Jo said, ‘And not just Neil. I think it hit all of them pretty hard. I had Malc down as a hard-bitten, badass digger, but when I tried talking to him about Beth he just walked away. He seemed real cut up about it.’

Clare twirled the stem of her wine glass. ‘When I went to see Stuart Craig a few weeks back he reckoned Neil had a thing for Beth.’

Jo said, ‘No way! But she was way older than Neil.’

‘Since when did that make a difference?’

‘You’ve got a point. And there’s no denying, Beth Kinsella was a good-looking woman. And we all have our fantasies, I guess.’

Clare gave her a quizzical look.

Jo felt herself blush. Damn! ‘I’m just saying. It doesn’t mean there was anything going on. Maybe he just admired her from afar.’

‘I didn’t know you were such an old romantic, Dr Death.’

Jo plucked a beer mat from the table and slapped Clare across the back of her hand with it. ‘Don’t start with the Dr Death crap, you! I get enough of it from the students. Anyhow, either way it would explain why he was so cut up about Beth’s death. And even if he didn’t have a thing for her, she was his boss. And if something happened to David I’m guessing you’d be kind of cut up about it.’

This time it was Clare’s turn to blush. But she swiftly changed the subject. ‘The other thing Stuart Craig told me was that Beth had been sacked by Sheffield because she was an obsessive. According to Craig, their whole lives had been taken over by her obsession with Celtic death and sacrifice. He more or less said it was why they split up in the end too.’

Jo said, ‘Well, she certainly seems to have been pretty single-minded about it.’

Clare leant forward. ‘That’s just it, Jo. Yes, she was single-minded, but everybody thought she was a fruitcake when she was going around shouting about Bailsgrove being an Iron Age temple. And now we know that’s exactly what it is. Beth Kinsella was right. And in my book that doesn’t make her an obsessive fantasist. It makes her a bloody good archaeologist. And if that was the case, why would she kill herself?’

There was no way Jo would ever tell her friend as much but she looked as if she’d aged ten years since she’d taken on the Bailsgrove dig. And she was worried about her.

She lowered her voice. ‘Look, Clare, none of us can get inside one another’s heads. No one is ever going to know what Beth Kinsella was thinking when she took her own life.’

‘If she took her own life.’