‘You’ve been a great help, Gail.’ He scribbled down the address of Cheyney Hall. ‘I think we’ve isolated the debt; I’m sure she’s just overlooked it. Would you know if Miss Gregson lives alone? No partner?’

‘Can’t help you there,’ she said, grinning. ‘Donna never let on. Didn’t let on about anything much, to be honest. I should think Miss Gregson’s beating them off, with all that lovely dosh, but I only ever saw her here on her own.’

‘She’s not been in recently?’

She frowned. ‘Now there’s a funny thing. I don’t remember seeing her all season, now you mention it.’

Crane stood near the entrance, waiting for Anderson, though the reporter had his own wheels this afternoon. He was curious about Kirsty Hellewell. Then suddenly, Anderson came careering across the entrance hall, jacket flying about him with the momentum. ‘Can’t stop, Frank, they’ve just got me on my mobile. Some nutter in Cutler Heights has a woman and two kids under siege. Threatening the uniforms with a gun. We’ll touch base at Patsy’s, OK?’

Crane followed him out, but he went off at an angle. ‘My car’s in the lower park,’ he said. Crane had never seen him so animated and didn’t believe it was much to do with a nutter with a gun. Anderson suddenly turned and ran back a few yards, his cocky, triumphant grin an ominous sign. ‘I’ve got fantastic news,’ he said in a lowered voice. ‘I think we’re there, Frank, I think we’re there!’

Crane ruefully watched him lope off. It was churlish to feel so disappointed and he knew it. The killer had to be caught and what did it matter who got the lead that counted? But Crane was the pro and he’d wanted it to be him. He got in his car. The reporter had clearly had a stroke of luck. And if he was so charming that women told him things, well, that was part of his luck too. But what could she have told him? Whatever it was, it had to be dynamite.

Anderson drove as rapidly as he dared to join the city ring road. He grinned, the look on Crane’s face! He knew this was a ball they could run with. He was almost certain in his own mind that it would solve everything and leave him with a story nearly as good as the original one. Boy, would he be glad when it was all over and he could begin work on the final draft of his big feature, and start to put out feelers to the Sunday Times. There was absolutely no doubt in his mind he would eventually get what he wanted. He always had. But the look on Crane’s face!

NINE

Crane went to Ilkley by the moor road. The sun shone from a clear sky and the rooftops of Ben Rhydding were as sharply defined as an engraving. He drove rapidly, the greeny-brown mass of the moor’s terrain rising to his left. He was tense, restless, impatient to know what Anderson had learnt. He had to admit that he was a bright bloke, he’d not be crowing that he thought they were there if he’d not got the strongest lead of all. Crane couldn’t shake off his disappointment that a young reporter could get ahead of a police-trained PI. All right, he’d had a massive stroke of luck. It didn’t make him feel any better.

He knew this would probably be a pointless journey, but he couldn’t settle. He’d decided to see Julia Gregson if only to eliminate someone else who appeared to have got to know Donna rather well, going by the deliveries she’d had her make. That other detail still nagged at his mind, some connection he couldn’t quite make.

‘Miss Gregson?’ he’d asked on the phone.

‘Who is this?’ she’d said sharply, in the imperious way moneyed people often had.

‘The name’s Frank Crane. I’m investigating the murder of Miss Donna Jackson on behalf of her parents. The original suspect has been cleared. Could you spare me a little time if I called on you?’

The silence was so lengthy he thought he’d been cut off. Then, ‘I … fail to see what help I can give you. All she did for me was deliver shrubs and bedding plants.’ There was a decided tremor behind the assured hauteur.

‘She made an awful lot of deliveries.’

‘I’ve got an extremely large garden.’

‘Did you become friends, Miss Gregson?’ he said, in a soft tone.

‘There’s nothing I can help you with, Mr Crane. Goodbye.’

‘I’m liaising with the police,’ he said quickly. ‘I shall have to pass on to them this information, and as they’re now on the point of reinvestigating the case themselves I think you’ll find they’ll insist on talking to you. I could possibly spare you that.’

After another silence, she said in a subdued tone, ‘Oh, very well, I’m in all evening.’

The house was off the Ilkley-Skipton road, isolated and standing in extensive grounds, around which ran a high perimeter wall. He drove in through an archway with ornamental gates that stood open. Cheyney Hall was a very grand residence: gabled, chimneyed, stone-built and with a delicately-columned portico sheltering the main entrance. The front garden was mainly sweeping lawn and mature trees, but a central fountain played into a carved stone basin.

She opened the door herself. ‘Come in, Mr Crane.’

She led him across a spacious hall, half-panelled and hung with landscapes in oil, and heavy with the scent of freshly cut flowers, which stood in ornate vases. There were more flowers in the lofty reception room she took him into, in more vases standing on carefully polished antique tables: roses, lilies, marguerites, sweet pea and many more he couldn’t put names to. It brought to Crane’s mind a French tag he’d once read somewhere: Qui fleurit sa maison fleurit son coeur.

Aphone sounded in a distant corner. She excused herself and left him standing by the window. It was rear facing and the spread of land on this side of the house seemed as vast as a park. It was overlooked by a balustraded terrace and in the foreground the garden was formal and geometrical in the precision of its layout, with a pool that was more like a small lake. Beyond it stretched walkways, tapestried hedges, a gazebo and tiny, separate, secluded gardens, shrouded by cherry, apple and laburnum trees. A distant strip of dense woodland formed a boundary. A lengthy, lavishly stocked conservatory ran from the left of the house at right angles. It was the largest garden Crane had ever seen enclosing a private house. He was so absorbed by the scale of the place that for a few seconds he was unaware of her return. She stood watching him in a wary silence.

‘Miss Gregson,’ he said politely, ‘may I ask why you had all those deliveries made of plants and shrubs you didn’t really need?’

She went on watching him in silence. She was about five-six and had dark brown hair looped back into an elegant bun, slightly protruding brown eyes, a rather aquiline nose and an olive complexion. She wore a black rib cardigan and a straight, black, ankle-length skirt. He seemed to detect in her eyes the same bottomless sadness he’d seen several times before in the Donna Jackson case.

‘I … yes … you’re right,’ she said heavily at last. ‘I ordered many things I didn’t need. Would never need. I … I liked to see her. I grew to care for her. She was so very sweet, such a friendly little thing. That’s really all there is to know about Donna and me.’

‘You had deliveries made simply to see her for a short time?’

She turned away, absently adjusted an already perfect flower arrangement. ‘Well, obviously I’d ask her in for coffee. I live a rather solitary existence. She’d stay and chat for a quarter of an hour. They seemed not to mind at Leaf and Petal.’

‘She never talked about boyfriends at all, Miss Gregson? Apart from Mahon, the man the police originally thought responsible for her death?’

For a second, he thought she was going to faint. She closed her eyes, swayed. He caught her arm.

‘Are you all right?’

She took several deep breaths, plucked his hand away with a look of distaste. ‘She never talked about men. Never.’