Ben Cooper parked his Toyota outside Earl Sterndale’s best-known landmark – its pub, the Quiet Woman. The swinging wooden sign outside was much photographed by tourists in the summer, because it showed an image of a headless woman. According to the story behind the pub’s name, that was a previous landlord’s solution to the problem of keeping his garrulous wife quiet.
There was a campsite next to the pub, though it was empty. Marston’s Burton Ales. Outside the door stood an old sink and a brush for boot washing, and plastic bags were kept in the porch for walkers to put over their dirty boots before entering the pub. It was the same principle as the one used at crime scenes, where forensic examiners and police officers wore plastic overshoes to avoid contaminating the scene with trace evidence and footwear marks.
The pub had milk delivered from a dairy in Hazel Grove. The bottles were still sitting in the porch, even though it was past midday. Of course, the Quiet Woman was closed. Many landlords in the more outlying villages found there was no point in opening their pubs during the day, especially in the winter months. There just wasn’t enough lunchtime trade to pay for the overheads.
Cooper looked across the road to locate the Beresfords’ house. Luke Irvine would be unhappy that his DS seemed to be covering the same ground, as if Irvine hadn’t done a good enough job the first time round. But that couldn’t be helped. Not today. It was bad enough having Diane Fry tagging along like a spare part. Didn’t she have anything better to do with her time? He supposed he could ask her, but he would only get a sarcastic answer.
‘Are you coming?’ he said.
‘No, I’ll wait here,’ said Fry. ‘I’ve got a few phone calls to make.’
‘Fair enough.’
Across the road he found Mrs Beresford was at home on her own, which was fine by Cooper.
‘One of your colleagues came the other day, you know,’ she said straight away when she answered the door.
‘I know. Just a couple more questions.’
She was a small woman with a chilled look, her ears and nose pink with cold as if she’d just come back from a brisk walk on the moors. Even as Cooper introduced himself, she was removing a quilted body warmer. Perhaps he was lucky to have caught her.
‘I don’t know what else I can tell you,’ she said.
‘It’s about Sandra Blair’s husband,’ said Cooper.
‘Gary? He died. I did tell—’
‘Yes. About five years ago?’
‘That would be about right.’
‘Do you happen to know where Mr Blair’s family are?’
‘His family? Well, I don’t think his parents are still around. They used to live at Bowden, of course.’
‘The estate village for Knowle Abbey.’
‘Yes. Sandra and Gary lived with his parents for a while after they got married. But there was no way they could ever have had children there, in one of those little houses. And they were planning a family. At least … Sandra said they were.’
‘And no other relatives in the area?’
‘Not that I know of. Some of the people at Bowden would have a better idea, perhaps.’
‘Thank you.’
Cooper went back to his car and drove through Earl Sterndale. Ahead he saw a distinctive hill called High Wheeldon. He glanced at Fry, but she was still busy with her phone, talking to someone at her office in St Ann’s.
‘Everything okay, Diane?’ he said, hoping she was being called back to Nottingham.
She nodded. ‘Absolutely fine.’
Cooper sighed and drove on. Fry hadn’t even asked where they were going next.
Viewed from the road out of the village, High Wheeldon looked like a Derbyshire pyramid, a transplant from Egypt, or something casually dropped by a passing alien. Artificial, certainly. Nature wasn’t capable of constructing such a regular, conical shape. Yet when you got closer and the road skirted its eastern side, you could see that it had been an optical illusion. High Wheeldon wasn’t shaped like a pyramid at all from here, but was just another irregular hump in the landscape, mysterious enough in its own enigmatic way, lending itself to leaps of the imagination, the way so much of the Peak District landscape did.
Once you turned off the main road to Longnor, it became obvious that Bowden was no ordinary village. To enter it you had to pass through a gateway and over a cattle grid, past the signs warning you that it was private property and part of the Knowle Abbey estate.
The houses were all well constructed from local stone, but in a surprisingly wide variety of architectural styles. It was as if the architect, or the earl who’d commissioned him, couldn’t quite make his mind up which design he preferred. There were Norman arches, Tudor-style chimneys, medieval turrets, Swiss roofs and Italianate windows. The paintwork on all the cottages was a collective Knowle Park green. But the houses with arched windows and balconies were larger and more ornate in style, distinguishing them from the plainer cottages. There had always been a social hierarchy, even among workers on the same estate.
It looked as though there had been a farmhouse here. But the house and its outbuildings had been converted. A barn had become a series of small apartments for staff. A lodge with castellations and imitation arrow slits guarded the entrance to Knowle Park itself. Cooper recalled seeing a matching lodge at the north entrance.
