The woman almost looked like she wasn’t going to tell it. But eventually she conceded. “Martha. Martha Hobson.”

“Martha, what did you mean by ‘trying to avoid’?”

Martha turned her nose up, but talked nonetheless. “We didn’t want your kind coming here. All looking for the Standedge Five. Playing armchair detective. Pretty much exactly what you’re doing is what we didn’t want.”

“How did you try to stop this, though?”

“It was Chief Claypath mostly. Held a town meeting a week or so after the Incident. Pretty much everyone was there—to show solidarity to the Claypaths, as well as the other families—” She said other like they were lesser. “We all agreed unanimously that Marsden should be protected. We know that the guilty party is already found. No need to make a big fuss—no need for this to be a big thing. Because we knew it would be if the ghouls had their way.

“I mean, we’d seen it in action. How many god-awful people go to get a snap by the room where that television detective was held now, eh, ever since that awful thing happened up there last year? Our world is getting overrun by bad guys, and the idiots who romanticize their every move. Murder Tourists.

“Good was the Standedge Five. Those kids were wholly good. And now they’re gone. Because of a boy I used to eat my packed lunch with. Even went through Standedge with him on a couple of occasions. And we don’t want him to be glorified. We want to remember the Standedge Five without having to remember him too. That’s what Claypath proposed and that’s what we all agreed to.

“We kept our heads down about it and kept quiet. And when Matthew McConnell is behind bars for good, that’s when we can grieve more openly.”

“You’re putting a lot of stock in the fact that Matthew is guilty,” Robin said.

“That’s because he is, sweetheart. He’s a crafty bastard, but guilty as sin.”

“Can I ask what makes you so certain?”

“Well, the police say he is, even after their investigation. There are no other suspects. And there’s no way it could have been anyone else.”

Robin thought as Martha went back to squeezing the mop and then finally splatting it onto the stone floor. “Can you talk me through the logistics of going through the tunnel? Explain the ways, as someone who works here, that it couldn’t have been anyone else?”

“Ooh, fancy,” Martha said. “Sounds like a GCSE question, dunnit?”

“Please.”