On the train the next day, she rings me. "Was your man an Authorship Conspiracist?"

"What?"

"A Shakespeare Authorship Conspiracist? I wondered, after seeing the list of his books you'd made." Claire sounds amused but patient. "There's a small but vocal group of people, often at the fringes of academia, who argue that Shakespeare the man couldn't have been Shakespeare the playwright because he was too thick or too provincial or whatever. That someone else wrote his output. The leading contenders are Francis Bacon and Christopher Marlowe, followed closely by the Earl of Oxford and a few other noble Elizabethan notables. Southampton, I think? People like that."

Claire gets some strange ideas sometimes. "I don't know."

"OK. Just a thought. It's all bollocks, anyway – some of the conspiracy claims are outlandish." There's the noise of the shop in the background. "Got to run. Have fun in the frozen North. See you soon."

At that point, I decide to lodge Claire's remark as significant. If she's thought about it, rung me up about it, and then called it into question, there is – usually – something behind her innocent-sounding line of enquiry.

*

Nat meets me at Hexham station. She's a short, powerful woman in her early thirties, rocking a smart, short haircut and a well-cut trouser suit. I feel scruffy in my usual jeans, blouse and jacket, and my gaydar pings as soon as I see her. I'm glad I turned down her offer of a bed in her spare room, and booked into a local pub.

She sizes me up as she shakes my hand. "Beth, pet. Good to see you. We don't get things like this much up here, the whole office is alight."

"It's not normal for us either, to be fair." I take my hand out of hers, with more reluctance than I should. Claire and her conspiracy intervention are at the back of my mind. "Have you got a list of your victim's reading interests?"

"Lots of Shakespeare, as you said, and his times. Lots on this Christopher Marlowe, too."

I feel a prickle up my spine. Our victim had lots on Bacon. For some reason, Dr Britten's amused but serious smile comes back to me. Unlikely as it might seem, I wonder if Nat's and my murders might actually be related. Apparently Nat's victim had also been a college lecturer, and something of a local historian: divorced, early fifties, quiet-living if a little prickly, no record and no known cause for having a mortal enemy. We toss some half-baked theories around while Nat drives me out to the village where the woman lived, for a quick once-over of her cottage.

After that, it's a hour or two at the station comparing notes properly, then Nat drops me at the pub where I'm staying. "Give us an hour or so to nip home and let the cat out. I'll come and fetch you for a pint and a bite, eh?"