Even if Scotland Yard didn’t know the local geography, somebody should have pointed it out. Perhaps someone had, and any link had already been investigated and discarded. If so, I would be going over old ground.

“Martin, would you be so kind as to arrange for me to visit Stephen Walmsley? He’s in Wakefield.”

“Wakefield?”

I did not want to say on an open line that Walmsley was a resident of His Majesty’s Prison. “Yes. George King is such a good host I hear.”

“Ah, yes, so he is. How soon do you want to visit?”

“Soonest possible, tomorrow?”

“Will be in touch.”

“Thank you.” I hung up.

This was not an ideal way to communicate, but at this time of night it was preferable to finding a police station with a secure line to Scotland Yard and going through the rigmarole of an explanation before being told to ring back in the morning.

Eager Martin Yeats would enjoy his journey back to Scotland Yard, and his latest task.

I came back into the dining room and told them of my planned visit to Wakefield prison, to meet the man accused of murdering the shopkeeper. “DC Yeats says there’s no connection. The motive for the murder of Mrs. Farrar appears to be robbery, but that feels too neat.”

Mrs. Sugden licked her pencil and made a note. Sykes stared at his fingernails. He hates it when a person licks an indelible pencil.

Mrs. Sugden sometimes makes a little whooshing sound when she has a good idea. She did so now. “You say this man was put in a sack?”

“Yes.”

“Was there ash? Might he have been some sort of penitent?”

Sykes held his tongue with difficulty. I never pooh-pooh Mrs. Sugden’s odd suggestions. She sometimes has an uncanny way of coming up with a useful line of enquiry, but to keep us on track I told them Mr. Woodhead’s suspicion that the man might be a foreign agitator.

Mrs. Sugden pounced. “Mediterranean, probably a Catholic. That would tie in with sackcloth and ashes.”

“Except there were no ashes,” Sykes said rather abruptly, “it was a sack, not sackcloth, and the man was shot.”

“True, on the face of it,” Mrs. Sugden agreed. “But we’re not theologians.” She gave him a hard stare. “And there are lots of people who are anti-Catholic.”

To shift the conversation, I told them of Commander Woodhead’s suspicions and DC Yeats’s guesswork.

“One line of enquiry is that he was carrying cash to encourage another miners’ strike, and that he was murdered for his money. DC Yeats’s thought he might be an author, because of callouses on his thumb and finger.”

Mrs. Sugden made a note. “Why would anyone murder an author?”

Sykes hates it when Mrs. Sugden interrupts. “Even an author might occasionally have money.”

Perhaps convening at this time of night was a mistake.

Mrs. Sugden had not finished. “I read a story where a playwright murdered a man who knew that his original play in English wasn’t original at all. He’d translated it from the German without letting on.” She paused for a moment. “There’s a word for it.”