If at that moment I had said what was in my mind, I would have had to pack my bags and go. Gertrude was a person who never had enough. I had forgotten what she can be like. I thought back over our friendship, and for the first time wondered how it had lasted this long.

My explanation was that we had met for lunch, in department store restaurants or select cafés. She had invited me to her version of country house weekends. Alongside her snobbish, self-satisfied guests, Gertrude seemed a saint.

She continued. “Mrs. Farrar had more money than she let on. Who knows what he stole and where he stashed it before the police picked him up?”

A tall woman from the end house opened her door, stepped outside, noticed us and retreated.

Unless I was mistaken, that was the grace and favour house, and she was the woman who lived rent-free.

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know all the tenants by name.” Gertrude steadied her horse that had become restless. “It won’t be easy to find someone to take on the shop. There’s a lot of superstition. People began to see Mrs. Farrar’s ghost hours after her body was taken away.” She turned and gave me a smile. “Are you ghoulish enough that you want a picture of the shop?”

“Yes, but just for my own information.”

“Not that I’m asking to be a censor or anything but this is a rather sensitive time.”

I took the photograph without dismounting. “It will be an aide memoire to where we’ve been today.”

“I’ve told the estate agent to be sensitive about advertising—at least until things have quietened down.”

I would make sure that Mrs. Sugden was the first person to come and look around. She would find out about the mysterious neighbour in the end house.

“Let’s get away from here.” Gertrude urged her horse into a gallop, calling, “I’ll show you a sight worth photographing!”

Chapter 24

Chapter Twenty-Four

After a mile or so, Gertrude slowed her horse. “Have you ever seen a pit being sunk?”

“No.”

“Neither have I. But you’ll see it now. I told you Royds wasn’t re-opened after the strike. Benjie had tests done, bore holes and such like. He’s opening new seams at Overton. There’s a company getting on with the work now.”

“That sounds like a huge undertaking.”

“A messy one! You’ll need a bath when we get back!” She trotted ahead. The breeze carried her words to me. “You have to speculate to accumulate. Our future is pinned on this. Fortunately, we have a lot of potential investors. Eliot and I have been drumming up support. It will be so up to date. Even Raynor—and I don’t quote him lightly—says it will be a gold mine of a coalmine.”