Lynley examined the picture. “Yes, of course. But she could have arranged it.”

Havers’s sharp little eyes widened in surprise. “I don’t think she could, sir. Not really.”

“Why not?”

“Teys was six feet four inches tall.” She clumsily pulled out more of the report. “He weighed…here it is, fourteen and one-half stone. I can’t see this Roberta slinging round fourteen and one-half stone of dead weight just to arrange a crime scene. Especially if she intended to confess immediately after. It doesn’t seem possible. Besides, the body had no head, so you’d think there’d be a bit of blood on the walls if she’d slung it about. But there wasn’t.”

“Score a point for you, Sergeant,” Lynley said, pulling his reading spectacles out of his pocket. “I think I agree. Here, let me have a look at that.” She handed him the entire fi le. “Time of death was put at between ten and midnight,” he said, more to himself than to her. “Had chicken and peas for dinner. Something wrong, Sergeant?”

“Nothing, sir. Someone walked over my grave.”

A charming expression. “Ah.” He read on. “And barbiturates in the blood.” He looked up, his brow furrowed, and stared sightlessly at Sergeant Havers over the tops of his spectacles. “Somehow one never thinks of a man like that needing sleeping pills. There he is, putting in a hard day’s work on a farm, out in that wonderful fresh air of the dales. He eats a hearty dinner and just drops off to sleep by the fire. Bucolic bliss. So why sleeping pills?”

“It looks as if he’d only just taken them.”

“Obviously. One hardly expects him to have somnambulated his way out to the barn.”

She froze at once at his tone, retreated back into her shell. “I only meant-”

“Excuse me,” Lynley interrupted quickly. “I was joking. I do sometimes. It relieves the tension. You’ll have to try to get used to it.”

“Of course, sir,” she replied with deliberate courtesy.

★ ★ ★

The man accosted them as they walked over the pedestrian bridge towards the exit. He was extremely thin, anaemic-looking, obviously someone who was victim to at least a thousand different kinds of stomach problems that were the bane of his existence. Even as he approached them, he popped a tablet into his mouth and began chewing upon it with furious determination.

“Superintendent Nies,” Lynley remarked affably. “Have you come all the way from Richmond to meet us? That’s quite a drive for you.”

“Sixty bloody miles, so let’s get it straight right from the top, Inspector,” Nies snapped. He’d stopped dead in front of them, blocking their way to the stairs that would lead them down to the departures platform and out of the station. “I don’t want you here. This is Kerridge’s goddamned game and I’ve nothing to do with it. You want anything, you get it from Newby Wiske, not from Richmond. Is that perfectly clear? I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to hear from you. If you’ve come up here with a personal vendetta in mind, Inspector, then just shove it up your arse right now. Got it? I’ve not time for poncey schoolboys itching for a pretty scratch of revenge.”

There was a moment of silence. Watching Nies’s dyspeptic face, Barbara wondered if anyone ever spoke to Lord Asherton in such a colourful manner on his Cornish estate.

“Sergeant Havers,” Lynley said mildly, “I don’t believe you’ve ever been introduced to Chief Superintendent Nies of the Richmond police force.”

She had never seen a man driven to a loss so swiftly, done with an impeccable show of manners. “Nice to meet you, sir,” she said dutifully.

“Damn you to hell, Lynley,” Nies snarled. “Just stay out of my way.” With that, he turned on his heel and pushed his way through the crowd towards the exit.

“Nicely done, Sergeant.” Lynley’s voice was serene. His eyes searched through the swarm of humanity in the terminal. It was nearly noon, and the usual bustle of York’s station was intensified by the lunch hour as people took the opportunity to purchase tickets, to argue car hire prices with the station agents, to meet loved ones who had timed arrivals to fit into the schedules of a working world. Lynley found the person he was looking for, said, “Ah, I see Denton up ahead,” and raised his hand in acknowledgment to a young man who was approaching them.

Denton had just come out of the cafeteria, caught in the midst of a meal. He was chewing, swallowing, and wiping his mouth with a paper napkin as he dodged through the crowd. He additionally managed to comb his thick dark hair neatly, straighten his necktie, and give a quick glance at his shoes, all before reaching them.

“Good trip, my lord?” he asked, handing Lynley a set of keys. “The car’s just outside.” He smiled pleasantly, but Barbara saw that he avoided Lynley’s eyes.

Lynley gazed at his valet critically. “Caroline,” he said.

Denton’s round, grey eyes grew immediately rounder. “Caroline, my lord?” he repeated innocently. His cherubic face became, if possible, even more cherubic. He flicked a nervous glance back in the direction from which he’d just come.

“Don’t ‘Caroline, my lord?’ me. We’ve a few things to straighten up here before you go off on this holiday of yours. This is Sergeant Havers, by the way.”

Denton gulped and nodded quickly at Barbara. “Pleased, Sergeant,” he said and turned his eyes back to Lynley. “My lord?”

“Stop being so obsequious. You don’t do it at home and in public it makes my skin positively crawl with embarrassment.” Impatient, Lynley shifted his black overnight case from one hand to the other.

“Sorry.” Denton sighed and dropped the pose. “Caroline’s in the cafeteria. I’ve a cottage lined up in Robin Hood’s Bay.”

“What a romantic you are,” Lynley observed drily. “Spare me the details. Just tell her to phone Lady Helen and reassure her you’re not off to Gretna Green. Will you do that, Den-ton?”

The young man grinned. “Will do. In a tic.”

“Thank you.” Lynley reached into his pocket and from his wallet extracted a credit card. He handed it to the man. “Don’t get any ideas,” he warned. “I want only the car on this. Is that clear?”

“Absolutely,” Denton replied crisply. He glanced over his shoulder to the cafeteria, where a pretty young woman had come outside and was watching them. She was as fashionably dressed and as fashionably coiffured as Lady Helen Clyde herself always was. Practically her clone if it came down to it, Barbara thought sourly and wondered if it was a requirement of the job: handmaiden to the youngest daughter of an earl, just like someone stepping out of the nineteenth century. The only real difference between Caroline and her ladyship was a minor lack of self-assurance evidenced by Caroline’s grip upon her handbag: a two-fisted clinging to the handles as if it were to be used as a defensive weapon.

Denton spoke. “Shall I be off then?”

“Be off,” Lynley responded, and added as the man scurried back in the direction he had come, “Take some care, will you?”

“Not a fear, my lord. Not a fear,” was the swift reply.

Lynley watched him disappear into the crowd, the young woman on his arm. He turned to Barbara. “I think that’s the last interruption,” he said. “Let’s be on our way.”

With that, he led her out onto Station Road and directly up to a sleek, silver Bentley.

★ ★ ★

“I-have-got-the- poop,” Hank Watson said confidentially from the next table. “The- straight-certifi ed-verifi ed-poop!” Satisfi ed that he had the undivided attention of the others in the dining room, he went on. “About the baby-in-the-abbey story. JoJo-bean and I had the straight, certified from Angelina this morning.”

St. James looked at his wife. “More coffee, Deborah?” he asked politely. When she demurred, he poured some for himself and gave his attention back to the other couple.

Hank and JoJo Watson hadn’t wasted much time becoming elbow-rubbing intimates of the only other guests at Keldale Hall. Mrs. Burton-Thomas had seen to that by seating them at adjoining tables in the hall’s immense dining room. She hadn’t bothered with introductions. She knew quite well there would be no need. The beautiful bolection mouldings of the room’s panelled walls, the Sheraton sideboard, and the William and Mary chairs became entirely lost to the American couple’s interest once St. James and Deborah entered the room.