and the new neighbours weren’t particularly friendly, either. Someone told her you have to winter out two years before you are accepted, but she didn’t think she could stand it that long. And the fact that Roger was in his element didn’t help much either. She was bored stiff. She didn’t have children to fill her days like Jane. Still, at least their visit had brought a welcome break to the routine. She should be grateful for that. She would
have been if it hadn’t been for Roger seizing his chance to pontificate.
“The Pennine mines are the only ones in Yorkshire. Know why? It’s because the lead ore occurs in Carboniferous rocks—the Yoredale Series and Millstone Grit. The ores aren’t exactly part of the rocks, you understand, but…”
At last they reached the old smelting mill, not much more than a pile of stones, really, and not much bigger than a detached house. Most of the roof had collapsed, leaving only the weatherworn beams. Inside, sunlight shone through the roof and through the gaps between the stones onto the ruined ore hearths and furnaces, and picked out the motes of dust they kicked up. Marjorie had never liked the old mill. It was a dry, smelly, spidery sort of place. Over in one corner, the dusty ground was darkened, as if some wandering drunk had been sick there.
“In the earlier mills,” Roger went on, “they used to burn off the sulphur first, changing the lead to oxide. Of course, for that you need places to roast then reduce the ore. But by the time this mill was built, they’d invented vertical furnaces that used bellows …”
They all obediently followed his pointing stick and oohed and aahed. He should have been a bloody tour guide, Marjorie thought.
Suddenly, Jane looked nervously around the mill. “Where’s Megan?” she asked.
“Probably playing outside,” Marjorie said, noting the anxiety in her voice. “Don’t worry, I’ll find her. I’ve heard this bit before, anyway.” Roger glared at her as she left.
Thankful to be out of the gloomy smelting mill and away from the droning echo of Roger’s voice, Marjorie shielded her eyes and looked around. Megan was clam
bering over a pile of scree towards the opening of the flue. Marjorie knew all about the flue, because she’d heard Roger read her the relevant sections from the book several times out loud. “Listen to this, darling …” But the only thing she needed to know right now was that it could be dangerous.
Built originally to extract and condense the fumes of the smelting process and carry them far away from the immediate area, the flue was a bricked hump about two hundred yards long. It looked very much like a tall factory chimney that had fallen on its side and half buried itself in the gentle slope of the hillside. Because it was old, sections of the arched roof had collapsed here and there, and more were liable to follow suit at any moment. It had originally ended at a vertical chimney on the hilltop, designed to carry the lead fumes away, but that had long since fallen down.
Megan was happily scrambling along over the scree to the dark entrance. Marjorie set off after her. “Megan!” she shouted. “Come away!” Behind, she noticed that the others had come out of the smelting mill and stood watching a few yards away. “It’s all right,” Marjorie said over her shoulder. “I’ll catch up with her before she gets inside. It’s quite safe out here.”
Maybe she had underestimated the six-yearold’s speed and nimbleness, she thought, as she struggled over the rocks, trying not to trip up. But she made it. Megan got to the verge of the flue just as Marjorie managed to grab her shoulder.
“It’s not safe, Megan,” she said, sitting down to catch her breath. “You mustn’t go in there.” As she looked into the black hole, she shivered. Far up ahead, she could see the tiny coin of light where the flue ended. Its floor was scattered with bits of stone, most likely fallen from the arched roof. A few yards or so in, she noticed a large,
oddly-shaped hump. It was probably a collapsed section, but something about it made her curious. It looked somehow deliberate, not quite as random as the other scatterings. She packed Megan off down the rise to join her parents and crawled into the opening.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she heard Roger calling. “Marjorie! Come back!” But she ignored him. Just for a moment, the sunlight had flashed on something ahead.
It was dark inside the flue, despite the light from behind her, and she hurt her knees as she crawled over the bed of flinty stones. She tried to stand, back bent low. The place smelled dank and foisty, and she tried to keep her breathing to an absolute minimum. She remembered Roger saying that the poisonous fumes of the volatilized lead condensed on the flue walls, which boys were employed to scrape at regular intervals. What a job that would be, she thought, crawling through here day after day and scraping lead off the stone.
When she arrived about six feet away from the hump, she could still make out nothing clearly. If she edged to one side and moulded her back against the curve of the wall, some light passed her and provided a faint outline. Then Roger blocked the entrance and yelled for her to come back.
“Get out of the way,” she shouted. “I can’t see a bloody thing!”
Oddly enough, Roger did as she asked. A faint wash of light picked out some of the details in the heap of stones, and as soon as Marjorie saw the small hand sticking out of the pile, she screamed and started to turn. As she did so, she stumbled and kicked some small stones near the body. A cloud of flies rose out of the heap and buzzed angrily up the flue.
II
“We’ve had three confessions already,” said Gristhorpe,
as Banks took the Helmthorpe road out of Eastvale.
Roger Bingham’s message had been vague, and both
avoided speculating whether the body of Gemma
Scupham had been discovered. “One of them told us at
great length exactly what he’d done with Gemma and
how much he enjoyed it. I tell you, Alan, sometimes it’s
a bloody shame you can’t lock a man up for his
thoughts.” He ran a hand through his unruly grey hair.
“Good God, did I really say that? Shows how much this
business is getting to me. Anyway, we got him for wasting
