Archie Tremaine raised his glass. ‘So let’s drink, shall we, to peace? Peace…in the near future, God willing. And to Victory for our brave soldiers, sailors and airmen…’

‘Peace…’ they echoed, and ‘Victory…’ as they all lifted their glasses and took a sip of the sherry, the wine which was always provided by Archie and Rebecca for the Christmas toast.

The company, this Christmas of 1940, differed slightly from that of the year before as the rectory folk were celebrating in their own home. Around the fully extended table in the dining room of Tremaine House twelve people were gathered; Archie, Rebecca and Bruce; Lily, Maisie, Joanie and Jimmy; and five land girls who had decided not to go home for Christmas as they lived too far away, but to take their leave at another time.

Everyone agreed that the meal was superb, just as sumptuous as it had been the year before. But Rebecca knew that there was less fruit in the pudding, less cream in the brandy sauce, and that the cake, to be cut at teatime, was covered this year with mock marzipan. They had still had turkey to eat, raised on Walter Nixon’s farm; but the Ministry of Food was insisting that more and more land must be ploughed over for the growing of essential food crops. Folk living in the country areas were fortunate and they knew it, but in the towns and cities the shortages were felt more keenly.

Maisie and Bruce, sitting next to one another, exchanged smiles – a rather shy one, on Maisie’s part – as they, too, raised their small glasses and took a sip of the sweet sherry. Maisie liked the taste, but her mother would let her have only a titchy amount. It made her feel all warm and glowing inside; but she knew that this feeling was not due entirely to the sherry. She was realising that she liked Bruce very much indeed. She was far too young, she knew, to think of him as a boyfriend; she was ten and would be eleven in May whereas Bruce was almost sixteen. But one of the reasons she liked him so much was because he treated her as though she was as grown up as he was and not just a silly kid. They met infrequently, though, with him being away at boarding school for the greater part of the year.

‘I believe you have another little visitor at the rectory now?’ he said. ‘Timothy Clegg? I was really sorry to hear about Ivy. She was your friend, wasn’t she? I remember seeing her with you and Audrey and Doris, but I don’t think I ever saw her brother. Will he be staying long?’

‘He’s here for good; at least I think so,’ replied Maisie. ‘I think Aunty Patience and Luke are going to adopt him, like they did with Audrey. They haven’t said very much, not to me and Audrey…but I can tell,’ she added meaningfully. ‘There’s a lot of talk going on.’

‘And you don’t miss much, do you?’ laughed Bruce.

‘No, I don’t,’ agreed Maisie. She smiled. ‘I try not to. I like to know what’s happening. I think it’s nice for Aunty Patience and Luke ’cause they’ve never had any children of their own. I remember when I first came here I asked if she had any boys or girls, and she got a bit upset and said no. Then afterwards she said she wished they had… P’raps she can’t have any of her own, but now they’ll have one of each, a girl and a boy.’

‘And what about Timothy? Has he settled down? Poor little boy; it must have been dreadful, losing all his family like that.’

‘Yes, he’s OK,’ said Maisie. ‘He’s been with the people he stayed with when he was an evacuee, and now he’s come to us. Me and Audrey have been looking after him, like big sisters, y’see, instead of Ivy.’

‘But you wanted to be with your own mum today, did you, and your brother and sister?’

‘Yes, of course I did,’ replied Maisie. ‘Aunty Patience says Christmas is a family time. And they’re my family really, aren’t they? My mum and Joanie and Jimmy…’

At the rectory Patience and Luke, Audrey and Timothy, and Mabel and Bill Roystone had enjoyed a similar sort of meal. Patience had invited the elderly couple for the day to help Timothy to settle into his new surroundings.

He had been in Middlebeck for about two weeks. His broken leg was still in plaster, though only up to the knee as the break had been near the ankle. He had managed the train journey with the assistance of Luke and Mr Roystone who had gone to collect him, and then he had stopped at the Roystones’ home for about ten days. He was hobbling along quite ably with the aid of crutches, and once he had recovered from the initial shock of losing his parents and his sister he had enjoyed being the centre of attention with his Aunty Mabel and Uncle Bill.

Now he had been told that his new home was to be at the rectory with Mr and Mrs Fairchild; he had gone to live there just a couple of days before Christmas.

