Cordelia was about to speak but I beat her to it. I blurted it out before I even realized the sense of staying quiet.

‘Your brother,’ I said, turning my gaze on Mrs Parker.

‘Was he a part of your little unit?’ asked Cordelia, catching up and pointing at Christopher. ‘Your old friend from Gilsland? What was his name?’

‘Loveday,’ I said. ‘Suffered for it too.’

Cordelia glared at Mrs Parker and I don’t know where her fury was coming from. All I had heard was convincing me that the people in the room were decent people. She seemed to be listening to a different version of events.

‘I can’t talk about that …’ began Christopher.

Mrs Parker shifted herself. Her posture changed as she looked up at the old photograph on the wall.

‘He’d been through so much,’ she said.

‘Your brother?’ I asked.

She shook her head. ‘Abel. My husband. He was so fragile. Broken.’ She gave a warm glance at the small, goblin-like man. ‘And we’ve been good, haven’t we, my love? I never wanted any of the things I now have but we’ve found a happiness. A happiness we deserve. Loveday gave us that. Loveday and Christopher – two dead men.’

I found myself thinking of the slight, hobbling figure of Audrey Parker’s brother. He’d lost half an arm in an accident with a harvester but his father had pulled some strings and found him a role where he could serve his country. That was the story everybody knew. He never came back from the war. I suddenly realized what that role had been. Intelligence Services. He had recruited an old friend from Gilsland and persuaded him they would both be better off dead.

‘We were approved, you see,’ said Mrs Parker. ‘Because of what we’d done in the war. The authorities knew he would be safe here. No questions would be asked. And I’d done my bit.’

Cordelia rubbed a hand across her nose and glanced at Christopher.

‘The prisoners of war,’ she said, flatly. ‘The care packages. The letters from home. You’re one of his spies, aren’t you, Mrs Parker.’

‘Don’t speak,’ said Christopher, sharply.

‘Is that it?’ I asked. ‘The men who worked the land here. All those soldiers who you sent your food hampers to and who you write letters to. You use them, don’t you? You gather up titbits of information to pass onto your brother and his spies.’

‘We all serve in our own way,’ she said.

Christopher lit himself a cigarette. Wordlessly he lit a second one for Cordelia. He passed it to her and she smoked in short, angry puffs.

‘Favre,’ she said. ‘The killer. The sadist. He’d tracked you down.’ She looked at the tip of her cigarette, putting the pieces together. ‘You knew, Mrs Parker. You knew he was coming …’