‘Seems reasonable,’ said Fry.

‘But look at this – the name and dates haven’t been exposed, just the inscription after them. It’s only a short one, too. Caro data vermibus. What does that mean?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘You’re the educated one.’

‘Ben, I took a degree in Criminal Justice and Policing at the University of Central England. It didn’t make me fluent in Latin.’

Cooper walked backwards and forwards in front of the stones, but beyond the first few feet of ground from the road the blanket of nettles and brambles was dense and unbroken. He watched a butterfly flit among the nettles.

Impatiently, Fry walked back to the entrance and looked up the road. ‘How near is this to Wardlow, did you say?’

‘Only a couple of miles.’

In the language of Derbyshire place names, ‘low’ always meant ‘high’. So this particular village must have been named after the lookout hill, Wardlow Cop, whose flattened conical shape appeared on their left as they began the descent from Monsal Head.

Wardlow itself was just as DI Hitchens had described it – a series of farms and houses scattered along one road. It was bordered on both sides by long, narrow strips of pasture land, preserved in their medieval patterns by drystone walls, networks of them strung across the fields and climbing the hills. Some parts of the White Peak plateau were said to have twenty-four miles of wall for every square mile of farmland. Instead of regular field patterns, the eye was likely to see a confusing geometry of stone, long courses of wall exaggerating every contour in the landscape.

Some of the farms at Wardlow had been converted into homes, but others were still working. A tractor turned out of a yard as they reached the start of the village, where two Union Jacks were flying. Cooper noticed that the village pub was closed during the day, like so many in places without much tourist trade. The Church of the Good Shepherd was just beyond a cattery operating from a cluster of surplus farm buildings. It was a small stone church with a slate roof and leaded windows, but no tower. Anything bigger would have been out of place.

They finally found space wide enough to park alongside someone’s hedge without blocking the road completely, and they crossed to the church. Through double gates they walked into a grassed area, where a pair of stocks stood near the rear wall. Cooper didn’t think they were medieval – more likely erected for a village fête some time in the last few decades. A chance to throw wet sponges at the vicar, rather than rotten eggs at a convicted felon. Ritual humiliation, all the same.

Behind the church was the graveyard itself, small and under-used. There’d be no need to close this one to burials for a few years yet.

‘Melvyn Hudson said there were very few funerals in Wardlow,’ said Fry.

‘He’s from the funeral directors, Hudson and Slack?’

‘That’s right.’