‘I am Aunty Patience to Audrey and Maisie,’ Patience told him. ‘Would you like to call me Aunty as well? And you can call Mr Fairchild, Uncle, or just Luke, if you would rather. He doesn’t mind.’

The little boy nodded seriously, but although he started to call Patience ‘Aunty’, a little diffidently at first, he still did not call Luke by any name at all. He seemed rather in awe of the man, but Patience had every confidence that his shyness would disappear in time. She was pleased to see him smiling, and actually laughing occasionally, when he was with Audrey and Maisie.

Audrey had whispered to her on Christmas Eve, when she had gone to tuck her in and kiss her goodnight. ‘Aunty Patience…Timothy is going to be my brother, really, isn’t he? I mean…you’re going to adopt him, aren’t you, like you did with me? And then he’ll be Timothy Fairchild, like I’m…I’m Audrey Fairchild now, aren’t I?’

Patience felt her eyes grow moist; she was so relieved that the girl had accepted her new name. It had been a gradual acceptance, without any pressure from herself or Luke. They had decided that she had to come to it in her own time.

‘Yes…we are hoping to adopt Timothy,’ she replied. ‘But how did you know?’ They had not told Audrey or Maisie what they had in mind.

‘I just guessed,’ said Audrey. ‘And I think it’s lovely. I always wanted a little brother.’

Patience kissed her fondly. ‘Thank you, darling, for being so kind to Tim. You and Maisie have really looked after him since he arrived…’

Now all four bedrooms at the rectory were in use. It seemed strange to Luke and Patience because for the first ten years of their ministry three of the upstairs rooms had been unoccupied, although they had always had lots of visitors in the downstairs rooms. Now Tim was in the small room at the back of the house, next to the one where Audrey slept, with Maisie in the small front room, and Patience and Luke in the large front bedroom, the one they had always used.

‘Are you happy, my darling?’ Luke asked her as they lay close together in their double bed on Christmas night.

They had retired later than usual, as the three children had stayed up late, playing with their Christmas presents; the Snakes and Ladders, Ludo, and Chinese Chequers games; the jigsaws, yo-yos and puzzles; and Maisie and Audrey had had to be almost forced away from their latest Girls’ Crystal annuals. Archie had brought Maisie back from Tremaine House after tea, then he had offered to take Mabel and Bill back to their own home. And when the children had gone to bed Patience and Luke had sat for a while on the settee, hand in hand, enjoying a glass of sherry, a special treat to celebrate a day that, in spite of recent bereavements and traumas, had been a quietly joyous occasion.

‘Yes…very happy, Luke,’ said Patience, snuggling closer to him. She threw her arm across his body and rested her head on his chest. ‘Do you need to ask if I’m happy? It has been a lovely, lovely day.’ She laughed out loud. ‘And three children! Just what we always wanted. I know it isn’t quite the same as we planned, and Maisie, of course, is only on loan to us. But…we are doing the right thing, aren’t we, Luke?’

‘Yes…we are. I am as sure about that as I have ever been about anything.’ Luke reached out and threw off the eiderdown and blanket, a heavy weight on top of them. He propped himself up on one elbow, looking down at his wife. ‘Except, of course, about loving you, my darling. That is something I have always been very, very sure of.’ Tenderly he stroked her auburn hair, now greying a little at the temples, then he leaned down and kissed her passionately. ‘I love you, Patience,’ he whispered. ‘I love you even more now than I did when I married you, and I didn’t think that was possible.’

‘I love you too, Luke,’ she answered, ‘more and more with every day that passes…’

After that there was no need for words as he gathered her into his arms and made love to her, in a way that seemed to both of them more poignant and meaningful than it had ever been before.

Timothy’s plaster was removed from his leg in due course and he was welcomed back at school by Miss Foster and his classmates, especially by Peter, his special pal, who had thought he would never see him again.

The children of Standard Four sat for their Scholarship examination during the month of February, then forgot all about it as the results would not be out until much later in the year. There were other things to occupy their minds and energies as well as school. Maisie, Audrey and Doris still attended Brownies, although at ten and eleven years of age this was starting to be regarded by them as somewhat childish. They were looking forward to joining the Guides, but that would not be until they went to the senior school.

