His men had done a thorough job so far, under terrible conditions, and there would be hell to pay about the cost of the search if nothing was discovered. So he looked as he walked, trying to imagine himself having a dead body to dispose of. It would be very heavy for a woman to drag, and she’d need to get it hidden quickly without being seen. She would also need to bury it somewhere where it wouldn’t be dug up accidentally at a later date.

Putting the body in an outhouse or shed while she dug a grave seemed a likely scenario. Dunkirk, where Reg Coleman was last seen, had been in June, and a body left lying around at that time of year would soon start to smell.

He walked around the house and noticed that a laundry room complete with an old wood-fired boiler was attached to it. He’d noticed a more up-to-date gas boiler in the kitchen but, although the outhouse was now obsolete, it had probably been in use during the war years.

There was an old greenhouse, a potting shed and an old chicken house in the back garden, too. At the right-hand side of the house was the garage and not very far from it, with its back to the garden wall, was a summer house.

He looked from one to the other. The greenhouse he rejected, as anything inside could be seen through the glass. The potting shed was less than five feet long, too short for a grown man to lie on the floor. During the war, people had relied heavily on their chickens, so Miss Gribble was unlikely to have disturbed them by shoving a body in there.

He went over to the summer house to examine it carefully. The felt on the roof was in good condition and the walls had been repainted pale blue in the last three or four years. The cane furniture inside was probably pre-war, but the cushions were clean and looked newer. There were books on a shelf, a couple of jigsaw puzzles on a table, all signs it had once been a loved place, but, judging by the amount of cobwebs, it hadn’t been used for a few years.

It seemed a likely spot to put a body: not far to drag it from the house, and not visible from it either, as there was a big oak tree at the side of the house blocking the view from the windows. He noted, too, that there were a few feet of crazy paving in front of the door. No concrete, just stones laid on the grass, and trodden in well over the years. He could understand someone putting down stepping stones, but it was odd to make a rectangle with them.

‘Over here!’ he yelled to two of his men. ‘I’ve got a strong hunch we might find something under these stones.’

They put up a tarpaulin to work under and, from the first spade of soil after the paving was removed, the men remarked how much easier it was to dig here than elsewhere in the garden. DI Pople could feel their growing excitement as keenly as his own.

‘I reckon she were a professional gravedigger,’ one of the men joked as they went down and down.

It was just a few minutes after his jovial remark that his spade hit something. ‘Looks like a blanket wrapped round something,’ he shouted from the now four-foot-deep hole. ‘Best pass me down a trowel to scrape away the soil.’

An hour and a half later, a skeleton was fully exposed and awaiting the pathologist. There were still bits of khaki uniform attached to it which hadn’t rotted away, and brass buttons, belt webbing and a pair of boots.

‘No doubt that it’s Reg Coleman,’ DI Pople said as he sheltered under the tarpaulin and gazed down at the skeleton. ‘It will be interesting to discover how she killed him. Anyone want to place a bet on it? Stabbing, shooting or poison?’

There was a round of speculation on the subject.

‘Bet he was over the moon to get back from Dunkirk in one piece.’ The voice of one of the constables rose above the rest. ‘Poor geezer, happy as Larry, thinking only of getting his leg over, and the bloody housekeeper does for him. That’s what you call tragic irony.’

‘Makes you wonder who else is buried out here,’ someone else chipped in.

‘It does indeed,’ DI Pople murmured to himself. ‘It does indeed.’

Three days later, armed with the police pathologist’s report, which confirmed that the body in the garden was indeed that of Reginald Coleman, DI Pople went back to Hellingly Hospital to see his widow. He had Sergeant Wayfield with him as a witness because he hoped that, by presenting the poor woman with evidence of just how evil her beloved Miss Gribble was, she might feel able to disclose other things which maybe, out of misplaced loyalty, she had kept to herself.

Christabel looked even calmer than she had on the previous visit. Her eyes were bright, her smile was warm and there was a glow about her.

‘I’ve been feeling very much better,’ she said. ‘I think this is due to finally being able to face up to the folly of allowing Miss Gribble to run my life.’

DI Pople thought that she might not feel quite so well balanced when he told her about the latest development but, however much sympathy he had for her, he had to press on.

‘I am very sorry to tell you but we have found your husband’s body in the garden of Mulberry House,’ he said. He wanted to tell her as gently as possible but whichever way he put it she was going to be distressed. ‘He was stabbed in the chest, and we have no doubt that this was done by Miss Gribble.’

Christabel’s glow vanished like the sun going behind a cloud. She clamped her hands over her mouth and her eyes filled with tears. ‘She killed my Reg?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ said DI Pople. ‘She buried him in front of the summer house.’

Christabel cried then, a low, keening sound that somehow illustrated how badly she had been betrayed by the woman who professed to love her. DI Pople stood up and put his hand on her shoulder in an effort to comfort her, and the sergeant asked the nurse waiting outside to bring some tea.

‘I never had any suspicions about her,’ Christabel said, wiping her eyes. ‘And the awful thing is that I chose to believe the rumour flying around the village that he had bunked off from the army to be with a woman in France. Isn’t it terrible that I believed that of him instead of grieving?’

‘If it were me, I would wonder who started that rumour,’ DI Pople said.

Christabel looked at him in horror. ‘You think it was her?’

DI Pople shrugged. ‘I think it’s very likely. It would stop you from trying to find out more about his disappearance.’

‘Oh God, I’ve been such a fool,’ said Christabel Coleman, holding her head between her hands. ‘I let her guide me because I trusted her implicitly. Why couldn’t I see what she was doing? She even turned Sylvia against me.’

‘I don’t think you should blame yourself for that,’ he said, afraid he’d pushed her close to the edge again with his revelations. ‘Most mothers would be upset if their unmarried daughter got herself pregnant.’

She looked at him with an expression of utter exasperation. ‘For a policeman, you aren’t that quick,’ she said. ‘Sylvia didn’t get pregnant. I did. Petal is my child.’

For all his years of experience of witnesses telling him the most unexpected and often outrageous things, DI Pople had never expected to be shocked like this, and by this gentle woman.

‘She’s your child?’ he said stupidly. ‘But how? I mean, who –’ He broke off, unable to find appropriate words to ask how she could have even met a black man.

‘My goodness, you’re shocked,’ she said, and gave a humourless laugh. ‘The lady from the big house having an affair with a black man! Well, I did, and, for your information, he was a good man. I met him towards the end of the war in Ashford. He was an American airman, handsome, charming and fun. I hadn’t had any fun at all since Reg disappeared. I was in no man’s land, neither a confirmed widow nor an abandoned wife. A friend in Ashford talked me into going to a dance with her, and that’s where I met him.’

‘What was his name?’ DI Pople asked, trying to overcome his shock and to pull himself back into the role of interrogator.