‘Do hunting people really have all these rules to follow?’

‘Yes. And they stick to them rigidly.’ Cooper turned back to face her. ‘I don’t care what your video shows, Diane. These weren’t members of the hunt.’

Chapter Fourteen

FRY FELT HER determination harden as they drove to Watersaw House, where the Forbes lived. There was no way she was going to stand at her own crime scene and let someone like Ben Cooper tell her she was wrong. He wasn’t even supposed to be here, for heaven’s sake.

Yet Cooper seemed to be unavoidable. Trying to keep him at arm’s length was as impractical as taking precautions against the plague.

‘This Eyam place,’ she said, as they passed the end of the village. ‘The Plague Village. What’s that all about, then? The Black Death as a form of entertainment? I know people are really stuck for things to do in these parts, but celebrating the plague is pretty weird, even for Derbyshire.’

‘I think it’s more a question of celebrating the village’s survival,’ said Cooper. ‘That’s what the story is all about.’

‘If the place was a bit more civilized,’ said Fry, ‘they might not have got the plague in the first place.’

She heard Cooper sigh, and restrained a smile. He wasn’t invulnerable. There were ways to wind him up, too.

‘The plague came from London in a bundle of damp cloth,’ said Cooper. ‘Black rats had introduced the Black Death to England when they came off ships in the docks.’

‘I didn’t know you could catch bubonic plague from rats.’

‘Not from the rats themselves. From their fleas.’

Fry shuddered, and began to regret that she’d mentioned Eyam at all. Rats and fleas were two of the things she hated most in the world.

‘Watersaw,’ said Cooper, when he saw the sign at the entrance to the Forbes’ drive. ‘There’s a Watersaw Rake near here. One of the old opencast workings. Abandoned now, but it would be the nearest one to the crime scene, I think.’

There seemed to be horses everywhere at Watersaw House. As soon as Fry parked her car in the entrance to the stable yard, a huge black horse ran up to the post-and-rail fence and hung its head over to stare at her. She couldn’t squeeze past the car door without brushing reluctantly against its inquisitive muzzle.

‘It looks quite friendly,’ said Cooper.

‘Are you sure?’

The one other thing Fry knew about horses was that they were supposed to like sugar cubes. But who on earth used sugar cubes any more, let alone carried them around in their pockets in case they met a horse?

But she did have a packet of mints in her pocket, and she took it out. The horse nuzzled her jacket, as if searching the rest of her pockets, a quick frisk on suspicion of possession. When she unwrapped a mint and held it out on her palm, the horse went straight for it.