Текст книги "The Corpse Bridge"

Автор книги: Stephen Booth

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 39 страниц)

For a few minutes he read about its claim to historic associations and the generations of Manbys who’d lived there. He skipped through the stuff about antique furniture and fascinating collections of curiosities, turned the page on details of the restaurant and the craft centre, and the walled nursery. Then he reached a few paragraphs about the extensive parkland on the Knowle estate.

Finally, he dropped the leaflet back on his desk with an exasperated groan.

‘How could I have been so stupid?’ he said.

‘What is it, Ben?’ asked Irvine in surprise.

‘Grandfather,’ said Cooper.

‘What?’

‘Meet Grandfather, 1am. It’s not a person. It’s a place.’

27

‘The family tend to refer to him as the Old Man of Knowle,’ said Meredith Burns as she led the way from the estate office at the abbey. ‘It’s a traditional Manby joke, I think. A reference to the previous earl. The “old man”, you know?’

Cooper nodded. ‘Yes, I see,’ he said.

As he and Diane Fry followed Burns along the signposted trail into the parkland, Cooper reflected that the old Derbyshire lead miners had often talked about ‘t’owd man’ too. But they’d meant something quite different. They’d usually been referring to the Devil.

But who knew what went on in a family like the Manbys? In any family, in fact. Perhaps there was more than a coincidence in the similarity between the miners’ superstition and the way the Manbys referred to the old earl. That portrait of the seventh Lord Manby in the Great Hall made him look a real tyrant. And when had Knowle Abbey begun to deteriorate so much? Had a previous owner neglected its maintenance, while spending his fortune on something else entirely? That would be enough to cause some degree of resentment among his descendants when they inherited a crumbling estate up to its chimneys in debt.

They’d entered the edge of the trees, and as the trail took a sharp bend they lost sight of the buildings they’d just come from.

‘I don’t like forests,’ said Fry. ‘You ought to know that by now.’

‘This is hardly a forest,’ said Cooper. ‘It’s landscaped parkland. Some previous earl obviously planted a few trees to create a view from the east wing.’

‘But you said there are wild animals.’

‘Roe deer. They’re far more frightened of you than you are of them, Diane.’

Fry didn’t look convinced. But he knew no animals would come near her, if they could help it. She was hardly Snow White, attracting wild creatures to feed trustingly from her hand. She was more the kind of person who would introduce a badger cull, then willingly extend it to include anything that moved in the dark.

‘One of the great things about these big trees is that they make such wonderful landmarks,’ Burns was saying. ‘You might not be able to find your way through a wood where all the trees are the same age and look identical. But anyone can find this grand old chap.’

‘And lots of people do, I suppose?’ said Cooper.

‘Oh, he’s a tourist attraction in his own right. We have signs on all the trails to point the way to him. Visitors love to come and stand underneath his branches and have their photos taken, or see how many of them it takes to reach all the way round his trunk. British people have a very affectionate relationship with this particular species.’

‘Do they?’ said Fry.

Cooper laughed. Her horrified expression suggested she was imagining a much more intimate relationship than anything Burns had meant.

‘There he is,’ said Burns. ‘The Grandfather Oak.’

The Old Man of Knowle, or the Grandfather Oak, was a thousand-year-old oak tree. Its status as a unique tourist attraction was the reason it was mentioned in the leaflets about Knowle Abbey.

Cooper paced round the tree. He didn’t really know what he was looking for, but he could find none of the things that he might have expected from examining the scene at the Corpse Bridge. No effigy, no noose, no witch ball filled with curses. Not even any graffiti or obscene messages carved into the ancient bark. There were no signs that anyone had been here with malicious intent. And it would be useless to do a forensic search of the woods. Far too many people came through here, leaving signs of their presence.

He looked up into the branches. It would make a great vantage point, he supposed. But these branches were old and brittle. A couple of the larger boughs were propped up by lengths of timber to prevent them from snapping under their own weight. He wouldn’t want to try climbing this tree without proper safety equipment.

Cooper turned to look at the abbey. It was barely visible from here. Just a small tower on the south corner in the distance could be glimpsed through the trees.

As they made their way back along the trail, the abbey came into sight again. Cooper spotted a small, slightly overweight figure moving towards the back of the house. He was dressed in wellingtons, mud-spattered jeans, a tweed jacket and a felt hat.

He pointed at the figure.

‘Is that…’ he began.

