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understand.’ Dr D’Acre glanced at the skeletons. ‘No obvious cause of death and they were alive when they were brought here, no point in restraining or gagging a corpse.’
    ‘None at all.’
    ‘Northern side of the garden, the sun would have baked them if they were here in the summer, in the sun all day, no shade, no remnants of clothing to indicate that they were clothed. If they were not kept alive they would have succumbed quite rapidly to dehydration.’
    ‘Thirst?’
    ‘Yes. Horrible death. What people have been known to drink because of the ravages of thirst . . . petrol . . . stagnant water alive with insects . . .’
    ‘So I have heard.’
    ‘If they were abandoned in the winter it would have been an easier death, very painful at first, but quick and pain free in the end,’ she paused, ‘but all that is pure conjecture, not scientific observation.’
    ‘Whatever, but it does not bear thinking about, particularly the summer death, that would have taken days.’
    ‘Yes, and all but the first would have been chained to a corpse or corpses . . .’
    Hennessey asked Dr D’Acre how long she thought the corpses had been there.
    ‘Years . . . the skeletons could be twenty years here, the fourth and fifth victims less time. They did not all disappear in a small time frame, so their disappearances might not have been linked. Is the occupant of the house implicated, can I ask?’
    ‘No. Late occupant in fact.’
    ‘I am sorry.’
    ‘Ninety-seven years old . . . he had a good run . . . but he was housebound and led a hermit-like existence in the last twenty years of his life.’
    ‘Twenty?’
    ‘So we believe. This business . . .’ Hennessey pointed to the skeletons, ‘this business seems to have gone on right under his nose but in his complete ignorance.’
    ‘So someone knew the garden existed, yet it’s so far from the road and in a remote part of the Vale on top of that.’
    ‘Yes,’ Hennessey smiled, ‘so we’ll be tracing all the former staff . . .’
    ‘Well, I wish you luck. Have you got all the photographs you need?’
    Hennessey turned to the scene of crime officer who nodded. ‘Yes, sir,’ he added.
    ‘So we can transport the bodies to the York District. I’ll go and await them.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I’ll commence the post-mortems tomorrow first thing, nine thirty am. Will you be observing for the police, Chief Inspector?’
    ‘Yes, ma’am, most probably.’
    It was 16.35 hours.

TWO
    Thursday 11th June – 10.05 hours – 22.22 hours
in which a home visit is made and Carmen Pharoah and George Hennessey are severally at home to the gracious reader.
    T he room was brilliantly illuminated by a series of filament bulbs concealed behind opaque Perspex sheets in the ceiling. The Perspex sheets successfully avoided the potentially dangerous epileptic fit inducing ‘shimmer’ and bathed the room in a bright but constant glow, which was not harmful to the eyes of those in the room. In the room, four corpses lay on four stainless steel tables arranged side by side in a row. The fifth body of the five, one of the complete skeletons, found in the kitchen garden at Bromyards remained in a steel drawer in a chilled adjacent room. ‘Four is quite sufficient to start with,’ Dr D’Acre had explained. A sombre mood, very sombre in fact, thought Hennessey, as he stood against the wall observing the procedure for the police. He had not known a mood more sombre to have previously descended on the room. He watched as Dr D’Acre moved the arms and legs of each body, sometimes having to use all her strength, until all four lay face up, arms by the side, legs straight out and close together, and thus affording each corpse, even in death, a degree of dignity. Each victim seemed to have expired in a foetal position, either because they had sat up against the wall as they had drawn their last breath, or more likely, thought Hennessey, having seen the five bodies