“Rest easy, sir. No warrants and you can’t slap manacles on the dead. Wouldn’t expect it,” he murmured, gentling again. “As you said before, it’s a twenty-five-year-old case with no police enquiry worth the name carried out. No autopsy, no forensics of any kind. I just want to know the truth. I want you to know the truth. The same goes for her ladyship Lavinia’s death. I think we might find the answers under the same roof.”

Hunnyton hauled himself to his feet and dusted off his knees, still gazing at the grave. “It’s not just that she was special to me … I don’t know if it gets you the same way, sir … Once you’re acquainted with a corpse, it belongs to you until you find out what happened to it and who was responsible.”

Joe grimaced. “Know what you mean. I’ve had so many bloody albatrosses round my neck I’m bent into a hairpin. I can carry one more. A little light-boned one. She’s no trouble, bless her. Well, come on, other sheep’s head! Let’s get moving! The vet did you promise me?”

As they strode down the path Joe paused by one of the tombstones. “See here, Superintendent. There’s a local family thick in the ground hereabouts, it would seem. The ‘Hunnybuns.’ Any relation? I like to know these things.”

He had the satisfaction of watching the stony features flush red. Anger? Embarrassment? Impossible to tell.

“That was my name. It’s a very ancient village name and I’m proud to bear it. There’s hundreds of us in the county and in Cambridge, too. So common I didn’t realise there was anything amusing about it until I was about to apply to college. The old man called me in and explained he’d taken steps to have my name changed by deed poll.” His supple voice took on the tone of an aristocratic old duffer: “ ‘Wouldn’t do to have the other undergraduates laughing at you, old chap! Or calling you a nancy-boy.’ ” He grinned and clenched his fists. “He needn’t have worried. I had my own ways of making my mark.”

“Thought as much. But I’m with your old man on this—he did the sensible thing. It’s amazing what a difference one consonant can make—kills off any chance of teasing and hoiks you up a class or two. Does seem a waste of a good name, though. I like it! I think you should call your first daughter ‘Hunnybun.’ I shall expect an invitation to the Christening.”

“You’ll have to find me a wife first, sir.”

Joe was glad to hear a lightening of mood. “I shall give it my best attention. Carrying on the theme of ‘honey,’ I’m inspired to look for something in light auburn, perhaps, and very lovely as you’re so hard to please.”

Hunnyton rolled his eyes in scorn at this flight of fancy. “So long as she’s not called Blossom or Gypsy, that’ll do right well.”

THEY DROVE ROUND to the vet’s house, set a little apart from the rest of the village at the easterly end, its garden hidden behind a stalwart copper beech hedge. Clearly a gentleman’s residence. It was Victorian, of the same period and the same red brick as the schoolhouse. Decorative cornices, stepped brick corners, contrasting black window and door details were the stamp of an uncompromising city architect who was aiming to mark out his work as something superior to the reed-thatched, ground-hugging local dwellings. A row of steeply pitched gables snapped off an angled salute and tall chimneys at either end stood to attention, giving the house more than a touch of imperial consequence, but a bower of climbing roses, which some later owner had encouraged to swarm all over the façade, poked light fun at the ruled-edge regularity and softened its severity with blousy white blooms.

They parked on the gravelled carriage sweep and got out as the church bell pealed eleven. Seconds later, the infants erupted from the schoolroom into the playground for their recreation and filled the air with their shouts and songs.

“What’s the vet’s name? Hartest? Must be doing well for himself. This is a very good house.”

“He’s a very good vet. Best the village has ever had. London trained. Not in the flush of youth. He’s a widower. Came out here last summer, thinking to work out his remaining years in peace and quiet.” His grin was full of mischief. “He isn’t getting much! His prices are very reasonable so people don’t need to think twice before calling him in and, as I say, he knows his stuff.”

Hunnyton tugged on the bell-pull.

A maid answered at once, taking their hats and ushering them into a cool black-and-white-tiled hallway. “You’ll be the police gentlemen for Mr. Hartest. Sorry, sirs, but you can’t see him at the minute. Vet’s been called out to Fox Farm. There’s trouble with that new bull of theirs. But you can have a word with Doctor Hartest.”

They exchanged puzzled looks but before Joe could ask a question, a door at the rear banged open and a voice called out a greeting. “How do you do, gentlemen. I’m Doctor Hartest. Adelaide Hartest. Sorry to disappoint you. My father asked me to welcome you, make his apologies and try to give you any information you might want about the death in the stables. You may see all the notes he made at the time and … well … we did talk about it extensively so I can pass on his comments if you wish.”

The young woman looked from one to the other of the two men standing awkwardly in her hall. For mature men following a profession where words came easily, they stood in stunned silence, staring at her.

Adelaide Hartest’s smile of welcome began to fade. “So long as you’re not here to sell me an encyclopedia or guarantee me a pass through the Pearly Gates, you may come into the parlour and introduce yourselves. When you’ve remembered who you are.”

Her appearance was as informal as her greeting. She was a tall girl, wearing trousers and an aged linen open-necked shirt which had probably belonged to her father or even grandfather, Joe thought critically. Lord! It could well have seen action at Gallipoli. She had wooden clogs on her feet. A pair of pruning shears stuck out of one pocket and a gardening glove dangled from the other. Joe didn’t much care for women in trousers but, as she turned to lead them into the parlour, he decided to add the name of Adelaide Hartest to his list of women who could wear them. It was now a list of three: Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel and Dr. Adelaide Hartest.

Joe was the first to recover from the surprise of finding himself in the presence of a bright-faced, extremely pretty and self-assured woman. But it had been the sight of the unfashionable abundance of light auburn hair which had silenced him. Hunnyton also had been knocked sideways. What on earth could he be thinking? Joe caught the man’s eye and asked him a silent question. Hunnyton pulled a comedy villain’s face and shrugged a shoulder, saying clearly: “No idea! Nothing to do with me, guv.” Joe’s waggling eyebrows replied in kind: “Me neither!”

Joe held out a hand and shook the doctor’s, introducing himself, and then he presented Hunnyton.

“Well, I’d have been happy to welcome PC Plod up from Bury but—a Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner and a Detective Superintendent from Cambridge? They’re really rolling out the big guns! Do you two normally work together?”

“No, Miss … Doctor … just for this one outing,” Hunnyton supplied.

“I’ve made some coffee. Suit you both? Good. Sit down, will you, and if you can stop gurning at each other like loonies, we’ll get started.”

While she poured coffee into blue-and-white china cups and passed around a plate of shortbread biscuits, she explained her presence in her father’s house. Adelaide Hartest had only been in the village a week or two. She was taking time off from St. Thomas’s Hospital in London, where she’d begun her medical career as a junior doctor and was about to enter general practice if her father could scrape the money together to buy her a partnership. Joe steeled himself to nod sympathetically through an outpouring on the difficulties that beset a woman forging a career for herself in the man’s world of medicine in this post-war era, but none came. She was focussed and succinct.