Brookside Cottage,

Thornton Lacey.

September 4th.

Well hello, Peter Pascoe! A voice from the grave! Or should I say the underworld? Out of which Ellie (who gave me the glad news of your existence when we met in town last month) hopes to lead you, for a while at least, back into the land of the living.

Ironic, thought Detective-Superintendent Backhouse, his gaze flicking momentarily to the pale-faced man who sat opposite him. He did not speak the thought aloud. He was a kind man, though he never shunned the cruelties of his job when they became essential.

He read on. Doubtless she told you we've been doing up this rural slum to make it a fit place for pallid cits to recuperate in. Well, now it is complete and we'd love for you and Ellie to week-end with us in a fortnight (constabulary duty permitting, of course!). Timmy and Carlo are coming down from the Great Wen so there will be much nostalgia! Not quite as squalid as that other cottage in Eskdale (I hope) – but oddly enough life in Thornton Lacey is not without its correspondences!

'What's he mean by that?' asked Backhouse.

Pascoe stared at the sentence indicated by the superintendent's carefully manicured finger. It took him a second to bring the words into focus.

'When we were students,' he said, 'we spent a few weeks one summer in Eskdale. In Cumberland.'