‘Yes, that was the earl,’ said Burns. ‘I think Her Ladyship has sent him to do some mucking out in the stables.’

‘Who’s “Her Ladyship”?’ asked Fry.

‘The Countess. Lord Manby’s wife.’

‘Countess? I thought her husband was an earl, not a count?’

‘Well, we don’t have counts in England any more. They replaced the title with a more Anglo-Saxon version centuries ago.’

‘And they never bothered introducing a female form of the new title,’ added Cooper.

‘Typical.’

Fry dropped back and leaned closer to Cooper when Burns was out of earshot. She waited to be sure that Burns wasn’t listening.

‘With all the staff he employs,’ said Fry, ‘don’t you think Lord Manby would have someone to do the mucking out for him?’

‘I think Meredith was joking,’ said Cooper.

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really. You missed that?’

‘I must have done.’

‘It was a reference to the way the earl was dressed. Actually, I think she felt a bit embarrassed about us seeing him.’

‘Ah. Perhaps he was presenting the wrong image.’

‘I believe that was exactly it,’ said Cooper.

But as they returned to the estate office, Cooper was wondering why Fry hadn’t noticed the significance of the earl’s very different appearance, once he was at home and relaxing among his own rolling acres instead of in white tie and tails at a formal occasion. Now Lord Manby looked exactly like the effigy on the Coffin Stone.

In her office Meredith Burns became defensive when Cooper asked about the earl’s plans for the church and graveyard at Bowden.

‘As I told you, we have to do everything we can to bring in revenue for the maintenance and repair of the abbey,’ she said. ‘I explained that to you last time you came. The monthly wage bill alone is staggering. The staff is enormous – you’d be surprised how many people there are working here.’

‘About three hundred?’ said Fry.

Burns was clearly taken aback. ‘Yes, around that figure.’

‘But you didn’t mention the graveyard at Bowden,’ said Cooper.

‘It’s just one of a range of projects,’ protested Burns. ‘Some of the old staff properties will become holiday lets. We’re also hoping to get planning permission to build some new chalet-style units on the western side of the burial ground, within the walls of the park itself. Those units will have a very desirable setting.’

‘And there’s the church, of course.’

‘Yes, and the church will be sold. We’ve had several expressions of interest, but unfortunately we don’t have a confirmed buyer yet.’

‘Does it surprise you that many of the people whose family members are buried at Bowden have strong objections to these plans?’

Burns shrugged. ‘It was bound to happen. Some of these decisions are painful, but they have to be made. Otherwise what would happen to Knowle?’

She sat down at her desk and stared at a large plan of the Knowle Abbey estate on the wall in front of her.

‘You know, at one time, this estate consisted of more than fifty properties and about three thousand acres of parkland and farms,’ she said. ‘Inheritance tax and divorce settlements have taken their toll over the centuries. But it has to be admitted that much of the decline was due to bad management by successive earls who were more interested in hunting and shooting, or in hosting lavish dinner parties for the local gentry.’

Cooper was satisfied to hear his speculation confirmed. But it was Fry who voiced what he was thinking. She had always been more prone to blurting out her opinions – probably more than was good for her.

‘I don’t think anyone would be surprised by that,’ said Fry.

‘I realise it’s an image still common among the more ill-informed members of the public,’ said Burns.

Fry opened her mouth to object and Cooper thought for a moment he was going to have to intervene in a peacekeeping role. But Burns didn’t seem to notice Fry’s reaction. She pointed at the map of the estate in front of her.

‘When the present earl took over the estate, he launched himself into a whole series of projects,’ she said. ‘As Walter himself would tell you, he inherited a great many wasted assets and he wanted to make them work for their living. His first idea was the conversion of the old coach house into a restaurant. Then the kitchen gardens were turned into a plant nursery, and a craft shop was created in the joinery workshop. We’ve recently applied to the county council for a licence to use part of the abbey as a wedding venue. But none of these activities brings in enough money – and as revenue streams they’re unpredictable, because they rely on the general public. An extended spell of bad weather could ruin us.’

‘Or negative publicity?’ asked Cooper.

‘Well … quite.’

Cooper recalled the picture postcard view of Knowle Abbey he’d admired from across the river, above the Corpse Bridge.

‘What about using the abbey as a location for filming?’ he said. ‘I’ve heard that’s a thriving business.’