Sheep were grazing in an adjacent field and across the park he could see a small herd of cattle. Limousin cross, if he wasn’t mistaken. During the landscaping of the park, the course of the River Dove had been altered slightly and a new bridge had been built. Big landowners could do that in those days, if it improved the view. Planning permission was never a concern. Nor was consideration for your neighbours, probably.
Bowden had a small church with a disproportionately tall spire. But the doors were locked and weeds were growing in the porch. On two sides of it was the burial ground, with several untidy rows of headstones, many old enough to be worn and corroded by the weather, their inscriptions almost illegible.
This was where the mourners from those small hamlets to the east would have arrived after their arduous trek across the hills and over the Corpse Bridge. Many of the coffins mouldering under these headstones would have been carried for miles and allowed to rest for a while on the same coffin stone where they’d found the effigy on Friday. Cooper found it hard to grasp the fact that all those people had been brought here at the end of their lives and laid to rest on the earl’s property, as if they were a final tribute.
Though he could hear a few children playing somewhere, there seemed to be very few residents of Bowden actually at home. On a small field next to the graveyard he could see piles of wood heaped up in a large stack, ready for Bonfire Night on Tuesday. A short distance away from it a yellow bulldozer was parked behind the church. It must be handy to have that sort of equipment available.
They began to knock on doors and it was Diane Fry who found someone first. Cooper got a call from her on his phone and he walked back across the central green to meet her.
‘This is Mrs Mellor,’ said Fry. ‘Mrs Mellor, my colleague Detective Sergeant Cooper.’
She was a woman in her mid to late sixties, with a welcoming smile and a faint smell of pine disinfectant and toasted cheese. In the background Cooper could hear what sounded like daytime TV, perhaps an old episode of Lewis or Midsomer Murders.
‘Hello. Come in,’ she said. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? I don’t see many people during the day, even on a Saturday.’
Fry followed him into the house. Cooper wished he was alone in circumstances like this. He would find it easier to get on with people and encourage them to talk. But he seemed to be stuck with her for now.
They sat down in a cosy sitting room and the kettle was soon boiled for tea. Mrs Mellor produced a plate of biscuits and it occurred to Cooper that it must be around lunchtime. He felt hungry.
‘I gather you knew the Blairs,’ said Cooper. ‘They used to live in Bowden.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Mellor. ‘They were just across the way there. They lived here for many years.’
‘All these properties at Bowden still belong to Knowle Abbey, don’t they? The cottages were built for estate workers.’
Mrs Mellor poured the tea for them both. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘The earl himself is the landlord. Though I don’t think anybody sees much of him these days. Not this present one, anyway. We deal mostly with the estate manager or one of the office staff.’
‘So the people who live here are all workers at the abbey or on the estate?’
‘Knowle Abbey staff and pensioners.’
‘Pensioners?’ he asked.
‘You know, retired staff or estate workers. You don’t get kicked out of your house as soon as you retire. At least, that’s been the arrangement in the past.’
‘So Gary Blair’s father must have worked for the estate? Or he used to?’
‘He was a forester. Alan Blair was part of a team maintaining the woodlands around the estate. Mostly to keep the paths clear and remove any damaged trees. But they produce a bit of commercial timber too. He started working at that job a long time ago, under the old earl.’
‘The old earl,’ said Cooper. ‘He was popular, wasn’t he?’
Mrs Mellor sat down opposite him and sighed.
‘All the estate workers loved the old man,’ she said. ‘He was lovely. The old earl liked to ride round his land and see what was going on. Somehow he managed to know all the men personally and asked after their families by name. And he always gave them a big dinner at Christmas too as a “thank you”. The children of the estate were given two parties a year, one in the summer and one in December. Of course, Father Christmas always managed to make a surprise appearance. The earl used to love doing that job himself, until he got too old for it. I believe there was quite a lot of beer drunk in honour of the old man. But it doesn’t happen now.’
‘I see.’
Cooper felt torn over whether that was a good thing or not. Paternalistic employers had certainly disappeared. There might not be so many toasts in the present earl’s name, and he probably didn’t know all his staff personally, but the old-style landlords had exercised a kind of autocratic control over their workers. He bet that the previous earl would have had no hesitation in sacking a man on the spot if he misbehaved or was disrespectful. With workers living in these tied cottages in the estate villages, that meant a man would lose his home too, and his family would be evicted. At least the current earl would be expected to obey current employment legislation.
