‘Aye, I was telling John just last night. Got the contract for fixing the mess the tree made during the storm. He said you ladies saw it.’

Cordy didn’t look at me. Swung her legs like she was a nipper.

‘We were in the graveyard when the storm hit. Tree went right into the crypt.’

‘I’ll correct you there, love,’ said Harper, raising his mug and gesturing at the air in front of him. ‘A crypt’s subterranean. Underground, I mean – usually under a church floor.’

Cordelia’s jaw tightened. ‘I know what subterranean means.’

‘Yes? Good for you, love. What the Kinmonts have is a mausoleum, of sorts, though they’re usually a damn sight bigger. They were all the rage for about twenty years but there aint many of ’em up here. Bit showy, I suppose. But this one were well built. I’d spied it long since. You couldn’t see ’em but the figurative work would have been stunning in its day. You look close enough you could see there was a death’s head above the first inscription.’

‘Death’s head?’ I asked.

‘Aye, people have always had funny ideas about symbols and what stuff stands for. Death’s head is a real old one but the idea is you would scratch it on to keep evil away. People still ask for them nowadays, which shows you that people are the same no matter how far forward and back you go.’

‘What else was on there?’ asked Cordelia.

Harper started scratching, rummaging in his pockets. He unfolded a piece of paper with a black and white picture on it and handed it over to Cordelia. She stared, not blinking, then handed it to me. I didn’t know if I wanted to see it but took it anyway. It showed the crypt as it had been just after the war. It looked little different to the structure I had passed a hundred times while laying flowers at Mam’s grave, but for the first time, I found myself really studying the sculptures that had been wound into the grey stone.

‘Work of art really,’ said Harper. ‘Half a dozen different religions in among that lot. Must have been a hell of a job for some seventeenth-century mason with a chisel and a wooden hammer.’

‘What’s that?’ I asked, gesturing at the face above the door.