The girls were busy, whilst the evenings were dark, making articles which would be sold in a few weeks’ time at a Spring Fair and Bring and Buy Sale in the church hall. They worked away knitting kettle holders and dish cloths, sewing lavender bags, peg dolls and needle-cases, to aid ‘our gallant soldiers, sailors and airmen’. The money raised would help to buy tanks and aeroplanes and ammunition, and adults and children alike were told that every little would help; everyone must try to ‘do their bit’. And so they collected silver paper and milk bottle tops and waste paper, and bought sixpenny savings stamps at school on a Monday morning, then stuck them into a little book to help with the National Savings scheme. The news from other parts of the country was grim, with air raids still continuing, but it was good to think they were helping in some small way.

Life in Middlebeck, however, seemed to carry on quite uneventfully. Something that Maisie enjoyed, but which Audrey and Doris were not part of, was singing in the church choir. Maisie had always enjoyed singing, both at school and at Sunday school, and she always sang out loudly and confidently. When Luke had heard her carolling away happily at home he had suggested that she should join the church choir. Audrey had been back in Leeds by that time, but when she returned to Middlebeck she said, quite definitely, that she did not want to sing in the choir. She had only a tiny voice anyway, and she would not want everyone looking at her, she said, standing at the front of the church in the choir stalls. Doris, also, was not a member of the choir, although her father was the leading baritone singer. She laughingly said that her dad had told her she had a voice like a corncrake, whatever that was. Maisie thought that Mr Nixon was quite often rude to his daughter and said hurtful things, but Doris didn’t seem to mind.

Maisie was the youngest of the girl choristers. The other three girls were twelve and thirteen years old and were at senior school, and there were four boy choristers too. The rest were men and women of varying ages, from seventeen to over seventy, she guessed. She quite liked being made a fuss of, as the youngest member, and she loved wearing the blue cloak over her ordinary clothes and the little squarish cap with a tassel at the back.

At the moment, during the season of Lent, they were practising songs to sing at the Easter services. Mr King, the elderly organist and choir master, called them anthems. There was one called ‘This Joyous Eastertide’, and another one called the ‘Easter Hymn’, which was from an opera. It was very difficult to sing, but Maisie loved the way the music started off quiet and then went louder and louder, with the voices of the choir echoing around the empty church. There was something mystical and magical about it when the church was in semi-darkness, lit only at the end they called the chancel. She often found herself humming the melody or singing the words,

when she was at home.

She was beginning to understand the notes, the black ones and white ones and the ones with tails and how much you had to count for each one, like doing sums at school; and how they went up and down on the stave, going higher or lower; and what all the lovely Italian words meant; allegro, andante, diminuendo and crescendo, and her favourite one, rallentando.

She had a special friend in the choir and she was rather proud of this. It was Priscilla Meadows, the land girl who lived across the green in Miss Thomson’s house. She had befriended Maisie as soon as she joined the choir and Maisie liked her very much. Priscilla was small and pretty with fair curly hair and she laughed and smiled a lot. Her friend, Jennifer, was not in the choir, but Priscilla had wanted to join because she had been in the church choir in Leicester, the town where she lived. She was one of the sopranos – the ones that sang the high trilly notes, the notes that the younger members of the choir sang, too – and you could tell by watching her singing that she enjoyed it.

Priscilla confided to Maisie, one evening in early March, that she had met a young man who was really nice. ‘He’s in the army,’ she said, ‘and he’s stationed at Catterick, just up the road. Well, a few miles away, but it’s not all that far. I met him at a dance last Saturday, and I’m seeing him tonight, after we’ve finished the practice.’

Her eyes were bright and sparkling and Maisie felt happy for her. ‘What’s he called?’ she asked.

‘Jeff…Jeff Beaumont; he’s a lance-corporal. That means he has one stripe on his arm,’ Priscilla explained, ‘but I expect he’ll be a corporal before long.’

‘And…and you like him a lot, do you?’ asked Maisie, all agog.

‘Yes…I think so,’ said Priscilla, smiling and blushing a little. ‘I had a boyfriend at home, but we broke it off when he joined up and I came here. Yes, I think Jeff might be…rather special. Oh…we’d better shut up. Mr King is waiting for us.’

Maisie sat next to Priscilla at choir practices because the older members helped the younger ones to understand the music. But during the proper church services the young ones sat at the front with the grown-ups behind them. Mr King did not like them to talk too much, but there was always time for a little chat between songs.

‘Hymn number 520, please, ladies and gentlemen, if you are ready,’ he said now. ‘Love divine, all loves excelling…’ He nodded at Mrs Hollins, the pianist who played for practices, then they all started to sing again.

