“What crime?” Dora protested.
“Daisy’s death.”
“That was unfortunate, but it isn’t a crime to die.”
“It is if someone else is involved,” Keya responded.
Dora’s eyes widened, and her mouth formed a silent O.
“I’m not saying anyone was,” Keya continued. “We still aren’t certain of the cause of death but, until we are, we have to treat this as a suspicious death. My colleague, Constable Sparrow, will take that dustbin bag from you, as he’ll need to sort through it, and I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave the standing stones.”
“When can I finish tidying up? We can’t leave it like this. What will visitors say?” Dora demanded.
“Hopefully there won’t be too many visitors over the next few days and the police tape will keep those who do come away from this area.” Keya turned to Constable Sparrow and said, “When you take the rubbish bags to the car, can you collect the three plastic fence posts I put in the boot, and the roll of tape, so we can make the cordon more secure?”
Constable Sparrow took the black bag from Dora, who glowered at Keya.
Keya regarded Dora thoughtfully. She wasn’t just the diminutive figure she liked people to think she was. “What did you think of Daisy Bentham?”
“She was a jumped-up little madam.”
Keya stepped back, surprised by the bitterness in Dora’s voice. But she waited for Dora to expand.
“Moving into Mill House and announcing her grand plans to the whole village. Redecorating and updating, she called it,” spat Dora. “And that wonderful garden.”
“Do you know it?” asked Keya.
“Know it? I designed it. I lived there for fifty years.”
“But I thought the old mill manager lived there?” Keya queried in an uncertain tone.
“He did. He was my father, Sir Anthony’s younger brother, and we lived at Mill House as a family. My mother died young, and I looked after Daddy until he became too ill to work. And then Sir Anthony threw us out and installed Dorothy’s son as the new manager.”
“Dorothy?” Keya was confused.
“Yes, Dorothy Watson. She’s Sir Anthony and my father’s younger sister.”
“So you are Sir Anthony’s niece?”
“Yes, but so what?” Dora asked defensively.
“Nothing. I’m just trying to understand where everyone fits in. And your father?”
“Dead. Less than a year after we moved out of Mill House.”
“But you still live in the village?”
“Yes, number five, Barley Row. And that’s another thing. Daisy should never have upped and left like that, leaving her poor, dreamy sister to cope with their father. Dennis Bentham is a brute. I can’t blame Doreen for leaving him.”
Constable Sparrow appeared carrying three blue plastic posts and a roll of tape. As he reached the crime scene cordon, he bent down to duck under it and dropped everything.
“Stay there, Constable,” Keya called. “I’ll help you in a minute.” She turned back to Dora, but the slight figure had already left the stone circle and was hurrying towards the edge of the coppice. She deftly ducked under the crime scene tape and disappeared amongst the trees.
But at least Keya knew where she lived.
Keya and Constable Sparrow spent the next hour at the standing stones. They reinforced the police cordon with the extra plastic poles and lengths of blue and white tape. They then searched the scene. First inside the stone circle, although Dora had efficiently tidied most of the rubbish away, and then outside it.
“Eugh,” Constable Sparrow exclaimed as he found something unsavoury in the perimeter wood.
Keya was examining the ribbons, bells and pieces of writing attached to the branches of an oak tree which stood on the edge of the wood nearest the standing stones.
Hanging from a green ribbon, there was a card with the image of an oak tree at sunrise and below it the words for a summer solstice blessing. It looked like something Aurora might sell in her shop.
Keya no longer felt a chill when she re-entered the stone circle. Perhaps she’d imagined it before. After all she’d been only too quick to point out to Ryan that there were no such thing as ancient mystical forces. But then?
A lone blackbird sang in the low branches of a tree, and she felt at peace.
Looking around, she said to Constable Sparrow, “There’s nothing more for us here.”
She didn’t know why, but she was certain that the answer to Daisy’s death did not lie at the Standing Stones.
Something stopped her before she stepped out of the stone circle and she knew, with absolute certainty, that Daisy had not died from natural causes.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Keya felt a little disconcerted after she left the standing stones and drove Constable Sparrow down to Lower Rollright.
