Free Murder on the Old Road by Amy Myers

held strongly to it. Nevertheless, they also felt an obligation to the village and therefore to the Anglican church here. After all, it is dedicated to St Thomas.’
    â€˜Is that why the St Thomas ruins now belong to Anne Fanshawe?’
    Jessica sighed. ‘The Wayncroft family sometimes had odd notions. Whereas Julian and Sebastian are in favour of fully honouring St Thomas, Robert and Hugh firmly believed that the best way of so doing was not to put them at risk from tourists and to keep the remains holy. Robert saw that as his duty, and so he left them to Anne and not to Julian, the foolish man.’
    â€˜But why to her personally, not to the church?’
    â€˜I have no idea. You will have to ask her that, though I have to say she is unlikely to tell you.’ Jessica tittered. ‘I presume Robert took that course because Anne shared his personal commitment to leaving the ruins undisturbed. How very foolish. In my view we should honour history, not ignore it. But Anne will not be moved. Just as Hugh, too, could not be so persuaded.’
    â€˜Did you never share his views?’
    â€˜I had a son of eleven when I married Hugh and a second son who was born nine years later,’ Jessica said almost apologetically. ‘With Julian to think of, as well as Val, I needed to see a future, and all I could see was a pile of mouldering bricks at Chillingham Place, which we could not afford to run. I also had a husband who seemed to believe more in history than in the need for educating his children. Without children I might have felt differently, but I did not then, and I do not now. There is the future of the family to consider. I am not as impetuous as I was once, when I could not understand Hugh’s viewpoint. He was serious-minded – and that’s what both infuriated me and drew me to him. I was such a flighty thing, and so was my first husband – not flighty exactly, I suppose, but Peter was a risk-taker. I met him in the special forces during the war; we married, and then came his death and Valentine’s birth. Hugh was so different. A brilliant actor, but withdrawn as a person. He played Becket and I was Queen Eleanor, Henry II’s wife – such a splendid part, such a wicked woman. And who knows, perhaps her scheming to kill her husband’s mistress, the so-called Fair Rosamund, really did have bearing on Becket’s murder, as Tennyson’s play suggests. In it, Becket saves Fair Rosamund from my evil hands.’
    â€˜So far as I recall, legend-cum-history claims you managed it in the end,’ Georgia said lightly.
    Jessica smiled. ‘Queens usually win. On the Sunday afternoon after clearing up the theatre, we marched back home along the Pilgrims’ Way to Chillingham. There had been an after-show party on the Saturday night, so there was a bit of a mess, and as we were only amateurs there were no professional stage staff to do the dirty work. We arrived at the Three Peacocks about six o’clock for the celebratory evening that Fred had arranged. I thought Hugh had gone straight home for some reason and would be joining us, but he didn’t arrive. Val and I dashed off to see if he was there, but he could not be found, and so we realized something must be wrong. All we could think was that Hugh had had an accident during the last part of the walk. He was inclined to straggle on walks, since he was a keen birdwatcher and often fell back because he had spotted something or other. I set off immediately with Val and Clive – and, I think, Fred. Others came along after us. We found Hugh – or rather Clive and Val saw him; they wouldn’t let me near at first – lying at the edge of the wood. They told me to stay where I was because there was no doubt that he was dead.’ She grimaced. ‘They did not tell me how he died until later. Even from where I stood I could see he was dead from the way he was lying.’
    She gave a little shrug,