There were choir stalls on each side of the chancel, and in the one opposite was seated Walter Nixon, Doris’s father. Maisie could see him now, looking intently at Priscilla, and then down at his music. But his eyes were upon her most of the time, or so Maisie thought. She had seen him looking at her before, and she had seen Mr Nixon and Priscilla talking and laughing together at the end of a practice. They knew one another quite well, though, because she had been working on his farm, and on the land that belonged to Mr Tremaine, ever since she came to Middlebeck.

Everyone seemed to like Priscilla, more especially the men, because she was so pretty and lively and friendly. She would talk to anyone, and she had a way of making you feel special. That was how she had made Maisie feel, and Maisie guessed that that was how she made the older men feel as well; there were no very young men in the choir, because they were all in the forces.

Maisie had overheard one of the choir ladies whisper to her friend that Priscilla Meadows was a flirt. ‘You’d best keep yer eye on yer husband when that one’s around, I’m warning yer,’ she said. But Maisie did not think that that was true. Priscilla was just a nice agreeable young woman.

‘I’m seeing Jeff again tonight,’ she told Maisie the following week. ‘He’s getting a lift down from the camp, and I’m meeting him at the Green Man.’ That was a public house halfway down the High Street. ‘He’s bringing a pal with him, and I’m going to introduce my friend Jennifer to him. Jen’s a bit shy, you see, and… Hey up! Mr King’s ready for us.’

‘Have a good time,’ said Maisie when the practice came to an end.

‘Don’t you worry; I will,’ Priscilla laughed.

Then Maisie went to talk to Betty, one of the senior school girls who had offered to lend her a book all about the Guides. There were only Mr King and Mrs Hollins in the church when they left, sorting out the music and locking the piano.

‘Tara, Betty,’ shouted Maisie, then she set off along the path, through the church gate, and across the corner of the green to the rectory. There was a shorter way, a path through the bushes, which led to the back gate of the rectory, but it was dark and rather spooky in the blackout, so she always went the longer way round at night. Just when she reached the gate to her home she realised she had left her gloves behind. They were nice bright red ones that Patience had knitted for her and she didn’t want to lose them. She supposed they would be safe there and Luke could get them for her in the morning, but she liked to wear them for school and she didn’t want Patience to think she had been careless with them. She decided to go back.

She went round to the back door of the church, the entrance they used when they went for practices and meetings, but for proper church services they used the front door. But the door was shut and it was obvious that everyone had gone; Mr King and Mrs Hollins must have left almost immediately. Maisie turned to go back home, then she stopped dead in her tracks. She could hear voices coming from the other path, the one which led through the bushes. If it was Mr King and Mrs Hollins she could ask them to unlock the door so that she could get her gloves. She opened her mouth to shout, then she decided not to; they were both inclined to be a little short-tempered; no, it would not be a good idea. Then she froze, because the voices she could hear were not those of the organist and the pianist, but those of her friend, Priscilla and…Mr Nixon. At least, she knew it was Priscilla, and she was almost sure it was Walter Nixon.

‘Leave me alone!’ she heard Priscilla shout.

And then, ‘Aw, go on; you know you don’t mean it…’ came the man’s voice.

Maisie wondered if she dared to take a step in that direction and peep through the foliage, but then she heard Priscilla’s voice again. ‘Let me go, Walter! What d’you think you’re doing?’ So it really was Walter Nixon.

‘I’m only doing what you’ve wanted these past months. Don’t act all prim and proper wi’ me. You know you want it as much as I do…’

‘No, I don’t… Let go of me!’

Maisie held her breath and tiptoed away. She had been in trouble for eavesdropping before, and she knew that Mr Nixon and Priscilla would not want her to hear them. She hoped Priscilla would tell him to get lost and that she was going to meet her boyfriend.

‘I’ve forgotten my gloves,’ she said to Patience when she arrived home. ‘I went back, but the door was shut.’

‘Never mind, dear,’ said Patience. ‘Luke will get them for you tomorrow.’

She decided not to say anything about what she had heard. And she was sure that Priscilla was well able to look after herself.

‘You’re very quiet, Maisie,’ Patience said to her the following morning. ‘Is there something troubling you?’

