it into the glasses. “Just a splash for Joe,” she said. “He’ll be driving.”

Rachael, sipping, looked at the sergeant inside the house, talking earnestly. She had no intimation of tragedy as she had before Grace’s death. She thought he was probably talking to his wife. They were discussing what time he could reasonably expect to get home. She was passing on news of the little boy. He snapped the phone shut and came to the French windows.

“Can I have a word, ma’am?”

“What’s up with you?” Vera was sitting on the rug, legs apart, skirt pulled above her knees. The glass was already empty. “Relax, man, I’m not ready to go yet.”

“It’s not that.”

“Well, what is it? Spit it out.”

He hesitated, looked at Rachael and Edie. “There was a 999 call from Holme Park.”

“And?” She saw him looking at the other women. “For God’s sake, man, whatever it is they’ll find out sooner or later.”

“A body.”

“Who?”

“No positive ID.”

She was on her feet looking down at Rachael. “You’ll have to wait,” she said. “That’s the hardest thing of all. As soon as I find out what’s going on I’ll send someone tell you. I promise. I’ll leave Joe here until someone can relieve him. Or do you want to go back to Kimmerston?”

“No,” Rachael said. “We’ll wait.”

“Inside then. Just in case.”

Rachael sat in Constance Baikie’s chair, surrounded by black bin bags and read about her father. At one time she would have thought it the most important thing in her life. Now it was a distraction and she had to force herself to concentrate. It began to rain large heavy drops which rattled like shingle against the window. She saw that they’d left the rug on the grass but Joe wouldn’t let her outside to bring it in.