She sat up at once. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘As true as I’m lying here. Daniel the scruffy don, expert in horrible history. Son of your old boss.’
‘What on earth is Daniel doing up here? It’s rather late in the day to be taking a look round his father’s haunts.’
‘Oh, I think there’s more to it than simple sight-seeing. He’s bought a cottage in Brackdale.’
‘He’s what?’
‘Thought you’d be surprised,’ Marc said complacently. ‘And he hasn’t just bought it for the occasional weekend break. Seems as though he and his partner have decided they want a new way of life, and they want it here in the Lakes.’
‘What about his job? He was one of Oxford’s shining stars.’
‘As far as I can gather, he’s walked out on his college. What’s more, he doesn’t have any more television scripts in the works. He simply wants to sit in his cottage and do a bit of writing. When he comes up for a breath of air, with any luck he’ll drop in at the shop and treat himself to a couple of first editions.’
Hannah shook her head. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘It’s not that unusual. We know plenty of people who came here to live the dream.’
‘But Daniel. It’s — very strange.’
‘Trust me, it gets stranger. You’ll never believe which house he’s bought.’
‘Go on, nothing can surprise me now.’
‘Don’t be so sure,’ he said, slipping his hand inside her night-dress and stroking her nipple. ‘He’s become the proud owner of Tarn Cottage.’
She pulled his hand away. ‘You can’t be serious?’
‘Never more so.’
For all the warmth of the bed, Hannah had gooseflesh. ‘Ben was never convinced that Barrie killed the girl.’
‘Perhaps it helped him to feel better about failing to lock Barrie up.’
‘It wasn’t like that at all,’ she said angrily. ‘Ben was bigger than that.’
Marc grunted and Hannah cursed herself for falling into a trap. Long before Nick Lowther, Marc had been jealous of Ben Kind. She’d taken pains to convince her lover that she and Ben used to talk about nothing but work, work, work. But she and Ben both cared so much about the job that work always became something more, something intensely personal. Maybe that was why Marc suspected that their relationship was not merely platonic. Or maybe he just liked having someone of whom to be jealous.
‘My guess is, the son’s like the father,’ Marc muttered. ‘He simply can’t bear to let things go.’
Chapter Seven
‘Daniel, tell me about Barrie.’
Daniel was sitting with Miranda in the kitchen, nursing a mug of coffee. When he’d arrived back from his encounter with Cheryl, the cottage had been filled by a cacophony of drilling and sanding, but at last the workmen had finished for the day and the place was still.
Forget about the murder. He remembered his injunction to himself that first morning as they drove over the fell and into Brackdale. He should have known better. Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t forget history.
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I’m curious.’ Miranda gestured at their surroundings. ‘I mean — he spent the whole of his life here, this was the only home he ever knew. You were fond of him, but most people think he was responsible for a shocking crime.’
He sneezed. Unexpectedly, and yet it kept happening. It was the dust from the builders’ work, the dust that was everywhere; sometimes he feared his sinuses would never be rid of it.
‘I suppose you think I’m crazy, to imagine for a moment that he was innocent. Probably it is crazy. After all, we were only together for a few days, a long time ago.’
‘Why do you believe in Barrie? In his innocence, I mean?’
‘Because people don’t change, that’s what I believe. They learn, they make mistakes, they grow, they get older — but their nature doesn’t change. And the Barrie I knew was kind, not cruel.’
He left the room for a few moments. When he returned, he was carrying an aged Revelation suitcase. He opened it up and took out a thick photograph album, thumbing through the pages. Each picture was carefully pasted in, and carried a brief caption in careful, immature script. On the final page, he came to a snapshot of two boys, leaning against a beech tree. In neat childish handwriting the shot was labelled: Barrie and me, in his garden.
‘There,’ he said. ‘The very last photograph my father took for the family album. Recognise the scene? Dad took this, he was standing outside this window. Barrie used to help his mother in the garden, but you can see it was wild even then.’
Miranda studied the photo. ‘Neither of you believed in combing your hair for the camera.’
He grinned. ‘Like I said, people don’t change.’
‘How did you meet?’
‘I bumped into him at the start of the holiday, after Dad decided we’d climb to Priest Edge while the girls looked round Brack. Barrie was coming in the opposite direction. He said hello — abruptly, he had a jerky way of talking, but I didn’t mind. Soon we were in deep conversation. My father went on ahead, but Barrie showed me a short cut along the coffin trail.’
She knitted her brow. ‘The coffin trail?’
He pointed through the window, towards the hillside. ‘See the stony track in the distance, disappearing behind the trees? That’s the coffin trail.’
‘So it’s a path?’
‘Yes, there are several in the Lakes. Often called corpse roads. Years ago, the trail was the route that mourners took when they buried their dead. There was no church in the next valley in those days, so a packhorse carried the body over the top of the hill and then down to St Helen’s in Brack.’
Miranda’s eyes widened. ‘They loaded a dead person onto a horse?’
‘Having first blindfolded it. When the funeral party was ready to start the journey, they put on blinkers.’
She shivered. ‘Poor creature.’
‘What amazes me is how those ponies managed to pick their way up and down the fells with such a burden on their back. The coffin trail is steep, although it makes a terrific short-cut. My father was a fit man, but Barrie and I reached the Sacrifice Stone first. From that moment on, we were firm friends. I’m not sure that Barrie had ever made a friend before. The fact that I came from outside made a difference. He could show me places, be in charge. I didn’t have any preconceived ideas, I just took him at face value. I think he liked that.’
‘What about Mrs Gilpin?’
‘She made me nervous. Barrie was in awe of her. He might have been clumsy, but even at that age he was big and strong. Nothing seemed to make him afraid — not swinging from a tree branch, not picking up an adder and wrapping it over his hand. But he was terrified of his mother’s wrath. She was small and fragile, but when she went on the warpath, he would cower in a corner and make noises like a stuck pig.’
‘But he wasn’t violent?’
He shook his head. ‘Let me tell you a story. A couple of days before the end of my holiday, Barrie persuaded me to follow his lead. He loved to swing from the tree, over the tarn. I kept waiting for the branch to snap, but it never happened. He assured me it was perfectly safe and in the end I accepted his dare.’
‘Don’t tell me — the branch broke.’
‘No, more embarrassing than that. I lost my grip and fell into the tarn. The shock of the cold water nearly stopped my heart. It was choked with weeds and when I went under I was afraid I’d never get back to the surface. For a few seconds I was sure I was about to drown.’
‘What happened?’
‘Barrie jumped in and rescued me. He picked me up and put me under his arm and seconds later he’d laid me out on dry land. I was crying from the shock, but he calmed me down. When his mother came out to see the cause