‘No,’ replied Maisie quickly. Possibly too quickly, because Patience then looked at her more closely. ‘No…honestly, there’s not.’ She picked up her piece of toast and carefully took a bite. ‘I think I’m just a bit tired, that’s all. After I’ve been to choir practice my head’s all full of tunes going round and round, and then I sometimes don’t go to sleep for ages.’ That much was true, but last night it had not been the tunes that had kept her awake, but her thoughts about Priscilla and Doris’s dad. She wondered if she should have told Luke or Patience about what she had overheard, but that would have been ‘nosy-parkering’. She just hoped that Priscilla had told Mr Nixon where to get off – the awful man! – and had gone to meet Jeff, her new boyfriend.

‘I see,’ said Patience. ‘I know what you mean. I don’t always get to sleep straight away if there is something on my mind. You do look rather tired, dear, but you’ll soon buck up when you get out into the sunshine. It’s a lovely day; it really looks as though spring had come at last.’

Maisie was worried about seeing Doris that morning at school, knowing what she did about her father. Not that she would dream of saying anything to her friend – she would not even tell Audrey what she had overheard – but she would feel sort of awkward and embarrassed. It seemed as though Walter Nixon might be no better than her step-father, Sidney Bragg, although she didn’t think that Mr Nixon knocked his wife about like Sid had done with her mother.

As it happened, the morning at school was just the same as any other. Maisie didn’t avoid Doris, but neither did she go out of her way to talk to her. Doris seemed just the same as ever, happy and laughing, and they all rejoiced in the sunshine at playtime. It was warmer than it had been for months, and they soon discarded their coats, piling them up in a corner of the playground whilst they enjoyed their skipping and ball games.

Patience soon put her concern about Maisie to the back of her mind because she had something of much greater importance to think about. She had an appointment with the doctor that morning, one that she had not even told Luke about, and she hoped to have some very exciting news to report to him when she had seen Dr Forrester.

She had not had a monthly period since the middle of December, but she had thought nothing of it when the usual sign did not appear in January. Her monthlies were irregular; they always had been since she was a girl. This had made it more difficult when she and Luke, in the early years of their marriage, had desperately wanted to start a family. There had been several times when their hopes had been raised, only to be dashed again. She had had two early miscarriages as well, in the first few weeks of pregnancy. And since then they had come to the conclusion that it was their unfortunate fate to remain childless. They had decided to make the best of it, not to complain about their lot and make themselves miserable. And now they had adopted one child and the adoption of Timothy was almost complete.

What had happened seemed miraculous, too wonderful to be true, after all this time. She had not dared to tell even Luke, fearing that she might be mistaken. But in her own mind Patience was sure. She felt queasy in the morning, although she had not actually been sick, her breasts were tender and…she just knew in her heart that she had conceived a child of their own.

Her appointment was at ten o’ clock at Dr Forrester’s surgery, about ten minutes walk away, in a side street near to the market hall. He was a family practitioner who knew her and Luke very well, and he had attended to Timothy’s broken leg and to minor ailments of Audrey and Maisie. He raised his eyebrows and gave a surprised smile when Patience told him the reason for her visit.

‘Well, well, well…’ he said. ‘Let’s take a look at you then, shall we, Mrs Fairchild, if you don’t mind…’

She steeled herself for his examination, but he was very gentle and it was not as bad as she had expected. Anyway, what did it matter if the news was good? When she had gathered herself together the doctor beamed at her.

‘Well, Mrs Fairchild, you are right. You are pregnant; about three months on, I would say. Your baby will be born towards the end of September, as near as I can tell. Congratulations to you, and to the Reverend! It’s wonderful news.’

‘It is indeed,’ said Patience, unable to stop the tears of joy springing to her eyes. ‘Thank you so much, Dr Forrester.’

He laughed. ‘Don’t thank me, my dear. You should be thanking that husband of yours.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘A Christmas conception?’ he whispered.

‘It seems like it,’ said Patience, a little embarrassedly, thinking back to their night of love after the Christmas festivities.

