“The secret history,” Jess said. “What Mum used to call it.” Her eyes were dry. If she’d shed any tears for her brothers or sister-in-law, Ellie saw no evidence of them. “She kept it in her office. After Tony died –” and now there was a hitch in her voice “– she made me get it down. Read all through it. I mean, she already knew about it – her Nan’d told her. That’s what she said. Don’t think she believed it, though, till what happened to Tony. Could’ve sold it and made a mint, she said one time, only some things meant more than money.” She sniffed. “First time she ever said that.”

Madeleine was leafing through it. “So?” said Ellie. “What’ve we got?”

Everyone looked to Madeleine. The vicar shifted position, hissing as her stitches pulled taut. “Sorry,” she said. “Okay. Here goes. A lot of it seems to mesh with old legends. Saxon and Norse, mostly. But it goes back even before them. There’s the barrows, for a start.”

“As in Barrowman Farm?” said Ellie. “And Barrow Woods?”

Madeleine nodded. “And the one under the old St Alkmund’s Church, in Blackfield Park. Bayliss was dying to do a proper dig at either site. But the locals weren’t big on it. The Killers –”

“The who?”

Reuben stirred, blinked at Ellie again, then settled again.

“Family who owned Groveley Farm,” Madeleine said. “Way back before the Lornes, this’d be–”

“The Killers?”

“Yup. That was actually their name.”

“Bet nobody messed with them,” muttered Charlotte.

“Anyway,” said Madeleine, “they owned Groveley Farm and Blackfield – bought it off the Church when it turned out Blackfield was no good for the new St Alkmund’s. I forget why. Bayliss wanted to dig there, but they wouldn’t let him.” A weak, thin smile. “Agricultural reasons, maybe, or superstitious ones. Could’ve been either, could’ve been both. Anyway, Bayliss was sure there’d been a long barrow on the site. How much does everyone know about them?”

“Some sort of burial mound?” said Kate.

“Kind of. Pretty much the earliest kind of formal burial we know about. Goes back to the Neolithic Period – the back end of the Stone Age to thee and me. Usually for chieftains, respected warriors, priests. People like that. But sometimes they were sites of worship, too. So they might build them on a particular site.”

“Blackfield Park was full of those things last night.” Milly touched the cross at her throat. “What was the barrow supposed to do – stop ’em getting out?”

“Think so,” said Madeleine. “Thing is, Bayliss thought there was another barrow, a newer one, down in Thursdale.”

“Which I’m guessing became the main one,” Ellie said. “That, or those things stopped using Blackfield because the barrow there was working.”