She squinted slightly to read the card. She was probably one of those people who ought to wear glasses but didn’t for some reason.

‘“Watch over the bones. They must forget.” Was this found with the flowers?’

‘Yes.’

‘I suppose it might have something to do with the bones in the crypt. Is that your conclusion?’

‘It’s possible. I don’t suppose you recognize the handwriting?’

She gave him a regretful smile. ‘No.’

Cooper said goodbye to Mrs Chadwick at the gate and crossed the drive to his car. He took one look back at the garden, and saw her already bending over a plant, her hair catching the sunlight, her elegant fingers no doubt smelling of port wine.

He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. Madeleine Chadwick might be right about the triumph of good over evil. But the petals of a rose lasted barely a few days before they wilted and fell. Their triumph was short-lived. The thorns of the rose were different. Their cruelty lasted for ever.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Four

Cooper tried not to look at Professor Robertson differently next time they met. He was making an effort to keep Diane Fry’s comments out of his mind, not to mention his own reference to necrophilia. That was definitely one thought to re-bury in whatever hole it had come from.

When he arrived at the house in Totley, the professor was in his garden, spraying ant powder on the flagged path and against the back wall. This evening, he was wearing black wellington boots. Yet the trouser legs of his pinstriped suit were flapping outside the boots, which rather defeated the object of wearing them, surely?

‘Come in, come in,’ said Robertson. ‘The blasted insects have seen enough of me. I’m sure they must have grasped my intentions by now.’

They entered the house through the back door into a utility room. The refurbishment had revealed pine floorboards in many of the rooms, and even the kitchen units were built in Edwardian style, with beech and granite work surfaces.

When the professor passed close to him, Cooper caught a whiff of odour from his clothes. He felt sure it was from his clothes, though he couldn’t quite name the smell. It made him think of old garments draped on wooden hangers in a mahogany wardrobe – especially the clothes at the back, the ones that were never worn any more.

Robertson sat with his hands clasped together as Cooper delivered the information he was allowed to share.

‘Glycerine, phenol and formaldehyde?’ said the professor when he’d finished. ‘An unholy trinity, if ever I met one.’

‘They’re used in embalming fluids, I believe.’

‘Exactly. Formaldehyde slows the rate that proteins degrade, so muscle tissues become fixed. That’s why it’s so difficult to move the limbs of an embalmed body. They no longer have the flexibility of living muscles.’