CAROLINE DURWARD’S home, New Hall, the venue for the evening’s party, was the other side of the village of St Botolphe to the south east of Elmhurst. Rafferty had done a recce which had revealed the presence of a security camera mounted on the high metal gates. To avoid being recorded while in his alter-ego, he held a large handkerchief to his face and blew his nose.
The gates opened as they approached and a woman – whom Rafferty deduced, from the overalls and rubber gloves perched on the top of her basket, must be the cleaner – rode through on her bike. The taxi driver didn’t wait for instructions but drove through.
New Hall’s original structure – plain, basic, but sizeable – had stood foursquare to the elements for two-hundred-and-fifty years before its Victorian owner had added wings
