‘I couldn’t really comment,’ said Fry, staring at the woman’s outfit and make-up. ‘So you’re a dancer, rather than an actress?’

‘Well, a bit of everything. The little group of us are a sort of comic turn, you see. We don’t dance exactly, but we do things together, so we have to be choreographed.’

‘I see. I came to ask you about the information you and your husband gave to the mobile police unit in Rakedale. About a Mr Jack Elder.’

‘Yes, Alex phoned to say that you’d called at the house. I don’t know what I can tell you that you don’t already know from my husband. It was Alex who spoke to this man, not me.’

Over their heads, music began. Feet thumped on wooden boards. Fry had to raise her voice over the noise.

‘Mrs Brindley, I know you’ve been in Rakedale longer than your husband – you inherited the house from an aunt, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘So you must know more about the sort of beliefs and superstitions people in a place like Rakedale have. I’ve heard talk of something called the “Old Religion”.’

‘Oh, I remember the old people talking about things like that. I mean, the people who were already old when I was a child – my grandmothers, and their generation. But it doesn’t still go on now, does it? I’m sure it can’t do, Sergeant. Not in this age of TV and computers and mobile phones. I can’t credit that people still believe in those things.’

‘But there was an incident when you first moved to Rakedale, wasn’t there? A rather unpleasant incident, involving you personally.’

‘Oh. So someone has been talking, have they?’ Mrs Brindley gave a brittle laugh, causing the stage make-up on her face to crack and fall in a small shower on her costume. ‘I wonder who that could have been? As if I didn’t know.’

‘PC Palfreyman dealt with it at the time, in his own way. But you must have been disturbed by it.’

‘Yes, of course. To be honest, I’ve never forgotten it. It wasn’t the birds so much as the few minutes when I thought there was an intruder in my house. A real, human intruder.’

‘Well, there must have been a real intruder in the first place. Did Mr Palfreyman ever tell you who he suspected?’

‘No. And I agreed with him that it was best not to know. I would have found it difficult to behave normally with them, if I’d found out. And then it would have been me who was being odd and refusing to be friendly.’