Although Sam Pullen could be a bit direct and over the top, Jane liked her and felt they shared a bond. They were both strong-willed and determined to prove themselves as good as any man at their jobs.

Jane went into the living room. The door to the dining room was open and she could see Nick looking at one of the building plans, that she’d forgotten to put away. She bit her lip, wondering how he would react.

‘I’ve cancelled my lunch with Sam Pullen. She was fine about it,’ she said.

He looked up. ‘Great. We could go out for lunch and a drive in the countryside . . . if you want to?’

‘I’d love to. Sorry about the mess. My DI wanted me to look through a load of plans and documents we got from the Bromley planning department,’ Jane said in a casual tone.

‘What for?’

‘Just to see if there’s anything about the land being consecrated.’

‘I can help you if you want . . .’

‘It’s all right. I’ll do it tonight. Besides, this is my day off and I’m entitled to enjoy it.’

‘There is something interesting here,’ he said, pointing to some markings on one of the plans.

Jane moved closer. It was the original plan of the convent dated 1851 and the markings were two parallel lines of dashes running from the convent chapel to the buildings that had been destroyed by fire.

‘Is it a pathway of some sort?’ Jane asked.

‘I’m not sure, but I think it might be a tunnel, running from the chapel to the old outbuildings.’

‘Really?’ Jane replied, her curiosity piqued.

‘There’s a cellar in the chapel with a six-foot-long cavern off it, which my father uses for storing his wine. I think the cavern might once have been part of this tunnel but was bricked up at some point.’ Nick looked at the 1965 plan for his father’s original development of the convent. ‘There are no similar markings on here for a tunnel.’

‘Why would that be?’

‘A number of reasons. The architect may not have looked at the original plans, or he might have thought the tunnel had been filled in, or decided it wasn’t relevant to my dad’s development.’

Jane realised the outbuildings weren’t far from where the coffin had been discovered and wondered if the tunnel could have been used to secretly move the nun’s body outside the convent. If it had been, common sense told her that two or more people had been involved in moving it, sometime after the murder but probably before Thomas Durham bought the land. There was a part of Jane that really wanted to tell Nick the nun had been murdered. But she knew it was best not to say anything until DCS Barnes decided to go public with the details. She just hoped Nick would be understanding when he learned the truth.