Finally, a property man with deep pockets bought it and began extensive renovations. He died in a paragliding accident. Then his company was wiped out in a big property crash. A few years later, in 2015, it was bought by a couple – he’d made some money selling a technology firm, his wife was a lawyer, and they had a young daughter. They’d only been moved in a short while when the mother and daughter were killed in a car crash – and he died of a heart attack on the same day.

The Harcourts.

On his phone, Jason flicked through to the photograph of the Harcourts’ headstone and family grave, which he’d also taken earlier. He read their names. Oliver, Caroline, Jade.

Fears told him the final owners of the house were a fund manager and his wife, Sebastian and Nicola Molloy. With a fortune close to a billion, Molloy had the money to do a proper job of the restoration. But he’d had a better idea, Fears had said with a sarcastic laugh. Molloy wanted to tear the old building down and put up a big, modern mansion. The local planning authorities told him he wouldn’t have a cat’s chance in hell of getting plans through to do that.

One night, soon after permission had been rejected, the house burned down. The fire investigation team believed, but could not prove, it was arson – almost certainly by the owner himself. But no one would ever know the truth, as the whole Molloy family had perished in the blaze. The gossip was that Molloy had planned it but must have miscalculated how fast the fire would spread.

He looked back at the photograph of Roland Fortinbrass. The vicar. Confirmed dead.

But the man had been in their house yesterday, talking breezily to himself, Emily and Louise, and trying to recruit them for the church choir.

He shivered suddenly, involuntarily. Someone walking over your grave, his mother used to call it. Was that a time-slip?

A shadow fell across the table, and he looked up to see Lester Beeson towering above him. ‘Can I get you anything else?’ he asked, warmly.

‘I’m good, thanks.’

‘Albert’s a funny old bugger,’ he said. ‘This is a pretty friendly village, but you know, you always get the odd one or two in the countryside who don’t like change.’

Jason smiled. ‘Or don’t like anything.’

‘Hope he didn’t spook you too much. But actually, you should feel privileged he talked to you at all. He never normally speaks to anyone who isn’t a local.’

‘Someone else said the same. So, how long do you have to live here to become a local?’

‘For old Fears to regard you as one? You have to be born here.’

‘Does dying here make you one?’

Beeson laughed, heartily. ‘I’d prefer if you didn’t, Mr Danes – we never like losing a customer.’

‘Sounds like you’ve lost quite a few in recent years.’

The landlord sat down opposite him. ‘Can I offer you a drink – on the house?’