The Anchoress of Shere

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It seemed at first mere eccentricity, as with all such things in England. Soon it became a murderous obsession that would span more than six hundred years, and inflict on its victims a terrible fate.

The key to understanding the tragedy was an innocent visit to the village of Shere in the summer of 1967. The season was warm and gentle. The rains had caressed the Surrey woodlands, where the ash, oak and cherry flaunted their freedom in the fertile hollows.

Marda Stewart stopped and impulsively plucked a stalk of honeysuckle, savouring its fragrance before tucking it behind her ear, perhaps because wearing flowers in your hair was considered fashionable. After an eight-mile hike she realised she was thirsty-until then she had been much too engrossed in her thoughts to consider food or drink. The energetic young woman marched along the last leg of the footpath etched in the sandstone escarpment, heading towards a seventeenth-century free house. She stood a little self-consciously in the bar, quickly drank a glass of white wine, and left the pub. Marda had not noticed, sitting in a corner seat, a powerfully built man, in his late forties, who had scrutinised her every movement.

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