‘We’ve tried, but we’re competing with Chatsworth House and Haddon Hall, and a dozen other places in the county. Yes, we benefited a little from the Downton Abbey phenomenon. But the last TV crew to visit Knowle were from Bargain Hunt. Do you know it?’

‘No, I’m sorry.’

‘Daytime television, I believe.’ She looked at Fry. ‘Someone called Tim Wonnacott?’

Fry shook her head too. ‘No.’

Burns sighed and gazed at Cooper seriously.

‘There’s a grand plan to save the Knowle estate,’ she said. ‘But it needs a massive long-term injection of cash. Somehow we have to find millions and millions of pounds of revenue – and from a consistent source.’

‘Downton Abbey,’ said Fry as they drove out through the parkland in the gathering dusk. ‘I’ve actually seen that one. Is Homeland like that?’

‘Not exactly like that,’ said Cooper. ‘Why?’

Fry turned to him. ‘Well, just a thought. I was wondering if you remembered that you still have my TV in the boot of your car?’

When Cooper’s phone rang a moment later he answered it automatically. But it was bad news.

‘Has it just happened?’ he said. ‘Last night? Why didn’t you call me? Well, okay. Yes, I suppose so. Thank you. And, well … I’m really sorry to hear of your loss.’

Cooper ended the call with a curse. ‘Damn.’

‘What is it?’

‘Mrs Shelley,’ he said.

‘Oh … she’s your landlady.’

‘She was,’ said Cooper. ‘But she’s dead.’

When he got back to Welbeck Street that evening and let himself into his flat, Cooper was immediately struck by how different it felt.

It made no sense, of course – especially as Dorothy Shelley had been in hospital since Friday. And even when she was living next door, he’d hardly been aware of her presence most of the time. But now that he knew she was dead, it made all the difference. Logic didn’t come into it.

As he walked through the rooms he found it quite unnerving how much number eight no longer seemed the same. Deep down he knew the reason for the feeling. Death had crept a little bit too close to his walls, reminding him once again that there was no escape. As if he could forget.

Cooper checked his messages and fed the cat. He dug a chicken and sweetcorn pasta bake from the freezer compartment of his fridge, pierced the foil and slid it into the microwave. Six minutes at full power before it needed stirring. Then he switched on the TV for the news.

As he watched stories about bad weather and a firemen’s strike, his mind began to drift. He thought it was odd that Diane Fry should remind him he had her television in the boot of his Toyota, then not ask for it back. She hadn’t even arranged a time for him to deliver it to her new apartment in Nottingham, though surely she must be living there now – the old flat in Grosvenor Avenue would be empty and not fit to live in, even for someone with Fry’s spartan needs. It was almost as if she’d wanted her TV to stay where it was. Well, he couldn’t blame her. There wasn’t much worth watching. It wasn’t as if she were missing any episodes of Homeland. Or even Bargain Hunt.

A few minutes later Cooper sat down at the kitchen table with his pasta bake, watched by the cat and trying very hard not to stare at the empty chair opposite him. Liz had planned a big kitchen in their new home, with oak units and marble worktops. Even then her dream had seemed a million miles away from number eight Welbeck Street. And now it was just a half-forgotten fantasy. The reality was this cramped space at the back of a terraced house in an Edendale side street, with a microwave oven and a place set for one.

And this wouldn’t last either, not once the new owner of the properties arrived. Cooper considered his options. Perhaps he should start house-hunting again. But the prospect filled him with dread. Every estate agent’s window would have too many painful associations. Every set of property details would feel pointless.

When he first moved into this flat from Bridge End Farm, Cooper had never known a silent house in his life. He remembered a foreboding of how depressing, how desperate, and even how frightening it might be to come home every night to a dark and empty house. The post would still be lying on the mat where it had fallen in the morning, a single unwashed coffee mug would be in the sink where he’d left it after breakfast. And the house would have that feel of having got along all day without him, that his existence was unnecessary, maybe even unwelcome.

He recalled that first taste of loneliness now – sour and unexpected, a burst of metallic bitterness at the back of his mouth, like a spurt of blood on his tongue.

As he ate his pasta Cooper gradually tried to nudge his thoughts on to a different track, the way he’d been taught months ago by the grief counsellor. He ran his mind back over the events of the day, seeking some useful insight.

