The Locked Room (Ruth Galloway #14)(34)

‘Thanks so much,’ says Ruth.

‘No problem. I’m at a bit of a loose end. There’s no teaching work and all the tourist attractions have closed. And, to cap it all, I’m having to move house.’

‘Are you?’ says Ruth. ‘That sounds very stressful.’

‘My lease is up,’ says Janet. ‘And my landlord is being rather intransigent. But I’m sure I’ll find somewhere.’

Ruth thinks that her friend is being very resilient. She’d hate to move house in the middle of a pandemic. It makes her feel very grateful for her four walls, whatever mysteries they are hiding.

Before she rings off, she tells Janet about the Grey Lady email.

‘“Beware the Grey Lady”,’ says Janet. ‘Who could have sent that?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Ruth. ‘It gave me a bit of a jolt, remembering the story you told me. The bricked-up house and the girl eating her parents’ flesh. All that.’ She shivers although the garden is sunny and the birds are singing from the apple tree.

‘Don’t worry, Ruth,’ says Janet. ‘The Grey Lady can’t hurt you.’



When Kate has finished her lesson, they go out for a brisk walk across the Saltmarsh. Kate is in a better mood today and happily gathers ‘interesting grasses’ to go in her Nature Book. It reminds Ruth of collecting samphire with Peter. Maybe she should contact him again? They always got on well and it’s time that Ruth stopped waiting for Nelson, consciously or not.

Back at the house, Kate embarks on some homework set by Mrs Obuya. Ruth opens her laptop to see the photograph sent by Janet. She has opened a new folder on her computer and has also allocated a yellow file marked ‘House’ which contains the original photograph plus several printed-out pages. Ruth is a born academic; nothing is real until it has a file.

Janet’s photograph shows the cottages, brick-fronted, with a horse-drawn cart in front. The sign on the cart says ‘Adnam’s Beer’ and this was clearly the focus of the picture. Ruth knows that the local ale – a favourite with her ex-partner Frank – was first brewed in the 1870s. Why was the dray standing outside her cottage? Were the owners big drinkers? Ruth prints out the picture and puts it next to her mother’s photograph, the pink houses, the boxy car. Peering closely she can see a name plaque on the middle house. Does it say ‘The Cabin’? She can’t be sure. The plaque isn’t there in the nineteenth-century photo. Who gave the house its cosy but slightly sinister name?

Ruth has discovered that the three houses on New Road were built in 1860 and were described, in the county records, as ‘farmworkers’ cottages’. Ruth purchased her house in 1998 from the estate of the late Alfred Barton. The 1939 census shows that the house was occupied by Alf Barton, described as ‘labourer’, his wife Dorothy ‘seamstress’ and two children – John, 16, and Matthew, 14. John and Matthew would be in their nineties if they were alive now. Ruth doesn’t discount this; people in Norfolk seem to live for ever. It’s also possible, of course, that one or both sons died in the war. The thought makes her sad. She senses a definite fellow feeling with the family who once lived in this tiny house. The question is, did Ruth’s mother also have a link with them? And, if so, what was it?

Who would have been living in the house in 1963? Alf, judging by the title deeds, but who else? Ruth logs into the archives of the local newspaper, as Janet had suggested. She puts her address into the search box and, immediately, an article from 1970 pops up.

Big-hearted Foster Mum Dies

Tributes have been paid to Dot Barton, of 2 New Road, Saltmarsh, who died of cancer at the age of 68. As well as being mother to two sons, John and Matthew, and grandmother of three, Dot also fostered more than a hundred children. ‘Our door was always open,’ says Dot’s husband, Alf (70). ‘Dot was so kind,’ says Alma McLaughlin (24), who was fostered as a teenager. ‘She really made a difference to my life.’ Dot’s funeral will be held at St Peter’s Church, Gaywood, on Wednesday 17th June.



Hundreds of children? Ruth realises that this is over a period of at least thirty years but she suddenly has a vision of small figures swarming over the tiny house, like an illustration from The Old Woman Who Lived in A Shoe.

‘Mum!’ says a commanding voice. Ruth turns to face her one and only child.

‘Yes, darling,’ she says, trying to channel the caring spirit of Dot Barton.

‘I’m bored,’ says Kate. ‘Can I watch TV?’



Judy is also working from home. It’s been decided that only a skeleton staff will remain at the police station. The boss goes in every day, of course, and the rest of the team will take it in turns. Today Tony is sitting alone in the shared area, deprived of any outlet for his relentless sociability. Nelson will be closeted in his office – doing God knows what – and Leah will be bringing him cups of coffee and answering the printer’s querulous demands for fresh paper. Judy has set up a workstation in her bedroom. It’s not ideal because the rooms in the cottage are small and hers and Cathbad’s is almost completely taken up by their antique brass double bed. Judy has managed to fit in a small table and chair, but she is now wedged beside the window and her Zoom background shows only a flowered curtain and a portrait of Thing, painted by Miranda, stuck on the yellow wall. It doesn’t exactly say ‘modern police professional’. But Cathbad has commandeered the kitchen for home-schooling and the spare room is now full of Maddie and her myriad possessions.