He returned his attention to the book, and forced himself to begin reading. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for exactly, but Callum Richardson had been very clear in describing the fire as Melissa and Lance’s inspiration, and there was obviously something he wanted Fleet to find out – though whether it would help Fleet get any closer to identifying Ben’s killer was another matter entirely.

The fire, it turned out, had been set deliberately. Fleet had so far assumed it had been an accident, but eyewitnesses reported seeing flames emanating first from the library – which, given that the main building of the school had been refurbished to the exact specifications of the original structure, meant somewhere very close to where Fleet was sitting now. By the time the blaze had been brought under control, the southern wing of the school had been completely gutted, as had several of the outbuildings – including, of course, the original chapel. The weather conditions were largely to blame for the way the fire had spread, apparently – the high winds and uncharacteristically dry summer – as well as the slow response of the fire brigade, which was still depleted following the huge loss of manpower the country as a whole had suffered during the First World War.

In the end, seventeen people were wounded – three severely – and two people lost their lives. One was a firefighter, the other a teacher who’d evidently become trapped while attempting to direct the children under his care to safety. It was tragic, but the death toll might well have been far worse – if, instead of starting during the day, for example, the fire had happened at night, when six hundred children were asleep in their dorms. Even for Fleet, reading about the fire a century after the event, it was an outcome that didn’t bear thinking about.

Once he’d read the chapter from start to finish, he turned back to the image of the school ablaze and wondered what it was he was missing. For all Richardson’s hints and insinuations, there seemed no obvious connection between the fire that had almost destroyed Beaconsfield a hundred years ago and whatever had happened to Ben. Fleet had half hoped he might find some reference to the survival of the original crypt, accounting for the fact that someone had later discovered its existence, but there was none. The fire had occurred almost exactly a century ago, which at first Fleet thought might be significant, except the anniversary related to the discovery of Ben’s body, not to the murder itself. The only detail that did strike a chord was the fact that whoever had set the fire had never been caught, meaning whoever had killed Ben wasn’t the first person connected with the school to have effectively got away with murder.