“Just that pit?”

“For now. I will write about them all. I have written about rhubarb, all the facts.”

“Philip, what you said ties in with an idea I’ve had.”

He smiled. “Do you want to read my facts?”

“Yes. I’d like that.”

“Which ones?”

“The facts about the rhubarb, to begin with.”

We drove on. I asked to do a short detour, passing Ardsley Railway Station. It had a small station office, and extensive sidings.

Philip stayed in the van. I took my camera, went into the station, making a show of looking at the timetable for passenger trains. I then walked along the platform to where a goods train stood. A truck door was open. This may have been where the unknown man was brought. Perhaps someone had conveniently left a truck door open on that day, too.

If I asked questions, I’d stick out like a sore thumb. Already attracting attention, I put the camera back in my satchel. This part of the investigation would be best left to Sykes.

We drove on. Philip pulled in to the side of the narrow lane, allowing a herd of cows to waddle to their milking parlour.

As he set off, a horse and cart loaded with a bed, a couple of chairs and a table came dangerously close. The wobbling furniture, not very well secured with rope, seemed an apt image for the enormity of my task. With little to go on, and hampered by the instruction to investigate with discretion, I felt like a person playing with dice loaded in favour of the tables.

I had always thought of Thorpefield as a village, but of course it is just a hamlet. We came in on the back lane and came close to the Corner Shop that we used to call the halfpenny drinks shop. “Slow down, Philip, please.”

“It’s closed,” Philip said. “No drinks today.”

The shop stood alone. The large rear garden bordered adjacent fields. It would be possible for someone to come across those fields unnoticed and enter the house part of the building from the back.

“Keep going, Philip, just drive up one street and down the next.”

“Someone robbed that shop,” he said. “Someone killed the halfpenny drinks lady.”

“Yes.”

He drove up Silver Street, the first in a row of workers’ cottages. Number 42, last in the row, was where Stephen walked with Joan after band practice. I imagined the police going door to door, asking questions. But perhaps they had not needed to ask questions, when they found Stephen Walmsley with blood on his hands.

“Kate, why would someone rob a little shop when there are big shops?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“There are no big shops in this village. Everywhere else there are Co-operative Stores. Here there are none.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Are you investigating?”

“I know you can you keep a secret, Philip.”

“I never told how far we used to come, and how we got sick on the rhubarb.”