Each of the visits he’d made to Knowle Abbey reminded him that the Manbys’ historic mansion was as much out of his comfort zone as it was for Diane Fry, a woman who never seemed truly at home anywhere. There were so many things he didn’t understand about the way that place was run. The Right Honourable Walter, Lord Manby of Knowle, was an enigma to him and would probably stay that way. Even if he got a chance to interview the earl, which seemed unlikely, he wouldn’t expect to learn anything helpful. Someone like his lordship would undoubtedly be as well practised at putting up a façade as any career criminal protesting his innocence in a court-room. It was all about public perception, letting people see whatever they wanted to see.

Cooper couldn’t get the ideas of the coffin roads out of his head. Sandra Blair and the Corpse Bridge were at the centre of everything, he was sure. The discovery of George Redfearn’s body had distracted most of the attention today, including his. The post-mortem result on Mrs Blair hadn’t helped.

As a consequence his time had been taken up interviewing a middle-class cocaine user and a dodgy enquiry agent, not to mention a giant oak tree. Instead, he should have been trying to find a way of breaking open the group of people Sandra Blair had been involved with. He should have been seeking the weak link he’d mentioned to Luke Irvine.

Cooper could feel his position weakening hour by hour, though. Without more evidence, his justification for concentrating on Sandra Blair and Knowle Abbey was being eroded away and soon his stance would become untenable. And there would be no shortage of people willing to point it out.

As Cooper finished his pasta, Diane Fry was driving through the gates of a modern executive development on the outskirts of Nottingham and drawing up outside her new home. She’d rented a double-bedroom, top-floor apartment with an open-plan lounge and kitchen area, a master bedroom with fitted wardrobes and juliet balcony, and a secure door entry system. The rent was about six hundred pounds a month, but it did have its own parking space. And it was only a stone’s throw from the A52 for her commute into the city.

She sat in the car for a few moments and looked at the other properties, with their neat grass verges and the little access roads between them. There was barely a sign of human occupation, but for lights behind curtained windows and a car parked in front of a garage door.

It was amazingly quiet here – much more peaceful than the house in Edendale, with its constant comings and goings, the endless flow of noisy students and migrant workers, the neighbours who wanted to stop and chat in the street, the friendly family in the corner shop who always smiled and asked after her health.

It didn’t seem right, really. The city ought to be noisier and livelier than a small country town. But she was in the suburbs here, twenty minutes from the city centre with its pubs and shops and theatres. Suburban life had its own rhythm.

Fry let herself into the apartment, remembering to clear the burglar alarm. It was something she’d never had to do in Edendale. But then, she didn’t have anything worth stealing. She’d never felt the urge to surround herself with material possessions. But she lived here now. Perhaps she would feel obliged to go shopping.

She walked to the windows and looked outside. She found herself worrying about where she should put her wheelie bins without making the development look untidy. And she realised with a shock that she must have become middle class.

Fry took off her jacket and dropped her keys on the table. She had to admit that the rooms sounded empty and strange. She turned and looked at the corner of the lounge, where a table stood waiting for her TV set to arrive.

Well, that was one thing that kept her connected to Edendale. There was one small part of her that still hadn’t left.

28

Monday 4 November

It was a typical early morning in November. A frost lay on the ground and a thick mist blanketed the valley. Above the mist the humped backs of Chrome Hill and Parkhouse Hill were lit by the sun, like whales breaking the surface.

Ben Cooper couldn’t believe he was out so early. He’d been sleeping better for the past few nights, but this morning he woke so promptly that he was out of the house at dawn. Barely half an hour later he was here on the edge of the county, watching the sun rise.

The very top of Parkhouse Hill felt almost razor sharp. With that vertical drop on one side, you wouldn’t want to lose your footing on a day like this. He imagined two people up here together. It would be so easy, wouldn’t it? He could see the picture now in his mind and hear the conversation.

‘Watch where you’re walking. It’s slippery.’

‘I’m okay.’

‘Here, let me hold on to you…’

It wouldn’t take much. A quick push, a momentary loss of balance. And the result would be serious injury or even death.

He continued to walk until he’d passed through the mist and emerged into sunlight. With a deep breath, Cooper turned and looked northwards. From here the view was stunning. It fired his imagination like no other vista in the Peak District.

Seen from Parkhouse, Chrome Hill was clearly the body of an ancient dinosaur, a dragon sleeping in the Derbyshire landscape. It was half buried in the ground, its sides covered with grass over the centuries. The dragon was quite clear, and obvious. He could see its ridged back and scaly tail. If he leaned a few yards to the left, he’d be able to make out its massive head. Its belly lay beneath those scrubby trees on the southern flank. The rise and fall of its breathing was almost visible to him.

