His life had taken him away from the country and finally anchored him to an office desk. The skills were not forgotten, though. Joe would say nothing to Hunnyton, as he’d said nothing to anyone, not even to Dorcas. His oath was his oath.

Lightly he remarked, “Amazing what an effect a Fitzbillie’s Chelsea bun will have! I nipped out after breakfast and bought a bag of them in Trumpington Street. I say—do you think they’d have the same effect on girls? Shall we try it?”

He made no reference to the tiny bottle of oil of cloves he’d bought for an alleged toothache from Lloyd’s the chemist next door. A few drops of that on his handkerchief and a discreet smear on his face and neck had done its job. Better than a calling card. Always a good stand-by in horse country.

“There’s Frank come to round them up,” Hunnyton said. “We’d better be off and leave them to their work.”

“Well, thanks for that! I enjoyed meeting your friends.” Hunnyton peered at him. “Got a hanky have you? You might like to wipe the crumbs and froth off your chin before we encounter civilised society.”

THE VILLAGE OF Melsett was indeed small. A strung-out length of timber-framed cottages, plastered and painted, with small windows squinting out under the weight of low-hanging reed thatch, undulated with the rise and fall of the land for half a mile. Each had a neat and extensive plot under cultivation at the back and the small front gardens, where there was space for one between the skirts of the cottage and the road, were ablaze with hollyhock, delphinium and foxglove. At the centre, where the road dipped into a water-splash, there was a village pub—unsurprisingly, The Sorrel Horse—and, opposite, a building which, judging by its size and the bell mounted on the roof, could only be the school. The Friday fishmonger—Mr. Aldous of Southwold, apparently, from the name painted on the side of his Morris van—had arrived to sell his wares from a box of ice in the back. They passed slowly along the high street, Hunnyton pointing out his own cottage as they drove by until they arrived at the ancient village church mounted on a slight rise above the village.

“We’ve time to stop here and look about before we go to see the vet,” he said, showing Joe through the sheep-gate. “There’s something you’ll want to see, Sandilands.”

Joe set off up the path, his eye intrigued by the many headstones engraved with a name he thought he recognised. As they approached the church Hunnyton caught him by the sleeve and pulled him off to the left. “No, this way. Never go round a church widdershins. If you do, the Devil will have you!” Joe doubted the Devil knew his widdershins from his elbow but if Hunnyton favoured a clockwise approach, he was happy to indulge him.

They went off beyond the church and away to the furthest perimeter hedge that divided the church land from the cultivated farmland. A solitary grave with a simple stone marker seemed to be their destination. Joe noticed before they arrived at the spot that the plot was tended, grassed over and carefully trimmed. A stone vase held a bunch of white roses. Buxom, overblown garden-variety roses. A scatter of petals over the grave told Joe that they had been placed there some days ago. Hunnyton was not the only one in the village who remembered her, it seemed.

Joe knelt and read the name. PHOEBE PILGRIM. BORN: 1892. DIED: 1908. MAY SHE REST IN PEACE.

“I noticed other Pilgrims in graves a bit nearer the centre of things,” Joe said. “A Suffolk name?” Hunnyton nodded. “So why is Phoebe laid to rest here, away from her family?” he asked, knowing the answer but wanting to hear it from Hunnyton.

“There were some as said she’d no right to be on hallowed land at all. They wanted her planted out at the crossroads.” He snorted with disgust. “Medieval barm-pots! You’ll still find ignorant old shell-backs in these parts who think a suicide has no place in Christian soil.” His voice had taken on a rougher countryman’s edge to give traction to the remembered emotion. “I were that mad you could ’a boiled a kettle on my head! I gave that no-good preacher what for—right there in his own church and I got the old man to back me up.”

“Good man! Glad to hear you’re dragging them into the twentieth century. But—suicide? You don’t have to be a countryman to find that a bit tricky. It’s still regarded as a crime by the law, even in sophisticated London Town. Poor child. She was only sixteen.”

Joe knelt at the grave and said a silent prayer. Deep in thought, he removed a dead flower and rearranged the rest.

“Are you ever going to tell me why you’ve lured me here, Hunnyton? You’ve managed what no official body has managed in a quarter of a century—you’ve got a Scotland Yard officer on his knees at a graveside on Suffolk soil. Quite a feat! Look—there were twenty-five recorded self-inflicted deaths in the Suffolk police authority in 1908 and, apart from the war years when the rate went down, it’s been pretty steady ever since. I check these things! So, I’m wondering why you want the Yard here, six feet from the bones of little Phoebe Pilgrim, asking questions.”

Hunnyton knelt down opposite Joe, putting his right hand on the grave and staring at him across the small plot, using the earth as he might have used the Bible offered in court. A gesture of sincerity. An accepted guarantee of truth.

“It wasn’t a suicide. Someone murdered her. I’ve always known that. I let it go all these years but this latest—another woman in the Truelove household dying unnaturally—I had to stir myself and do something. It needs a good brain and an influential position to get to the bottom of this and sort it out. It needs you, Sandilands. I didn’t just pick your name off a list. Oh, no. The insubordination and the clout I hear about appealed to me, but I chose you for a reason that’s personal to you though you don’t yet know it.”

Joe shied away from things personal. “Shall we start with Phoebe?” he said crisply. “What was she to you?”

In Joe’s experience, faces usually crumpled as confessions were made, truths revealed. Hunnyton’s stiffened into sandstone slabs. They ground together as his mouth opened with reluctance. Difficult to read. “I loved her. Intended to marry her. She was two years younger than me but there was only one class in the little school where everybody started. She was scared when she came for the first day. She was five—a little, pale creature, all eyes. Her shoes were a size too big. Her socks were more darns than socks. I took her under my wing and kept the bullies off. Sat next to her on the bench and looked after her. I took the teasing and bloodied a few noses in return. Teacher never dared say anything to me—Miss Lackland knew who my father was.” A slight smile cracked his mouth a little further. “God! I must have been objectionable! I scrupled not in those days to take advantage of either one of my fathers’ positions.” He shuddered at the memory. “ ‘Diddled old Mrs. Mutimer out of her rent money, they’re sayin’, Sammy? My dad wouldn’t like to hear that …’ and ‘That old donkey o’ yours lookin’ a bit scrawny these days, Noah. Will you start feedin’ him properly or shall I ask my dad to come an’ check up on ’im …?’ They were never quite sure which father I had in mind. Not sure I did myself sometimes. Still—I’m not going to blame myself for that,” he added rebelliously. “Precious little else going for me.”

“Phoebe worked at the Hall, you imply?”

“Yes. Housemaid. Started when she was fourteen. Eighteen hours a day, heaving buckets of coal and baths of water up and down four floors. Slavery. I saw her on Sunday afternoons, her only time off. She was looking forward to the time I could stand on my own feet and marry her out of there. Trouble was—when she was rising sixteen I was eighteen and Sir Sidney was sending me off to Cambridge for three years.”