‘At one time there was even a school here for children of the estate workers,’ said Mrs Mellor. ‘It was set up by one of the Manbys who had a particular interest in his tenants. They say that school had as many as sixty pupils in its heyday. But it was demolished long ago. Children are picked up by bus to go to the local primary school now.’
‘So what happened to the Blairs?’ asked Cooper.
‘Oh, Alan dropped dead from a heart attack one day. It was quite a shock and Pat became very ill. She was in hospital for a long, long time. In fact, she never really recovered, poor woman. She died of pneumonia in the end.’
‘Gary and his wife Sandra lived with them for a while, I believe.’
‘Yes, they couldn’t get a house of their own. It’s difficult for young couples.’
‘I heard they wanted to start a family of their own. So they stayed here while trying to save up to buy their first house.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Mrs Mellor. ‘But I think they were hoping for a tenancy of their own here on the estate.’
‘Oh?’ Cooper hesitated, not sure he’d understood correctly what she meant. ‘Mrs Mellor, do you mean Gary Blair worked for Knowle Abbey too?’
‘Yes, of course. Didn’t you know that?’
‘No.’
For a moment Mrs Mellor looked as though she might regret having told him something he didn’t know. But it was just a fleeting confusion. Cooper must have given the impression he knew more than he actually did.
Diane Fry took up the opportunity presented by his silence.
‘What job did Gary do?’ she asked. ‘Was he a forester too?’
Mrs Mellor turned to her. ‘That’s right. He learned the work from his father and went into the job himself when he left school. He was very good at it, so I’ve heard. He knew how to manage a chainsaw.’
Cooper ate another digestive as he watched the two women in conversation. Fry hadn’t even touched her tea, let alone the biscuits. She was probably unaware of how rude it looked to people when she did this. Since Mrs Mellor had taken the trouble to make the tea, she ought at least take a sip or two out of politeness.
But Mrs Mellor didn’t seem to have noticed.
‘It was sad, but Gary got very depressed after his father died and his mother was so ill. I think they all went through a difficult time. And then there was the accident, of course…’
Fry’s ears almost visibly pricked up. ‘Accident?’
Mrs Mellor took a deep breath and shuddered. She leaned towards Fry and lowered her voice. ‘With the chainsaw. Horrible.’
‘They’re very dangerous things.’
‘I know. But Gary Blair, of all people. They all get the training and the safety equipment. But this particular day … well, no one knows what really happened. He was on his own at the time, working out of sight of the other men. I suppose he must have slipped.’ She shuddered again. ‘It’s too awful to think about.’
‘Was he badly hurt?’
‘Oh, yes. They had to remove his arm. Then he couldn’t work as a forester any more. He wasn’t qualified for anything else. They offered him a job in the car park, just a few hours a week. But he went downhill rapidly from then on. Well, you can imagine.’
‘Did Gary and Sandra have to leave Bowden after that?’
‘Oh, they knew they were going to have to leave,’ said Mrs Mellor. ‘They were told they wouldn’t be able to take over the tenancy of the cottage after Gary’s mother died. That was the biggest blow. I think that was what finished Gary off.’
Cooper brushed some crumbs from the table on to the now empty plate.
‘Mrs Mellor,’ he said, ‘how did Gary Blair die?’
‘You don’t know?’ she said, turning to Cooper. She looked at him as if he were the only one here who was ignorant.
‘I’m afraid you’re going to say that he took his own life,’ he said.
Mrs Mellor nodded. ‘Yes, he killed himself. He just couldn’t take it. It’s such a shame about that family.’
Outside Mrs Mellor’s cottage Fry stopped to ask a question.
‘Why do they need so many houses here,’ she said, ‘if they’re for workers at Knowle Abbey?’
‘Believe it or not, there are about three hundred people employed on the estate in various ways,’ said Cooper.
‘You’re joking. Doing what?’
‘They’re either in the abbey, working on maintenance and looking after the visitors, or they’re in the gardens, the restaurant, the shop. They’re on the farms, in the woodland, looking after the fisheries and game, or working in the offices. And probably lots of jobs I haven’t thought of.’
Cooper stood on the central green and looked around at the houses of Bowden. The Manby emblem was set into the gable end of the cottages and the larger properties featured stone carvings of the crest above their front doors.
Like the Devonshires, the Manbys had owned many of the local villages in their time. Their name wasn’t as ubiquitous, but it was certainly here at Bowden. It was on the church, the community hall and some of their workers’ properties. And so was their emblem. It was a profile turned to the right, with a hooked beak like a scimitar. An eagle’s head.
‘Where to next?’ asked Fry.
‘I think it’s time to go visiting the aristocracy,’ said Cooper.