A Great Deliverance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,35

it into the stereo. He did not, however, turn the unit on. She stared out at the passing countryside, mortified.

"I'm surprised you don't know about it," he finally said.

"Know about what?"

He looked at her then. He appeared to be trying to read her face for insolence or sarcasm or perhaps a need to wound. Apparently satisfied with what he saw, he returned his eyes to the road.

"Just about five years ago, my brother-inlaw, Edward Davenport, was murdered in his home north of Richmond. Superintendent Nies saw fit to arrest me. It wasn't a long ordeal, just a matter of a few days. But quite long enough." A glance at her again, a self-deprecatory smile.

"You've not heard that story, Sergeant? It's nasty enough to make good cocktail party gossip."

"I...no...no, I'd not heard it. And anyway, I don't go to cocktail parties." She turned blindly to the window. "I should guess the turnoff is near. Perhaps three miles," she said uselessly.

She was shaken to the core. She could not have said why, did not want to think about it, and forced herself to study the scenery, refusing to be caught up in any further conversation with the man. Concentration on the land became imperative, and as she gave herself over to it, the country began its process of seduction upon her, for she was so used to the frenetic pace of London and the desperate grime of her neighbourhood in Acton that Yorkshire came as a bit of a shock.

The countryside was a thousand different shades of green, from the patchwork quilts of the cultivated land to the desolation of the open moors. The road dipped through dales where forests protected spotless villages and then climbed switchbacked curves to take them again up to the open land where the North Sea wind blew unforgivingly across heather and furze. Here, the only life belonged to the sheep. They wandered free and unfenced, unfettered by the ancient dry stone walls that constructed boundaries for their fellows in the dales below.

There were contradictions everywhere. In the cultivated areas, life burgeoned from every cranny and hedgerow, a thick vegetation that in another season would produce the mixed beauties of cow parsley, campion, vetch, and foxglove. It was an area where transportation was delayed while two dogs expertly herded a flock of plump sheep across pasture, down hillside, and along the road for a two-mile stroll into the centre of a village, directed only by the whistling of the shepherd who followed, his fate and the fate of the animals he owned left to the skill of the running dogs. And then suddenly, the plants, villages, magnificent oaks, elms, and chestnuts - this truly insubstantial pageant - faded to nothing in the glory of the moors.

Here, the cerulean sky exploded with clouds. It swept down to meet the rough, unconquered land. Earth and air: there was nothing else, save the sapient presence of the black-faced sheep, stalwart denizens of this lonely place.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Lynley asked after some minutes. "In spite of everything that's happened to me here, I still love Yorkshire. I think it's the loneliness here. The complete desolation."

Again Barbara resisted the confidence, the implicit message behind the words that here was a man who could understand. "It's very nice, sir. Not like anything I've ever seen. I think this is our turn."

The road to Keldale switched back and forth, taking them to the deepest section of the dale. Moments after the turn, the woods closed in on them. Trees arched over the road, ferns grew thickly at its sides. They came to the village the way that Cromwell had come, and they found it as he had: deserted.

The ringing of St. Catherine's church bells told them immediately why there was no sign of life in the village. Upon the cessation of what Lynley was beginning to believe was surely Sayers's nine tailors, the church doors opened and the ancient building spewed forth its tiny congregation.

"At last," he murmured. He stood leaning against the car, thoughtfully surveying the village. He'd parked in front of Keldale Lodge, a trim little hostelry, heavily hung with ivy and multipaned windows, from which he had a sweeping view in four directions. Taking it in, he concluded that there couldn't possibly have been a more unlikely spot on earth for a murder.

To the north was the narrow high street, flanked by grey stone buildings with tiled roofs and white woodwork containing the requisite elements for comfortable village life: a