Then the doctor became serious again. ‘Of course you will need to be careful, Mrs Fairchild. A first baby at your age…I won’t say that it is a risk. You are fit and healthy, but you are no longer twenty or even thirty.’ Indeed, Patience would be forty later that year. ‘But we will take very great care of you, and I will get you booked into Middlebeck hospital directly. Now, off you go and tell your husband the good news…’

Luke was in his study, working at his sermon for the following Sunday, when there was a knock at the back door. Patience was out – she had told him she had some shopping to do – so he hurried to answer the knock himself. He found his elderly verger standing there. Seth Jowett was nearer eighty than seventy and had been the caretaker at St Bartholomew’s church since long before Luke took over the living. He always wore a long black cassock as a sign of his office, a position of which he was very proud, having been a worshipper at the church since his Sunday school days. Now, his pale blue watery eyes were wide with fright and his hands were visibly shaking.

‘Reverend, you’d best come wi’ me straight away,’ he said. ‘There’s summat in t’ bushes betwixt here and t’ church. I think it’s a body, but I daresn’t go any nearer to find out.’

‘Very well, Seth, I’ll come right now,’ said Luke, but he was determined not to show any sign of panic. Seth was an old man; his eyesight was not good and it was possible that someone had thrown something away into the bushes. The path was frequently used as a short cut as it eventually led on to the lower end of the village green.

Seth led the way silently along the footpath near to the rectory’s back gate. ‘There… Look over yonder, Reverend,’ he said, when they had gone some twenty yards through the bushes, which were just beginning to bud with the green of early spring. The old man pointed, but, as he had said, he did not venture any nearer; he rather seemed to cower away, averting his eyes.

The body, for it was obvious that it was, indeed, a body, was fully clothed and was lying a couple of yards away from the pathway, only partially concealed by the undergrowth. Luke gave a gasp of shock and horror as he recognised it was that of a girl; one of the land girls, because she was wearing a khaki greatcoat and those corduroy breeches they all wore. She had pretty fair hair which curled over her forehead and ears… And before he stepped forward to take a closer look, as he knew he must, Luke had guessed at her identity.

‘Oh, dear God, no!’ he breathed, as he looked down on the bruised and swollen face of Priscilla Meadows. Her coat was gaping open and he could see the red marks on her neck where someone must have handled her roughly – strangled her – and her blue eyes were wide open, staring sightlessly at him. Very gently he knelt down and closed them, although he knew he must not touch anything else.

‘Rest in peace, my dear…’ he whispered, but it was all too clear that poor Priscilla had come to a violent end.

He stood up, brushing the soil from his knees and turned to Seth. ‘You were right, I’m afraid. It’s Priscilla, one of our land girls, and a member of the church choir. She would have been here for a practice last night…’ he added thoughtfully. ‘Come along, Seth. You need a stiff drink after a shock like that, and I must phone the police right away.’

‘Poor lassie,’ said Seth. ‘I’m still trembling like a leaf. Yer can’t take it in, can yer, summat like this? Aye, I think I know the lass you mean; pretty little thing she were.’

Luke took the verger into the sitting room and gave him a glass of brandy and hot water. ‘Here – drink this; it’s good for shocks. And that’s what you’ve had; a terrible shock.’

‘D’you think…? Did somebody…kill her? Was she…murdered?’ asked the old man.

‘I’m afraid it looks very much like it,’ said Luke. ‘I’m going to phone the police now.’

‘There’s courting couples as use that there path,’ said Seth. ‘You can’t blame ’em. And there’s nowt we can do about it. Did she ’ave a young man, d’you know? The rotten bastard!’ he added feelingly.

‘I don’t know,’ replied Luke, ‘but I suppose she must have had.’

The police arrived very promptly and cordoned off the area around the pathway. The inspector in charge of the case had come to ask Luke some questions and they were sitting together in the lounge when Patience arrived home.

‘Hello, darling…’ She burst into the room, then stopped dead at the sight of the policeman sitting there with her husband.

‘Oh, Patience… This is Inspector Davies,’ said Luke. ‘Come and sit down, my dear. I’m afraid there is some very bad news.’

Patience felt her high spirits droop as she sat down next to her husband. Her good news would have to wait a while. Her mood of elation quickly evaporated even further on hearing the tragic tidings. Priscilla…dead! Most likely murdered… It was impossible to take it in. She shook her head unbelievingly.

‘But…who? Who could possibly do such a dreadful thing?’

‘That is what we intend to find out,’ said the inspector. ‘You knew the young woman, Mrs Fairchild? Your husband was saying that she was probably at the church last night, at the choir practice. You didn’t see her yourself?’

‘No…I have nothing to do with the choir, and my husband doesn’t usually go to the practices, do you, Luke? One of our little girls is in the choir; Maisie, she came to us as an evacuee and she is still with us. She would probably have seen Priscilla…but I don’t want her questioned, Inspector.’

