Sheila Foggarty clearly didn’t share Clare’s appraisal of the situation. ‘Then why are you working for a cowboy like Paul Marshall, whose only desire is to profit from the destruction of our countryside?’

‘Beth worked for Paul Marshall too, Mrs Foggarty.’

‘Yes, but she was only doing it to protect the site. To show everyone that it was too important to build on.’

Clare was tempted to say that if that was true, Beth had entirely failed in her mission, but she knew that would only make matters worse. ‘The Hart Archaeological Research Institute is part of the University of Salisbury – our very reason for existing is to discover and investigate important archaeological sites. What makes you so sure we don’t want to do our best by the archaeology and by Beth Kinsella? If Beth was right and this place really is some sort of Iron Age shrine, we will find out.’

For a moment Sheila Foggarty stood staring at her, hands rammed into the pockets of her Barbour, as if considering something. ‘Well, if that’s the case you might be interested in this.’ She retrieved a folded sheet of A4 paper from the pocket of her jacket and shoved it at Clare.

Clare took the paper without a word and studied it, trying to make sense of what she was looking at. It was a printout of a lot from an online auction site. It showed a photograph of what it claimed was an Iron Age sword. She was no expert on Celtic weaponry, but it looked fairly convincing from what she remembered from textbooks and museums. If it was a fake someone had done a halfway decent job. She glanced down at the description. It said it came from a nineteenth-century collection of material from in and around the area of Bailsgrove in Gloucestershire. It didn’t prove that Bailsgrove had been a shrine of any kind, but she knew that if it had really come from somewhere in Bailsgrove it would certainly add weight to Beth’s theory.

She looked up. ‘You realise that this might not be real. It’s not uncommon for dealers to give a false provenance to fake artefacts to lure customers in.’

‘Does it look fake to you, Mrs Hills?’

‘Well, on first appearances it does look about right but it’s impossible to tell without seeing it in the flesh. But even if it is what it claims to be, it’s not necessarily from Bailsgrove. And I’m sorry to say that one sword doesn’t make a shrine.’

‘Oh, that’s not the only one. There’s plenty of other material on the same website that comes from Bailsgrove.’

‘I’m really sorry, Mrs Foggarty, but I’m afraid that on its own this doesn’t prove anything.’