‘Oh, there were so many difficulties. Bulgarian adoptions require court approval – a notoriously slow process. It took months even to set a date for a hearing, and we were told that many adoptions required more than one hearing. Miss Shepherd was a great help, giving us advice all along the line, helping us to understand the rules, explaining all the bureaucracy. But at the first hearing, the judge refused our application. He said there were minor problems in the paperwork. We had to hire a Bulgarian attorney to correct the errors, then the court had to schedule another date. The process seemed to go on for ever. I remember there was a sort of prosecuting attorney, who was employed to point out legal problems. He was a tall man with black hair and broad shoulders, and he wore a bright red robe. We started to refer to him as Satan.’

‘All right. But this must have been, what – twelve months ago?’

‘Yes, that’s right. Luanne was six months old when we brought her out of Bulgaria.’

‘She’s been slow to develop in a lot of ways,’ said Mrs Lowther. ‘But that’s because of her background. When we got her, she could just about grasp a rattle, and her head still flopped about when we sat her up. She had no idea how to feed herself.’

‘The boys were much more advanced than that, so it was a bit of a shock for Lindsay,’ added her husband.

Mrs Lowther smiled sadly. ‘Luanne’s eighteen months old now, and she babbles to herself all the time, but she has difficulty forming words, even “mummy” and “daddy”. She tends to repeat the last word of anything that people say to her. She’s very restless physically, isn’t she, Henry?’

‘She certainly is. And she can be very emotional, too – she laughs and cries almost at the same time.’

‘And she’s still having trouble sleeping through the night, I believe, sir?’ said Fry.

Lowther hesitated. ‘Oh?’

‘Your son-in-law said that’s why Luanne was staying here on the night of the fire, to give Lindsay a bit of respite.’

‘Oh, that’s right,’ said Lowther. ‘Luanne is still suffering from separation anxiety. Lindsay and Brian should have learned how to let her cry before now, but they couldn’t. It’s always a difficult thing to do, of course. As a parent, you can’t ignore your child when it’s calling for you.’

Fry wasn’t impressed. Henry Lowther didn’t look like a man who’d get up in the middle of the night to attend to a crying baby, but she might be misjudging him.

‘So explain to me again how you came to meet with Rose Shepherd in Matlock Bath last weekend.’