“No,” she said. “Really, I’ve thought about it and I’m sure our tactics were just right. My husband’s in public relations and he advised us. Look, if you’re interested, I can show you a file of letters I sent asking for support—to councillors, the local M.P., the media. I kept copies of them all. We had a concerted attack in the last couple of weeks just before the appeal was heard.”

She disappeared into another room and returned with a yellow envelope file bursting with typewritten notes and letters. She sorted through them and took out a handful to show Hunter.

“Look,” she said. “All these are dated in the month before the appeal. I really don’t think we could have done any more. We just didn’t get the response from the public that we could have hoped for. Perhaps the campaign had just been going on for too long and they had a sort of protest fatigue. This sort of development had happened so often in the county that it just didn’t seem exciting anymore.”

“Do you know Henshaw?” Hunter asked. “ Personally?”

She laughed. “ No,” she said. “We don’t move in the same social circles.”

“Did he ever approach you during the campaign?”

“Not during the campaign,” she said. “ He came here afterwards, when the inspector’s decision was finally made public, to gloat. He stood on the doorstep and shook my hand and said that now that the due process of law had been completed he hoped we could be good neighbours.”

“What did you say?”

She shrugged. “What could I say? As far as I knew he was right. Everything was legal and aboveboard. I was as gracious as I could manage, wished him luck for the future, and asked him for a donation for playgroup equipment. As he was so keen to be a good neighbour. I’m on the playgroup committee and we’re always short of money.”

“Did you get your donation?” Hunter asked.

She smiled wryly. “Oh, yes, we got it. And just as the bulldozers were moving in, there was a picture in the local paper of Henshaw surrounded by grateful toddlers and piles of new toys. He knows more about public relations than my husband.”

“Yes,” Hunter said. “I see.” So Ramsay was wrong again, he thought. He should have more sense than to believe Jack Robson’s fairy stories.

She looked at her watch. “I haven’t been a lot of help, have I?” she asked. “ If there’s nothing else you want to know, I’ll have to be out soon to collect my older boys from school. I should avoid that while you’ve got the chance. There’ll be no peace then.”