back the way they had come but rather farther along the lane through a woodland of oaks and chestnuts. These afforded a canopy that arced over the lane in a verdant tunnel of leaves. Back out on the Lyndhurst Road, though, there was broad lawn on one side giving way to tangled heath on the other. Herds of ponies grazed freely here, and where they wished to cross the road, they simply did so.
Once in Burley, it became quickly clear why Hastings had said they would not want to have a private conversation there. Tourists were massing everywhere, and they seemed to be taking their cues from the ponies and the cows wandering through the village at will: They walked where their fancy took them, bright sunlight falling upon their shoulders.
Hastings lived through and beyond the village. He had a holding at the top of a strip of road called Honey Lane - actually marked with a sign, Barbara noted - and when they finally pulled onto the property, she saw it was similar to a farm, with several outbuildings and paddocks, one of which held two horses.
The door they used led directly into the kitchen of the house, where Barbara went to an electric kettle upended on a draining board. She filled it, set it to work, and sorted out mugs and bags of PG Tips. Sometimes a shot of the bloody national beverage was the only way in which fellow feeling could be expressed.
Nkata sat Hastings at an old Formica-topped table, where the agister took off his hat and blew his nose on his kerchief, which he then balled up and shoved to one side. He said, "Sorry,"
and his eyes filled. "I should have known when she didn't answer my calls on her birthday. And not ringing back at once th' day afterwards. She always rang back. Within the hour, generally.
When she didn't, it was easier to think she was just busy. Caught up in things. You know."
"Are you married, Mr. Hastings?" Barbara brought mugs to the table, along with a battered tin canister of sugar that she'd found on a shelf with matching old canisters of flour and coffee as well. It was an old-fashioned kitchen with old-fashioned contents, from the appliances to the objects on the shelves and in the cupboards. As such, it looked like a room that had been lovingly preserved, rather than one that had been artfully restored to wear the guise of an earlier period.
"Not very likely, that," was how he answered the question. It seemed to be a resigned and bleak reference to his unfortunate looks. That was sad, Barbara thought, a self-prophecy fulfilled.
"Ah," she said. "Well, we're going to want to speak to everyone in Hampshire who knew Jemima. We hope you'll be able to help us with that."
"Why?" he asked.
"Because of how she died, Mr. Hastings."
At this point Hastings seemed to realise something he hadn't yet considered despite the fact that he was being spoken to by representatives of the Metropolitan police. He said, "Her death ...Jemima's death ..."
"I'm very sorry to tell you that she was murdered six days ago." Barbara added the rest: not the means of death but the place in which it had occurred. And even then she kept it general, by mentioning the cemetery but not its location and not the location of the body within it. She finished with, "So everyone who knew her will have to be interviewed."
"Jossie." Hastings sounded numb. "She left him. He didn't like that. She said he couldn't come to terms with it. He rang her and rang her and he wouldn't stop ringing her." That said, he raised his fists to his eyes, and he wept like a child.
The electric kettle clicked off, and Barbara went to fetch it. She poured water into the mugs, and she found milk in the fridge. A shot or two of whisky would have been better for the poor man, but she wasn't up to rustling through his cupboards, so the tea was going to have to do, despite the heat of the day. At least the interior of the cottage was cool and kept that way by its construction of thick cob walls, which were rough and whitewashed outside and painted pale yellow within the kitchen.
It was the presence of the Weimaraner that seemed to soothe Robbie Hastings at last. The dog had placed his head on Hastings' thigh, and the low, long whine that issued from the animal roused