‘That’s not true,’ protested Cooper, aware that he was starting to flush, feeling the familiar discomfort that Diane Fry was so easily able to provoke in him.

‘And now the murder of Mr Redfearn,’ she said. ‘If there’s no evident connection between the two individuals, why do you insist on believing these two incidents are linked?’

‘Oh, that’s easy,’ said Cooper. ‘Because of the Corpse Bridge.’

On his desk Cooper found the leaflets that Meredith Burns had given him on Saturday. He put aside the one advertising the Halloween Night and opened the leaflet about the attractions of Knowle Abbey.

For a few minutes he read about its claim to historic associations and the generations of Manbys who’d lived there. He skipped through the stuff about antique furniture and fascinating collections of curiosities, turned the page on details of the restaurant and the craft centre, and the walled nursery. Then he reached a few paragraphs about the extensive parkland on the Knowle estate.

Finally, he dropped the leaflet back on his desk with an exasperated groan.

‘How could I have been so stupid?’ he said.

‘What is it, Ben?’ asked Irvine in surprise.

‘Grandfather,’ said Cooper.

‘What?’

‘Meet Grandfather, 1am. It’s not a person. It’s a place.’

27

‘The family tend to refer to him as the Old Man of Knowle,’ said Meredith Burns as she led the way from the estate office at the abbey. ‘It’s a traditional Manby joke, I think. A reference to the previous earl. The “old man”, you know?’

Cooper nodded. ‘Yes, I see,’ he said.

As he and Diane Fry followed Burns along the signposted trail into the parkland, Cooper reflected that the old Derbyshire lead miners had often talked about ‘t’owd man’ too. But they’d meant something quite different. They’d usually been referring to the Devil.

But who knew what went on in a family like the Manbys? In any family, in fact. Perhaps there was more than a coincidence in the similarity between the miners’ superstition and the way the Manbys referred to the old earl. That portrait of the seventh Lord Manby in the Great Hall made him look a real tyrant. And when had Knowle Abbey begun to deteriorate so much? Had a previous owner neglected its maintenance, while spending his fortune on something else entirely? That would be enough to cause some degree of resentment among his descendants when they inherited a crumbling estate up to its chimneys in debt.

They’d entered the edge of the trees, and as the trail took a sharp bend they lost sight of the buildings they’d just come from.

‘I don’t like forests,’ said Fry. ‘You ought to know that by now.’

‘This is hardly a forest,’ said Cooper. ‘It’s landscaped parkland. Some previous earl obviously planted a few trees to create a view from the east wing.’

‘But you said there are wild animals.’

‘Roe deer. They’re far more frightened of you than you are of them, Diane.’

Fry didn’t look convinced. But he knew no animals would come near her, if they could help it. She was hardly Snow White, attracting wild creatures to feed trustingly from her hand. She was more the kind of person who would introduce a badger cull, then willingly extend it to include anything that moved in the dark.

‘One of the great things about these big trees is that they make such wonderful landmarks,’ Burns was saying. ‘You might not be able to find your way through a wood where all the trees are the same age and look identical. But anyone can find this grand old chap.’

‘And lots of people do, I suppose?’ said Cooper.

‘Oh, he’s a tourist attraction in his own right. We have signs on all the trails to point the way to him. Visitors love to come and stand underneath his branches and have their photos taken, or see how many of them it takes to reach all the way round his trunk. British people have a very affectionate relationship with this particular species.’

‘Do they?’ said Fry.

Cooper laughed. Her horrified expression suggested she was imagining a much more intimate relationship than anything Burns had meant.

‘There he is,’ said Burns. ‘The Grandfather Oak.’

The Old Man of Knowle, or the Grandfather Oak, was a thousand-year-old oak tree. Its status as a unique tourist attraction was the reason it was mentioned in the leaflets about Knowle Abbey.

Cooper paced round the tree. He didn’t really know what he was looking for, but he could find none of the things that he might have expected from examining the scene at the Corpse Bridge. No effigy, no noose, no witch ball filled with curses. Not even any graffiti or obscene messages carved into the ancient bark. There were no signs that anyone had been here with malicious intent. And it would be useless to do a forensic search of the woods. Far too many people came through here, leaving signs of their presence.

He looked up into the branches. It would make a great vantage point, he supposed. But these branches were old and brittle. A couple of the larger boughs were propped up by lengths of timber to prevent them from snapping under their own weight. He wouldn’t want to try climbing this tree without proper safety equipment.

Cooper turned to look at the abbey. It was barely visible from here. Just a small tower on the south corner in the distance could be glimpsed through the trees.

As they made their way back along the trail, the abbey came into sight again. Cooper spotted a small, slightly overweight figure moving towards the back of the house. He was dressed in wellingtons, mud-spattered jeans, a tweed jacket and a felt hat.

He pointed at the figure.

‘Is that…’ he began.

‘Yes, that was the earl,’ said Burns. ‘I think Her Ladyship has sent him to do some mucking out in the stables.’

‘Who’s “Her Ladyship”?’ asked Fry.

‘The Countess. Lord Manby’s wife.’

‘Countess? I thought her husband was an earl, not a count?’

‘Well, we don’t have counts in England any more. They replaced the title with a more Anglo-Saxon version centuries ago.’

‘And they never bothered introducing a female form of the new title,’ added Cooper.

‘Typical.’

Fry dropped back and leaned closer to Cooper when Burns was out of earshot. She waited to be sure that Burns wasn’t listening.

‘With all the staff he employs,’ said Fry, ‘don’t you think Lord Manby would have someone to do the mucking out for him?’

‘I think Meredith was joking,’ said Cooper.

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really. You missed that?’

‘I must have done.’

‘It was a reference to the way the earl was dressed. Actually, I think she felt a bit embarrassed about us seeing him.’

‘Ah. Perhaps he was presenting the wrong image.’

‘I believe that was exactly it,’ said Cooper.

But as they returned to the estate office, Cooper was wondering why Fry hadn’t noticed the significance of the earl’s very different appearance, once he was at home and relaxing among his own rolling acres instead of in white tie and tails at a formal occasion. Now Lord Manby looked exactly like the effigy on the Coffin Stone.

In her office Meredith Burns became defensive when Cooper asked about the earl’s plans for the church and graveyard at Bowden.

‘As I told you, we have to do everything we can to bring in revenue for the maintenance and repair of the abbey,’ she said. ‘I explained that to you last time you came. The monthly wage bill alone is staggering. The staff is enormous – you’d be surprised how many people there are working here.’

‘About three hundred?’ said Fry.

Burns was clearly taken aback. ‘Yes, around that figure.’

‘But you didn’t mention the graveyard at Bowden,’ said Cooper.

‘It’s just one of a range of projects,’ protested Burns. ‘Some of the old staff properties will become holiday lets. We’re also hoping to get planning permission to build some new chalet-style units on the western side of the burial ground, within the walls of the park itself. Those units will have a very desirable setting.’