An Air That Kills by Andrew Taylor

piece of newspaper is rather fragile.’ He opened one of the envelopes and shook out the yellowed triangle of newspaper with surprising gentleness into the palm of his hand. ‘Perhaps we might put it on something.’
    Philip got up to fetch a book. Jill noticed he’d already covered nearly a page of his pad with neat shorthand hieroglyphics. Thornhill took the book with a muttered word of thanks and transferred the piece of newspaper on to it. He passed it to Charlotte, who examined it for a moment.
    â€˜Well, judging by the advertisement it’s obviously a local paper, as I am sure you realised. James Gwynne – now let me see – probably the grandfather, or perhaps the great uncle, of John Gwynne.’ She looked at Philip whose head was still bent over his pad. ‘They were before your time – they used to keep the draper’s shop at the bottom of Lyd Street. They moved to Cardiff just before the war.’
    â€˜Do you think it’s from the Gazette ?’ Thornhill asked.
    â€˜It certainly looks like our typeface and layout. I suppose it might be the Post – but I doubt it. They’ve not been going for more than fifty years, and this looks older.’ She looked up. ‘May I turn it over?’
    Thornhill nodded. ‘But please be careful.’
    Charlotte slid the scrap of newspaper off the book, turned it over and replaced it. ‘Now I think that Sunday School was closed down before the war – the First War, I mean. Before my time, of course, but I remember hearing my aunts talking about it. There was some problem with the last superintendent. It was all rather hushed up.’
    Jill thought briefly of some of the possibilities: embezzling the collection, perhaps, interfering with choirboys or displaying Romish tendencies – or even fathering unwanted babies on members of the congregation.
    â€˜What about the Rose in Hand? Can you tell me anything about that?’
    â€˜Well, of course, parts of the cellars may go back to the Middle Ages. The Knights Templar owned the—’
    â€˜I was thinking of more recent history. Perhaps the last hundred years.’
    â€˜How obtuse of me,’ Charlotte said with unconvincing humility. ‘You must be assuming that the newspaper and the bones belong to roughly the same period.’
    â€˜It seems the most likely possibility at present.’
    â€˜The place used to be a coaching inn. Quite a substantial establishment, I believe. But the coming of the railways put an end to all that. And they built the Railway Hotel, of course, which must have been a lot more convenient for travellers. Also, they opened a coal pit to the east of Templefields in the 1850s and I think that helped change its character.’
    Philip looked up. ‘My wife means that no one lived there who could afford to live elsewhere. Which is more or less the case today.’
    Thornhill nodded. ‘So – sixty or seventy years ago, Templefields would probably have been a working-class area? A bit of a slum, perhaps?’
    â€˜Oh, yes,’ Charlotte agreed. ‘I know the Rose in Hand had rather a bad reputation in my grandfather’s day. It attracted a lot of undesirable people. Indeed, as I’m sure you know, the area itself still does.’
    Jill thought that ‘attract’ was not the word she herself would have chosen. She said, ‘May I have a look at it, please?’
    Charlotte glanced at Thornhill, who nodded. Jill leant forward and Charlotte passed her the book on which the triangle of newspaper lay.
    â€˜Assuming that does come from the Gazette ,’ Thornhill went on, ‘would you be able to find it in your files? Then we could date at least the newspaper, if not the bones.’
    â€˜My husband will get one of our people to go through the backfile first thing tomorrow morning,’ Charlotte said. ‘Did you say you found something else?’
    Thornhill opened the second