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development, quite a significant development in fact.’
    ‘What sort of development?’ Farrent’s eyes narrowed.
    ‘A development as in the form of a discovery.’
    ‘Like someone with a metal detector? A hoard of coins has been found?’
    ‘No . . . nothing as lucrative, I am afraid. It is the discovery of human remains.’
    Thomas Farrent’s neatly chiselled jaw dropped. Blood drained from his face. His brow furrowed. ‘A body? Not ancient, otherwise the police would not be involved.’
    ‘No, two bodies in fact, at least two, and yes, recent enough for the police to be interested.’
    ‘In my field?’
    ‘Yes . . . though you don’t seem to be like a farmer . . .’
    ‘I am not. I own the land. I rent it to tenant farmers. They do all the work. I get paid the rent.’
    ‘Seems like a nice, comfortable way to make a living,’ Hennessey observed drily.
    ‘Possibly it is. But that’s how it should be.’
    ‘It is?’ Hennessey queried.
    ‘Yes . . . it is,’ Farrent sneered. ‘In this case it is. The land has been owned by our family, the Farrents, since the English Civil War. It used to be in the possession of a Royalist family, but after the war the deed of ownership was acquired by my ancestor who was a Parliamentarian. The deed was bestowed upon him by Oliver Cromwell, no less.’
    ‘No less,’ Hennessey echoed. ‘can’t do much better than that.’
    ‘No, not much better,’ Farrent continued. ‘That was in 1651, and it was a fair and just reward for my ancestor for being a loyal lieutenant of the leader of the Parliamentary cause. He was a man by the name of William Farrent. The lands have been in this family, owned by this family, from that day to this.’
    ‘Lands?’ Hennessey questioned.
    ‘Well, once an area of land becomes large enough it can be referred to in the plural, and at one point our land or lands stretched from the west of York to the coast, all one huge parcel. Over time some have been lost, sold to pay debts, or compulsorily purchased to build airfields during the Second World War or to allow motorways to be built. But once it was possible for a man to walk from York to the coast and not have to step off land owned by the Farrents . . .’
    ‘But now you can only walk from York to Selby on Farrent-owned land?’ Hennessey said with a smile.
    Thomas Farrent glared at Hennessey and then continued, ‘Now it’s fragmented into a series of small parcels . . . and only about ten thousand acres remain all told, but once . . .’ Farrent sighed at the thought of losing so much land, ‘but once . . . ponder a rectangle of land, prime agricultural land, some fifty miles long from east to west and ten miles wide. That was the extent of the land conferred upon William Farrent in 1651. Say about one hundred and fifty thousand acres. So the present acreage of ten thousand is nothing to crow about. The tenant farmers pay a low rent, so the income is just sufficient to maintain this house and to provide a comfortable level of living, modest but comfortable.’
    ‘Well, as they say,’ Hennessey replied, ‘one man’s floor is another man’s ceiling.’
    ‘Meaning?’
    ‘Meaning it’s all relative,’ Hennessey explained. ‘There are folk who could not even dream about living in a lovely house like this.’ He glanced at Farrent’s bungalow which seemed expansive, both wide and deep.
    ‘I see what you mean,’ Farrent growled. ‘The original house was a manor house; it was about twenty miles from here, but my father had it demolished . . . it was crumbling. I remember it; I was five years old when it was demolished. We saved what we could . . . old swords, paintings . . . they’re in storage, and moved into this house . . . a bungalow, a bit of a come down from a seventeenth-century manor house. So, skeletons in my field?’
    ‘Yes,’ Hennessey replied. ‘I am afraid so.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘We don’t know yet, hence our calling on you,’ Hennessey explained, ‘to let you,