But the call had conveniently reminded her of where she’d seen the surname on the headstone. ‘We found the cremated remains of a person called Wheelwright in a barn in Barnsley,’ she said succinctly. ‘What do you think of that?’

Ben stared at her. ‘What? In a barn?’

‘That’s right.’ She paused to think. ‘I don’t suppose it 292belongs to this family farm you’re talking about, does it? Right in the middle of Barnsley?’

‘No, it’s the other side of Cirencester, I think. I’ve never actually been there. How do you know they’re somebody’s ashes?’

Clovis was equally bemused. ‘You never told me about that,’ he reproached her.

Ben had lost all interest in the churchyard or walking to Betty’s Grave. ‘Can you take me to see? When was this? Will they still be there? Whose barn is it?’

Thea answered his questions to the best of her ability. ‘They’re in an urn – the sort provided by the crematorium. There’s a name label and a date. Gwendoline Phoebe Wheelwright. It was only Tuesday I saw them. Dozy of me to forget the name so quickly. Anyway, I shouldn’t think anyone’s going to move them.’

‘Well, let’s go and see,’ urged the youth. Clovis allowed himself to be hustled back to the car and instructed to drive back to Barnsley immediately.

‘The thing is,’ said Ben breathlessly, as they drove, ‘I remember my mum talking about her Great-Aunt Gwen. If I’ve got it right, the whole argument about the farm started when she died. Must be more than twenty years ago – I wasn’t born, nor Wilf. He’s my older brother. Mum always says if she’d been a bit quicker off the mark, she might have inherited the property herself.’

‘So who else is after it?’

‘Pretty much everybody, to start with. It’s all gone quiet lately. There are all sorts of descendants staking 293a claim. Gwen’s father was one of Great-Granddad’s offspring. Gwen was a childless widow when she died, and everyone thought the place belonged to her. But in fact she was just living there by default, you might say. It was never officially hers – nobody did the necessary paperwork. She had an older brother, Eric, who was killed in the war, which was one reason everything got so muddled. He didn’t make a will, and even if he had it might not have been valid. There were cousins who contested his claim on the farm, even back in the nineteen-forties.’

‘So why not sell it and share the proceeds?’ asked Clovis.

‘Good question. Stubbornness, I assume, or maybe they couldn’t if they didn’t know exactly who it belonged to. Anyway, Uncle Dick’s been researching into it recently, and he thinks he’s got a pretty good case for claiming it. Most of the others are dead by now.’

‘But they’ll have descendants of their own who might be interested,’ said Thea.

‘Dick thinks there’s really only one surviving branch that might cause trouble. When I was here a week or so ago, he was talking about getting in touch with them and seeing where things stood.’