Cooper saw it all so clearly that he even doubted for a moment if the dragon was sleeping at all. Perhaps it was about to rise to its feet with a roar, angered by his unwelcome presence in its lair.

Because that was what this place must be – a dragon’s lair. Parkhouse and Chrome were prehistoric anomalies. One glance told him they belonged to a distant past. They shouldn’t exist here, in the twenty-first century. These strange hills were a fragment of some parallel universe, dropped into Derbyshire by a momentary connection between their two worlds. He was standing in reality, but looking at legend.

Cooper found a flat rock and spread out his map. He marked Bowden, with its chapel and graveyard. Then he located the villages to the east. With a bit of guesswork, he could trace the probable routes of the coffin ways from each of those villages, the twists and turns the mourners would have taken to reach the crossing at the Corpse Bridge. One track came over the Pilsbury Hills and skirted the site of the castle as it descended to the river.

Another of the routes had passed through an area now swallowed up by an enormous limestone quarry. It was one of a whole series of quarries still operating south of Buxton – vast holes blasted out of the rock, their cliff faces carved into ledges like Roman amphitheatres, with diggers and dumper trucks that looked like Dinky toys as they trundled backwards and forwards on the roadways below. They were much larger than the disused quarry, the remains of which he could see now behind Knowle Abbey. They had become massive white limestone basins gleaming in the sun, but bowls of choking dust when the machinery was loading crushed stone. That route from Deeplow had once been a public right of way, now diverted at the request of the quarry owners, in an attempt to keep walkers away from the quarry.

And of course there had been a third coffin road, at least. He could see it on the map as it approached the bridge from the north. But where did it originate? It was hard to tell, but it looked as though mourners taking their dead to their final resting place at Knowle must have followed a very tortuous route. Their way had led across an area of ground now marked with a scatter of isolated structures arranged in a pattern unlike any community or industrial site he knew of in the Peak District.

Cooper could recall the Reverend Latham’s voice describing the funeral. The bearers and the funeral party making their way down the hill, resting the coffin, dividing and coming together again across the water.

But wait a minute. Dividing? Was that what Latham had said? He was quite sure of it. He could hear the words clearly in his head. Dividing and coming together again across the water. Did he mean the funeral party? Surely he must have done. But why would they have divided? They stopped and rested the coffin at the bridge, on the stone put there for the purpose. That was to allow the bearers to change over, the men who’d been carrying the coffin down the hill getting a rest and fresh shoulders taking up the load. So what else happened there?

Cooper looked down at the river. As he watched the waters of the Dove splashing and dancing over the stones, he realised what had happened to him. Somehow he must have been infected by Diane Fry’s cynicism, inhaled some of her incessant disbelief like carbon monoxide gas leaking from a faulty stove. Her sneering had affected him, despite his instincts. She’d made him feel reluctant to acknowledge those ancient, deep-down beliefs that his ancestors lived with. And not only lived with, but acted on in their daily lives. His forebears believed in spirits – not just as some quaint, archaic superstition, but as a real and present danger in the landscape. If they were told they needed to cross water to block a spirit’s path from the grave, that’s exactly what they would have done. Not simply on some occasions if it was convenient, but every time, as a necessity.

Cooper turned and looked down towards the Corpse Bridge, hidden in its belt of trees. A body at the bridge, one at Pilsbury Castle. Did it mean there would be more deaths, one on each of the coffin roads?

When Cooper reached West Street later that morning his team were already hard at work in the CID room, making him feel a twinge of guilt. He was supposed to be showing qualities of leadership.

‘How are things, Gavin?’ he asked.

Murfin looked up from his desk. ‘Like a bad day at the mortuary,’ he said.

‘It’s going that well?’

‘There’s good news, though,’ said Murfin. ‘There’s a lass here who’s come in to see you. She asked for you specifically too.’

‘Who is it?’

‘Her name is Poppy Mellor.’

‘Mellor,’ said Cooper. ‘That’s interesting. When you say a lass, Gavin?’

Murfin shrugged. ‘Twenty-one, maybe.’

‘Good.’

Poppy Mellor sat nervously in Interview Room One. She looked intimidated by her surroundings, as people often did who had never expected to find themselves in a police station. Looking at her, Cooper thought it had probably taken a lot of courage for her to come here.

