They gathered round her, eager and solicitous. ‘Sit down,’ said Thea. ‘In your own time,’ said Caz. Ben was holding his notepad and pencil.

Grace took the upright chair that Thea urged her towards, and leant her head on one hand, elbow on the table beside her. ‘It started with Simon – Karen’s father,’ she began haltingly. ‘He was a very committed socialist. Communist, really, at least in the old days. Remember he was married to a Chinese woman. He was a devoted follower of Chairman Mao, back in the sixties. Anyway – that meant that he never approved of private property. When Gwendoline died leaving the 339farm, Simon was the one with the best claim on it. But he refused to have anything to do with it. So that meant the Jackson brothers and a few cousins all scrambled over each other to get it. All those years of wrangling, endless legal fees and false hopes. Karen would talk about it now and then, but there was nothing she could do while her father was alive.’

‘But then he died,’ said Ben. ‘And she could do what she liked.’

‘So who did she hurt?’ Thea demanded impatiently.

Caz flapped a hand at her, and Grace ignored her. ‘She went back on a promise. Simon made her promise never to make a claim on the estate. He made her sign an agreement, and sent copies to the relatives. But she broke it. She said it wasn’t valid after he died. So she went up to Manchester last week to see the solicitor handling the whole business, to tell him she wanted to apply for the inheritance.’

‘And ran into the other claimants who drove her back here, trying to talk her out of it, and when she refused to co-operate, they killed her,’ Ben summarised.

Grace heaved a heartfelt sigh. ‘That’s what it looks like, doesn’t it?’ Tears were trickling down her face. ‘But who would ever imagine they would kill her for it.’

‘So – the Jackson brothers did it, did they?’ asked Thea, with a frown. ‘And Richard twisted his knee on these stairs, when rushing to get away afterwards.’

She tried to assemble all the new facts into a better picture. ‘But who took those ashes out of the barn?’ That had been nagging at her all afternoon.340

‘My guess would be Norma,’ said Ben. ‘But I don’t think it matters much now. The main thing is that somebody’s gone to the trouble to make her a little memorial, and think about her. That’s quite nice, whoever it was.’

Thea remembered that Gwendoline was also a relative of Ben’s, even if she died before he was born. She still hadn’t got the family relationships straight, and wondered whether she ever would.

‘We’d better go back over the road and talk to them,’ said Barkley.

After a stunned silence, Thea said, ‘But … won’t that be a bit risky? I mean, you won’t want all of us tagging along, will you?’