“That lets her out. What about the Shackletons?”

“Much more interesting. They were married at Saint Bart’s on the seventh of June, 1941. The husband’s name was Matthew Stephen Shackleton, the wife’s maiden name Gloria Kathleen Stringer. The witnesses were Gwynneth Shackleton and Cynthia Garmen.”

“Were they Hobb’s End residents?”

“Matthew Shackleton was. His parents lived at 38 High Street. They ran the newsagent’s shop. The bride’s listed as being from London, parents deceased.”

“Big place,” Banks muttered. “How old was she?”

“Nineteen. Born the seventeenth of September, 1921.”

“Interesting. That would put her within Dr. Williams’s age range by the end of the war.”

“Exactly.”

“Any mention of children?”

“No. I looked through the registry of baptisms, but there’s nothing there. Was he certain about that, do you think?”

“He seemed to be. You saw the pitting for yourself.”

“I wouldn’t know a parturition scar from a hole in the ground. It could have been a postmortem injury, couldn’t it? I mean, these things are often far from accurate.”

“It could have been. We’ll check with Dr. Glendenning after he’s done the postmortem. Do you know what? I’m beginning to get a vision of St. Catherine’s House looming large in your future.”

Annie groaned. Checking birth, marriage and death certificates was one of the most boring jobs a detective could get. The only positive aspect was that you got to go to London, but even that was offset by the department’s lack of willingness to grant expenses for an overnight stay. No time to check out the shops.

“Any luck with the education authorities?” Banks asked.

“No. They said they lost the Hobb’s End records, or misplaced them. Same with the doctors and the dentist. The ones who practiced in Hobb’s End are all dead, and their practices went with them. Records, too, I imagine. I think we can say good-bye to that line of inquiry.”

“Pity. What does your instinct tell you, Annie?”

Annie pointed her thumb toward her chest. “Moi?”

“Yes, you. I want your feelings on the case so far.”

Annie was surprised. No senior officer had ever asked for her feelings before, for her feminine intuition. Banks was certainly different. “Well, sir,” she said, “for a start, I don’t think it’s a stranger killing.”

“Why not?”

“You asked for my feelings, not logic.”

“Okay.”

“It looks domestic. Like that bloke who killed his wife and sailed off to Canada.”

“Dr. Crippen?”

“That’s the one. I saw Donald Pleasence play him on telly. Creepy.”

“Crippen buried his wife under the cellar.”

“Cellar. Outbuilding. Same difference.”

“All right, I take your point. Conclusion?”

“Victim: Gloria Shackleton.”

“Killer?”

“Husband, or someone else who knew her.”

“Motive?”

“God knows. Jealousy, sex, money. Pick one. Does it matter?”

“Did you ask Mrs. Kettering if she kept in touch with anyone else who lived in Hobb’s End?”

“Sorry, sir. It slipped my mind.”

“Ask her. Maybe we can track down some people who actually knew the Shackletons. Who knows where the old residents live now? We might even get a weekend in Paris or New York out of this.”

Annie noticed Banks avert his eyes. Was he flirting? “That would be nice,” she said, sounding as neutral as possible. “Anyway, for what it’s worth, I think it’s more the kind of thing someone who lived there, or near there, would do. It was a good hiding place. I don’t think anyone could have foreseen the reservoir, or the drought. Not that it would matter, really. I mean, if Adam Kelly hadn’t been playing truant and larking about on that roof, we’d never have found out. You can’t anticipate an accident of fate like that.”

“Blackout curtains.” Banks slapped his palm on the table.

“Come again, sir?”

“Blackout curtains. It’s something John Webb told me. He said they found some heavy black material with the body. I didn’t make the connection at the time, but it makes sense now. The body was wrapped in blackout curtains, Annie. And Geoff Turner mentioned wartime dental work. When did the blackout end?”

“At dawn, I suppose.”

Banks smiled. “Idiot. I mean when was it no longer required?”

“I don’t know.”

“We can find out easily enough, I suppose. Either the blackout material was left over – which I’d guess was unlikely, because from what I remember my mother telling me, nothing was left over during the war – or it was no longer needed for its original purpose, which might help narrow down the time of the murder even more. But I certainly think we’re dealing with a wartime crime, and Gloria Shackleton fits the bill as victim.”

“Brilliant, Holmes.”

“Elementary. Anyway, before we go any further, let’s find out all we can about her. What was her maiden name again?”

“Stringer, sir. Gloria Stringer.”

“Right. We already know she’s about the right age, and we know she lived in Bridge Cottage during the war. She hasn’t shown up as missing?”

“Not in any records I’ve seen. And hers was the first name I looked for.”

“Okay. If you can find no trace of her existence in the local records after, say, 1946, then we could narrow things down a bit.” Banks looked at his watch. “How about something to eat? I’m getting hungry. I don’t want to eat here again. Are there any decent restaurants in Harkside?”

Annie paused for a moment, thinking of every restaurant where she had found nothing she could eat but a salad, or meat and two veg without the meat, then she gave in to the little surge of devil-may-care excitement that tingled through her and said, “Well, sir, there’s always my place.”

After the honeymoon, Gloria continued to report for work at the farm every day at eight o’clock and she wasn’t home until five or later. On weekends, she was at Bridge Cottage, looking fresh and beautiful, ready for Matthew’s arrival. Matthew passed his engineering degree, graduating with first-class honors, as I knew he would, and started his military training at Catterick, which wasn’t too far away.

Gloria had managed, I discovered one evening, to barter her needlework skills for an extra half day off work at the farm, which gave her the full weekend. Her local area supervisor would be none the wiser, so long as the Kilnseys didn’t tell. And while Gloria kept them in mended clothes they were hardly likely to do that.

Most days I was busy with the shop. In my spare time I was involved in the Harkside Amateur Players’ production of a new J. B. Priestley play, When We Are Married, so I spent a lot of time in rehearsal.

Despite all this, we managed to get to the pictures in Harkside together a few times. Gloria just loved films and sometimes she didn’t even have time to change out of her uniform before pedaling at breakneck speed to meet me outside the Lyceum or the Lyric. She always managed some little eccentricity in her appearance, like wearing a bright pink ribbon or a yellow blouse instead of the regulation green.

That summer, for the first time, we had double summer time, which meant it stayed light much later. In autumn and winter, though, it was always dark when we had to go home. Though it was only a mile or so from Harkside to Hobb’s End across the fields, there was no marked path or road, and on a cloudy, moonless night you could wander for hours in the pitch-darkness and miss the place entirely. Unless there was a bright moon, we had to walk the long way home: all the way up Long Hill and then along The Edge, careful not to fall into Harksmere Reservoir.

Because it was much bigger, Harkside was eerier than Hobb’s End in the blackout. For a start, they had street lamps, which we didn’t, and though they weren’t lit, of course, each one of them now had a white stripe painted up its length to help you see your way in the dark, the same way there were stripes of white paint along the curbsides. People had also put the little dabs of luminous paint on their doorbells, which glowed like fireflies all along the streets.