‘Cheers, Margaret! You were sensational. I never knew you had a thespian streak.’ Clare raised her glass in congratulations.

Margaret laughed. ‘Thank you, my dear. I have many streaks. The majority of which are, thankfully, little known. But don’t underestimate your part in setting up our little performance.’

Clare smiled. ‘We don’t make a bad team, do we?’

There was no doubt in Clare’s mind now about where the finds had come from. And if nighthawks had been sniffing around Bailsgrove when Beth had been digging there, had they somehow been part of the reason why Beth had taken her own life? But whatever had driven Beth to suicide, Clare was desperate to find out what Margaret had made of the artefacts. And Margaret had steadfastly refused to tell her until she’d had a drink.

Not wanting to take the chance of being overheard, they’d decided not to risk the King’s Arms in Bailsgrove. Instead they now sat in the slowly descending darkness of an early summer evening in the near empty beer garden of the George Hotel in Birdlip, only a stone’s throw across the valley from their rendezvous point.

Clare studied her friend as she took a leisurely sip of her whiskey.

Margaret put down her glass. ‘That’s better.’

‘So, are they real or fake?’

‘Oh, there’s no doubting they’re real. They are a truly remarkable collection of artefacts. It was a privilege to hold them.’

Clare couldn’t hide her excitement. ‘So, Beth was right. There was a shrine at Bailsgrove in the Iron Age.’ Seeing the look on Margaret’s face, she added, ‘Or do you think it might have been some sort of high status cemetery?’

Margaret shook her head. ‘The local tribe round here were the Dobunni and their graves are pretty thin on the ground. Though, curiously enough, where we’re sitting now is within a spit of one of the richest of them.’ She waved her hand vaguely into the rapidly cooling night air. ‘Somewhere out there on Barrow Wake they found the Birdlip Lady. She was buried with a stunningly decorated mirror, a brooch and two bronze bowls.’

‘But couldn’t we have something similar at Bailsgrove?’

‘Well, there were a couple of male burials found near here that had swords that might not be out of place with the ones we saw tonight. But I don’t know of any cemeteries that have the range of artefacts to match what was on display this evening.’

And one thing was for sure, if Margaret didn’t know about them, that meant they didn’t exist. So Bailsgrove couldn’t have been a cemetery.

‘So surely it must be a shrine, then. And an important one too, if what we’ve seen were all offerings.’ Despite being half-terrified by the prospect of Paul Marshall’s reaction, the archaeologist in Clare wanted to punch the air.