Yes, he knew the old girl. Old Ma Fox. By reputation, of course, like everyone up here, but he’d actually met her. Twice. Burglaries reported. He’d attended the scene and taken her statement.

“Was she lucid?” MacFarlane thought he’d do well to establish this.

“Was she lucid!” the constable spluttered. “Sir! She grabbed the pencil from my hand and the notebook and corrected my notes! Frothing on about apostrophes and punctuation. Said she was going to insist on having from the governor a written explanation for the low standard of literacy in the West Riding Police Force. And it’d better be in good English!”

“Ouch!” MacFarlane’s sympathy was not feigned.

“Oh, she’s got all her marbles, if that’s what you’re asking. Cunning old crow! We knew the amateur jokers who’d done both jobs—course we did—but we were so riled by the time she’d done with us, we were ready to shake their hands and let them off with a caution. Just kids, they were! But they got five years hard in the reformatory.” He added bitterly: “She made sure of that. Up here, it’s who you know . . .”

Anyway, it wasn’t wise to argue with money in these parts, he’d advised. And that old girl seemed to have it by the bucketload. Her husband, old Freddy Fox—‘Purveyor Of Fine Foods to Fine People,’ he’d sneered—had landed some juicy contracts for supplying all the army depots in the north during the war years. “You can imagine what the average mud-and-bloodstained trench rat made of that slogan when he prised the lid off his tin of stringy horse meat stew.” The business had gone from strength to strength. Rumour was, they were planning to move into the richer grazing grounds in the south of England next. “Under new management,” he’d added in portentous tone.

A nervous maid responded to his knock on the door. She solemnly looked at his CID identity card, comparing the affably smiling features before her with the grim professional photograph pasted onto the card and decided that he’d do.

“The mistress will see you now in the parlour, Superintendent. Will you step this way?” And with a swish of the ribbons on her long-out-of-fashion evening-uniform headdress, she set off down the hall of Rosemount, Briary Lane, in the village of Wilby near Leeds, halfway between the golf course and the reservoir.