She nodded and turned away. ‘I’ll just go and get the tenancy book.’ Without being asked, he followed her up the open-plan staircase to the upper floor. The upstairs was cramped, the landing crammed with shelves of history and archaeology hardbacks. As she went into the back box room, the one corresponding to the site of the murder had this been Dove Cottage, Gillard peeked into the girl’s bedroom. A single bed, neatly made but with discarded clothes on it. There was a chest of drawers, a packet of contraceptive tablets on it and, hanging on a hook on the wall above, what looked like a fencing mask, with a black mesh face guard.

Hearing the sounds of Rowena emerging, he hurried out into the landing to see her appear with a big manila file. ‘Have you just been in my room?’ she asked indignantly.

‘I peeked inside, but I could get a warrant if you’d prefer to have half a dozen uniformed officers turn the place over.’

She looked annoyed, but said nothing.

‘I see from the mask that you’re a fencer as well as an archaeologist,’ Gillard continued.

‘I did a term of it at school. I was rubbish, so gave it up.’

‘Did they let you keep the sword?’

She looked at him as if he was stupid. ‘It’s not a sword, it’s a foil. At least that’s what I used. You can also use an épée or a sabre. And no, they didn’t let me keep it. I only got the mask because it’s too damaged to be used.’

‘Have you ever used an Anglo-Saxon sword or dagger?’

‘You mean did I kill the person found by the river? No, I haven’t, and no, I didn’t.’

Rowena led him downstairs. ‘Right, this is a list of all the tenancies for the properties our family owns. There’s quite a bit, actually, stuff Mum and Vicky inherited after my nan committed suicide.’

Gillard considered the tragedy of the Willows. Grandfather murdered in 1982, the grandmother committing suicide at Rissington Sluice a decade later. Michael inherited the farm, sisters Crystal and Vicky left to cope on their own. A steady stream of inherited income would be no substitute for the lack of an enfolding family.

Rowena pulled out a small file from within the folder. ‘That’s the formal tenancies for Dove Cottage going back to 1990,’ she said. The documents were neatly laid out in what he presumed was Crystal’s handwriting. He shuffled past the earlier residents, until he got to 2012. That was the year the bloodstained book was printed. It was impossible that the carnage in that bedroom could have occurred any earlier. The tenant at that time was the Rev Stephen Timpson, who stayed four years. From 2016, when he left, no tenants were noted until Cleaver’s arrival last year.