The Killings at Barley Hall (Constable 1995)
PC Clark knew that the man was dead, even before he noticed the red marks on the palm of the left hand; pressure marks, perhaps , as though the hand had been clutching something firmly and it had dug into the skin.
The murder victim was George Fellowes, a young archaeologist working on the site of Barley Hall, the medieval mansion under reconstruction in the centre of the ancient city of York.
Was he pushed from the scaffolding by a violent colleague? And what was the significance of the marks on the dead man's hand?
The emergence of a hidden reliquary of immense value and the discovery of a previous murder at the great Hall in the time of Richard III became the salient factors in a murder hunt which was to reveal undisclosed depths of greed and betrayal spanning centuries.
Blending, with superb assurance a knowledge and sense of history with a storytellers command of a modern CID investigation, Barbara Whitehead has given her many admirers a fifth classic whodunit in her York Cycle of Mysteries.