the same, scrambling away and panicking its neighbours. The cattle slowly got up and moved away from her.
‘Diane, stop bothering the animals,’ said Cooper, turning to see what was going on.
‘I’m not - they’re bothering me.’
She turned at a rattle on the slope behind. An old ewe was peering over the ledge at her.
‘See, that one threw a stone at me.’
Finally, they crossed a small ridge and found themselves at the foot of Peter’s Stone - Gibbet Rock, as Tom Jarvis had called it. Cooper wondered if Anthony Lingard had been
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gibbeted on top of the outcrop, or from the side of the rock itself. Or perhaps from the slope below it? There was nothing to indicate which.
On this side of the rock, there was a scree slope, an unstable mass of tiny, loose stones. Scree was notoriously difficult to climb, so a path had been worn towards the eastern side, where the gradient was steeper but more stable underfoot. Cooper looked up at the limestone outcrop. It was full of nooks and crevices.
They were breathing heavily by the time they had scrambled to the top of the outcrop. Cooper helped Fry up the last stretch, and stopped to get his breath back. From here, there was only one farmhouse visible on the skyline further down the dale. The opposite slope was formed of limestone terraces and more scree. Lumps of stone dislodged by the sheep lay around it like giant hailstones.
A few minutes later, Cooper lay half-hidden between two rocks, his head down in a deep crevice. He began to inch back towards the air, and when he emerged, he was clutching something in one hand.
‘What have you got there?’ asked Fry.
Cooper was panting, and red in the face from the blood rushing to his head while he was upside down.
‘Well, it looks like a Tupperware box,’ he said. ‘It was tucked away out of sight in this fissure. And there’s something inside it, see ‘
‘Let’s have a look.’
The box was about nine inches long, with a tight yellow lid. It wasn’t actually Tupperware but something similar, made of tough translucent plastic. It had two handles that hinged on to the lid and held it in place, making the box pretty much airtight and waterproof. It had been hidden deep in the crevice, and concealed from casual view by a lump of limestone. Fry brushed off some dirt and eased open the lid.
‘Lord, what’s all that junk?’ she said.
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Cooper leaned over her shoulder. Among a lot of other stuff in the box, he glimpsed a small toy dog, an England badge, a set of coloured crayons and a pair of sunglasses. There was even a Matchbox Land Rover Freelander that he would have loved as a child.
‘I can see a notebook, too,’ he said, reaching to lift the crayons out of the way.
Fry held up a hand. ‘Get it back to the office and let scenes of crime go through everything. If he’s left us a clue here, we don’t want to miss it.’
‘We’ve got an appointment,’ Cooper reminded her.
‘Yes, I know.’
Fry looked at her hand and sniffed her fingers, checking for traces of sheep droppings.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Cooper. ‘The dress code is casual. The Duke and Duchess won’t be at home.’
He took a last glance at the plastic box before they piled all the stuff back in. There were stickers and pens in a plastic Waitrose bag, a pencil sharpener, dart flights, sweets, and cloth badges advertising something called Les Randonneurs Mondiaux. A label inside the Waitrose bag said: Congratulations! You’ve found it!
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21
The White Peak could boast very few celebrities, apart from some ageing pop stars and TV personalities. If Cooper racked his brains, he could only recall the singer Long John Baldry, who’d been born in Bakewell, Buxton’s Tim Brooke-Taylor of The Goodies and DJ Dave Lee Travis. Great writers had passed through the area and moved on. Charlotte Bronte had created Jane Eyre while staying with a friend in Hathersage; Jane Austen had written part of Pride and Prejudice at a Bakewell hotel; and D.H. Lawrence had found his real-life inspiration for Mellors the gamekeeper living on the Via Gellia, near Matlock. So even literary links tended to be a bit tenuous.
As a result of the celebrity shortage, local people had to make do with the aristocracy. The dukes of Devonshire and Rutland had once owned the whole of this area between them, and large chunks of it still bore their names. The Devonshires’ home at Chatsworth House was a major tourist attraction, more spectacular and more opulent than Buckingham Palace, and containing a substantial share of the nation’s art treasures. Or so it had seemed to Cooper when he’d toured the house as a child.
Alder Hall had been one of the Devonshires’ smaller properties, so insignificant that an early duke had presented the
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estate as a gift to a less affluent cousin. The present hall had only fifteen bedrooms and two hundred acres of private grounds, so it would hardly have been missed.
The walls around the estate were high and festooned with ivy. Here and there, water gushed into stone troughs from drainage holes designed to relieve the pressure that built up behind the walls after heavy rain. The main gates were open when they arrived, so presumably the agent had got there before them. Cooper turned into the gateway and rolled the car slowly on to the gravel drive.
Well, there had probably been gravel here at some time. Now, it was hidden by the grass and weeds that had encroached from the shrubbery on either side. If the hall ever did get new owners, it would take quite a few doses of weedkiller to get this lot under control. Cooper could hear the stems of the couch grass scraping against the underside of the Toyota as he inched his way towards the first bend in the drive. He didn’t know how far the hall was from the road, but he expected a good view of it at some point. What he got instead was the sight of a figure standing in the middle of the driveway, waving madly.
‘What the heck is he doing?’
‘I don’t know. Is that the agent?’ said Fry.
