“I HOPE YOU ENJOY reading horror.” Damon Blundy’s first wife handed Sam Kombothekra a copy of her memoir, A Hole in the Stone. Sam barely noticed the title, or the subtitle: How I Survived the Marriage from Hell. He stared instead at the name on the jacket: Verity Hewson.

Verity Hewson, Abigail Meredith, he recited silently in his head. Verity Hewson, Abigail Meredith. Not, as they had quickly come to be known by CID, Doormat and Despot. If he could get through this interview without slipping up and calling either of Damon Blundy’s ex-wives a “D” word, Sam would be a happy man.

The inconvenience of Verity living in Lothersdale, a small village in North Yorkshire, was mitigated by her having Abigail Meredith as a houseguest. Sam would have preferred it if they’d arranged it the other way around, since Abigail lived in Oakham, which was nearer to the Culver Valley, but you couldn’t have everything. And although it was a four-and-a-half-hour drive from Spilling to Lothersdale, Sam was enjoying being back in Yorkshire, where he’d lived and worked for eleven years. As he’d driven through the unspoiled greenery on his way to Verity Hewson’s converted barn, he had finally been able to confirm something he’d long suspected about Yorkshire: parts of it were visually stunning, yes, but it didn’t have a kind heart in the way that, say, Devon did. The fields and trees of Yorkshire were not welcoming Sam home today, much as they had failed to greet him warmly when he’d first moved to Bingley, near Bradford, from London. If Lothersdale had been a person, it might have said to him, “Well, then. Let’s hear what you’ve got to say for yourself. I doubt we’ll be impressed by it, whatever it is.”

“You’re wasting your time on us, unless you’re just here to get background,” Abigail Meredith said. She was sitting sideways in a low-backed chair with her legs draped over its arm. “Vet was busy being a birth partner for a friend of hers on Monday morning—she got to cut the cord and everything. I was more boringly at work all day, surrounded by colleagues. I’d much rather have been murdering Damon.”

“Abby,” said Verity authoritatively.

“Sorry. It’s all just so horrible.” Abigail swung her legs around so that she was sitting straight in her chair. “I can’t stand the endless gloom of death. I mean, even after the death’s happened, the gloom just goes on and on! You know who’d agree with me? Damon! He’d laugh if he could hear me joking about murdering him.”

“If I’d known he was going to be killed . . .” Verity’s lower lip shook. “I feel as if I’ve spoken ill of the dead, even though he wasn’t when I wrote the book.”