She sat with a plastic cup of coffee in front of her on the table. She was staring at it as if she didn’t quite know what it was. Cooper could sympathise with that. He’d tasted the liquid that came out of the machine and he couldn’t tell what it was either.

‘Miss Mellor?’ he said. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Cooper. You were asking for me.’

She stood up when he came in, then sat down again suddenly, her legs wobbling and unable to support her properly. She looked relieved when she heard his name.

‘Poppy,’ she said. ‘No one calls me Miss Mellor.’

She was a tall, athletic-looking girl with dark hair, quite pretty in a way, with long hands moving restlessly against each other on the table, her fingers twisting a set of rings. She’d draped a cream jacket casually over the chair and was wearing a white T-shirt with an esoteric design Cooper couldn’t place without staring too closely.

‘Poppy,’ said Cooper, sitting down opposite her. ‘I met a lady at the weekend—’

She nodded. ‘My great-aunt Caroline. She lives at Bowden.’

‘Did she mention me to you?’

‘Yes. It’s amazing that she remembered your name really. She can be quite vague. You must have made an impression on her.’

Cooper looked at the plastic cup. The coffee had gone cold and a grey skin was forming on the top. It looked disgusting.

‘Would you like me to get you another one of those?’ he said.

‘No. Thank you.’

‘I don’t blame you.’

He put the cup aside and sat back. She seemed to be relaxing a bit more, but it would be a mistake to push her too hard.

‘Take your time, Poppy,’ he said. ‘Just get it clear in your mind what you want to tell me. There’s no rush.’

‘Oh, I’ve thought about it already,’ she said. ‘I know what I want to say. It’s about Rob.’

‘Rob Beresford?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s a friend of yours?’

‘Yes.’

‘He was part of the scheme, wasn’t he? I mean, the whole performance at the Corpse Bridge with the effigy and the noose.’

Poppy looked crestfallen. ‘He didn’t do much, you know. In fact, he didn’t do anything in the end.’

‘So what was his role?’

‘He was supposed to be the person who found the effigy,’ she said. ‘He deliberately didn’t play any other part. He had no contact with the others beforehand, so that he would just be an innocent person stumbling across the dummy.’

‘Why didn’t they just leave it for some genuinely innocent person to find?’

Poppy shook her head. ‘It might not have been found for weeks, especially if the weather turned bad. And they were worried who might find it. It could have been somebody who didn’t bother to report it. It could have been a child. They didn’t want to leave that to chance.’

‘So the next step was going to be making sure it got as much publicity as possible, I suppose?’

‘Yes.’

‘They were going to take photos, I imagine?’ said Cooper.

‘Of course. Carrying a digital camera would have been a bit too suspicious, but Rob was going to take photos and a short video on his iPhone, then pass them on everywhere he could.’

‘Local papers?’

‘Yes, but Facebook and Twitter too. The video would have gone on YouTube. They were hoping to go viral, he said.’

‘It would certainly have drawn attention to the cause.’

Poppy nodded. ‘That’s what they figured. There was no harm to it really.’

‘But it went wrong. What happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘And Rob doesn’t know either. He wasn’t there. Like I said, he had no contact with the others beforehand. They weren’t even supposed to have each other’s numbers on their phones, just in case. They know you look for things like that.’

‘Yes, we do,’ admitted Cooper.

‘But Rob recognised Sandra, obviously. He didn’t see how he could claim otherwise. You would have found out. There was no point in him pretending.’

‘We’ll need to talk to Rob directly,’ said Cooper. ‘He’ll have to give us a statement.’

‘I know. But I didn’t want you to go along thinking he’s a suspect. He isn’t.’

Cooper noted that Poppy Mellor seemed to be under the impression that Sandra Blair was murdered. Did she actually suspect Rob Beresford of being responsible? Was that why she’d felt compelled to come in and tell this story on his behalf? Not so much protecting the innocent, as standing by the guilty?

Well, nothing could be taken at face value – even someone who seemed so genuinely well-intentioned.

‘And what was your part in his scheme, Poppy?’ asked Cooper.

‘Me? I didn’t do anything. Rob wanted me to. I thought it was a good cause, protesting against the earl’s plans for the holiday cottages and selling off the church. And the car park, of course.’

‘Car park?’

‘On the burial ground at Bowden. He wants to concrete it over and turn it into a parking area for the holiday lets.’

‘I don’t think he can do that,’ said Cooper.

‘Well, it’s what they say.’