There was nothing for it but to go along. “Death hole?” Deborah enquired. She had knelt and was replacing her equipment-forgotten for a few moments in the lovely blue of Simon’s eyes-in its case.

“The baby, remember?” Hank said patiently. “Although considering what you two’s up to in here, I can see the baby story didn’t exactly scare the livin’ hell outa you, did it?” He winked lasciviously.

“Ah, the baby,” St. James responded. He picked up Deborah’s case.

“Now I got your interest!” Hank approved. “I could tell at first you mighta been a little peeved at me popping in on you like that. But now I got you, I can tell.”

“Yes, indeed,” Deborah responded, but her thoughts were elsewhere. Curious, how it had all happened in a moment. She loved him, had loved him from her childhood. But in a dizzying lightning-bolt moment of time, she’d realised that it had changed somehow, becoming quite different between them from what it had been before. He’d all of a sudden become not that gentle Simon whose tender presence had filled her heart with joy but a whip-bodied lover whose very look aroused her. Good heavens, Deborah, you’ve become quite silly with lust, she thought.

St. James heard his wife’s bubble of laughter. “Deborah?” he asked.

Hank nudged him in the ribs with a knowing elbow. “Don’t worry about the bride,” he confided. “They’re all shy at first.” He strutted on ahead like Stanley with Livingston in sight, pointing out areas of interest to his wife with a “Catch that, Bean. Get it in the lens!”

“Sorry, my love,” St. James murmured as they followed the progress of the other two through the ruined day room, across court and warming house and into the cloister. “I thought I had him taken care of until midnight at least. Five minutes more and I’m afraid he would have caught me getting you into some truly serious trouble.”

“What a thought!” she laughed. “Oh, Simon, what if he had! He would have shouted, ‘Get it in the lens, Bean!’ and our love life might have been destroyed forever!” Her eyes danced and sparkled. Her hair gleamed brightly in the afternoon sun, blowing about her throat and shoulders carelessly.

St. James drew in a sharp breath. It was like a pain. “I don’t think so,” he said evenly.

The death hole was in what remained of the vestry. This was no more than a narrow roofless hallway, overgrown with grass and wildflowers, just beyond the south transept of the ancient church. Here, a series of four arched recesses lined the wall, and it was to these that Hank pointed with ghoulish drama.

“In one-a them,” he announced. “Get it in the lens, Bean.” He tromped through the grass and posed toothily. “Seems this was the place where the monks kept their church duds. Sorta a cupboard or something. And on the night in question, the baby was plopped right in and left to die. Pretty sickening when you think about it, huh?” He bounced back to their sides. “Just the right size for a kid, though,” he added thoughtfully. “Like a whatdaya-call-it? Sacrifi cial offering.”

“I’m not sure the Cistercian monks were in that line of business,” St. James commented. “And human sacrifices have been out of fashion for a good number of years.”

“Well, whatdaya think, then? Whose baby was it?”

“I couldn’t even begin to guess,” St. James replied, knowing full well the theory was forthcoming.

“Then lemme tell you how it happened, because the Bean and I figgered it out the fi rst day. Didn’t we, Bean?” A wait for the woman to nod her head loyally. “Come on over here. Lemme show you two lovebirds a thing or two.”

Hank led them through the south transept, across the uneven paving of the presbytery, and out onto the abbey grounds through a gap in the wall. “There you have it!” He pointed triumphantly to a narrow track that led to the north through the woods.

“I see indeed,” St. James replied.

“Got it fi ggered out too?”

“Ah, no.”

Hank hooted. “Sure you don’t. That’s ’cause you haven’t thought it through like me ‘n’ the Bean have, right, Sugarplum?” Sugarplum nodded mournfully, moving her bunny eyes from St. James to Deborah in silent contrition. “Gypsies!” her spouse went on. “Okay, okay, I admit it. Bean and I didn’t get the full handle on this till we saw them today. You know who I mean. Those trailers parked on the side-a the road. Well, we figgered out that there musta been some-a the same here that night. It had to be a baby-a theirs.”

“I understand gypsies are inordinately fond of their children,” St. James noted drily.

“Well, not-a this kid, anyway,” Hank replied, undeterred. “So get the pitcher here, fella. Danny and Ezra are over there somewhere”- he waved vaguely in the direction from which they had come-“getting ready for the plunge, you know? And tippy-toeing along this path comes some old crone with a kid.”

“Old crone?”

“Well sure, don’t you see it?”

“‘Ditch-delivered,’ no doubt,” St. James said.

“Ditch-who?” Hank shrugged off the literary allusion like lint from his coat. “The old crone looks around, right and left,” Hank demonstrated, “and slips into the abbey. Looks around for a deposit box and bingo, Bob’s-yer-uncle.”

“It certainly is an interesting theory,” Deborah put in. “But I always feel just a bit sorry for the gypsies. They seem to get blamed for everything, don’t they?”

“That, little bride, brings me right on up to theory number two.”

JoJo-bean blinked her apologies.

Gembler Farm was in excellent condition, a fact unsurprising since Richard Gibson had continued to work it throughout the three weeks since his uncle’s death. Opening the well-oiled gates that hung between two stone posts, Lynley and Havers entered and surveyed it.

It would be quite an inheritance. To their left stood the farmhouse, an old building constructed from the common brown bricks of the district, with freshly painted white woodwork and frail clematis conscientiously trimmed and trellised over windows and door.

It was set back from Gembler Road, and a well-tended garden, fenced to keep out the sheep, separated the two. Next to the house was a low outbuilding, and, forming another side to the quadrangle that comprised the yard, the barn loomed to their right.

Like the house, it was constructed of brick with a heavily tiled roof. It was two fl oors high, with gaping windows on the second floor through which the tops of ladders could be seen. Dutch doors were used on the ground level of the barn, for this was a building for tools and animals only. Vehicles would be kept in the outbuilding to the far side of the house.

They walked across the well-swept yard, and Lynley inserted a key into the rusting lock that hung on the barn door. It swung noiselessly open. Inside, it was eerily still, dim, musty, and overcold, too much the place where a man had met a violent end.

“Quiet,” Havers observed. She hesitated at the door while Lynley entered.

“Hmm,” he responded from the third stall. “Expect that’s due to the sheep.”

“Sir?”

He looked up at her from where he had squatted on the pockmarked stone fl oor. She was quite pale. “Sheep, Sergeant,” he said. “They’re in the upper meadow, remember? That’s why it’s so quiet. Have a look here, will you?” Seeing that she was reluctant to approach, he added, “You were right.”

She came forward at that and passed her eyes over the stall. At the far end was heaped a mouldly pile of hay. To the centre was a not overlarge pool of dried blood-brown, not red. There was nothing else.

“Right, sir?” Havers asked.

“Dead on the bottom, if you’ll pardon the expression. Not a drop of blood on the walls. I don’t think we had any body-slinging here. No crime-scene arrangement done after the fact. Nice thinking, Havers.” He looked up in time to see the surprise on her face.

She reddened in confusion. “Thank you, sir.”