‘No, of course not; I understand. Did the young woman, Priscilla, have a boyfriend, do you know?’

‘As a matter of fact, I believe she had,’ said Patience. ‘Our little girl, Maisie, whom I’ve just mentioned, was friendly with her. Priscilla used to chat to her and Maisie had beome quite fond of her. Oh dear…she is going to be so upset! And I remember Maisie mentioning, only a few days ago, that Priscilla had met a young man that she liked very much. He’s in the army, stationed at Catterick; he’s called Jeff, I believe… You know how little girls love to chatter, and Maisie was quite thrilled because Priscilla had confided in her.’

The inspector nodded. ‘I see… Yes, that is very useful information.’

‘But you won’t have to question her, will you? Maisie, I mean?’

‘No, I promise you, Mrs Fairchild, we will not want to ask your little girl any questions. It would be too upsetting, we realise that. My sergeant has gone to break the news to Miss Thomson, the landlady of the poor girl, and maybe the young woman’s friend, Jennifer Brewer, will be able to give us some information. That will be all for now.’ Inspector Davies stood up. ‘Thank you both for your help… We will get him whoever he is,’ he added grimly.

Luke went to the door to see him out, then returned to Patience who was sitting motionless, stunned into shocked silence. He sat down and put his arms around her. It was several moments before she spoke.

‘Maisie and Audrey; whatever are we going to tell them? Maisie especially; she’d taken quite a shine to Priscilla. Oh, Luke; it’s so dreadful, so wicked…’

‘I’m afraid we will have to tell them the truth,’ he said. ‘If we tell them a half-truth they will only find out from someone else. Bad news travels fast; it will be all over the village, you can be sure, by the end of the day.’

‘But there’s never been anything like it in our little town before. Middlebeck was always such a peaceful little place. Hardly any crime to speak of, certainly no…murders.’

‘It’s wartime, my dear. We don’t know who was responsible, of course, but there are lots of newcomers round here who were not here a couple of years ago.’

‘You mean…the soldiers?’

‘Maybe…but we mustn’t speculate.’

‘Maisie and Audrey will be back from school soon,’ said Patience, ‘and Tim as well. I put a casserole in the oven before I went out, so it should be almost ready.’

‘Then I will go and see to it.’ Luke got up and gave her shoulder a squeeze. ‘You stay here and compose yourself.’

‘No, I’ll come as well. It’s better for me to keep busy.’

Together they set the table in the dining room and Patience put the plates to keep warm. ‘We’d better have our meal first before we tell them,’ she said, ‘or else nobody will want to eat anything at all.’

It was an uncomfortable lunchtime for Luke and Patience, although the children ate hungrily, as they always did, and chattered away to one another about their morning at school. Patience recalled how Maisie had seemed a trifle disturbed and quiet that morning, although she appeared all right again now. Had something happened at choir practice? she now wondered. Something which might have been connected with today’s shocking discovery?

It was Luke who broke the news. ‘We have something very sad to tell you,’ he began. ‘I am sorry, and I know you are going to be upset, but we would rather you heard about it from us.’ Three pairs of eyes looked at him steadily as he went on. ‘You all know Priscilla, the land girl who lived at Miss Thomson’s.’ They all nodded, Maisie the most interestedly. ‘Well…I am afraid she has met with an accident. I am sorry…but the poor young woman is dead. She was found in the churchyard this morning.’

The three children looked stunned. Maisie, in particular, turned pale, her mouth fell open and she stared at Luke in horror. ‘You mean…you said she’d had an accident. Did she fall over or what? Or did somebody…? You don’t mean she was…murdered, do you?’

Luke nodded briefly. ‘It looks very much like it. I’m so sorry, Maisie. I know she was a rather special friend to you, wasn’t she?’

‘Nobody knows what happened, darling,’ said Patience. ‘She might have been going to meet her boyfriend. They will have to ask him some questions, and anybody else who might have seen her.’

‘Jeff…’ said Maisie quietly. ‘She said he was called Jeff. But it couldn’t have been…’ She had turned as white as a sheet and her startled eyes were fixed on Luke in horror. ‘Oh no,’ she cried. ‘Oh no, no! He can’t have…’ She laid her head on her arms on the table top and began to sob uncontrollably.