‘It is, really. But Corpse Cottage is the name the locals use. The vicarage is the only house that overlooks it, so that’s why I called there straight off. But like I say, the Vicar was out.’
Turning to Digweed, Wield said, ‘If the hat was put there as a bit of fun, sir, can you think of anyone who might enjoy that kind of joke?’
Digweed said, ‘Children perhaps. Or the childlike mind. Tricks with policemen’s helmets were, I recall, a favourite pastime of The Drones’ Club.’
Wield, who had watched Jeeves on the telly, said, ‘Get a lot of Bertie Woosters in Enscombe, do you, sir?’
Digweed nodded a patronizing acknowledgement and said, ‘I suppose Guy Guillemard comes closest.’
‘Guy?’ said Wield, his memory jogged. ‘The one your neighbour wouldn’t serve yesterday? Who is he exactly?’
‘Exactly, he is Squire Selwyn’s great-nephew and, alas, heir, despite the superior claims of his granddaughter.’
‘So why doesn’t she inherit?’
‘Because,’ said Digweed. ‘Salic Law is one of the mediaeval practices still very popular in the upper reaches of Yorkshire society.’
Wield turned back to the front and his file. If the old sod expected him to ask what Salic Law was, he was going to be disappointed.
They were only a couple of miles outside Enscombe now on the narrow winding road Wield remembered from the day before, bounded by an ancient drystone wall on one side and a hedgerow not much younger on the other.
A Post Office van came up behind them, tailgated them for a while, then on the first not very long straight gave a warning peep on the horn and shot past.
‘Bit chancy,’ said Wield.
‘He’s late for the lunch-time pick-up,’ said Filmer. ‘Always late, is Ernie Paget. Except when he’s early ’cos he doesn’t want to be late somewhere else.’
‘At least he does move at speed when he has to,’ observed Digweed irritably. ‘Do we have to dawdle so? I have work to do even if you don’t!’
‘More haste less speed,’ observed Wield, which was not very original but proved almost immediately accurate. The red van had vanished round the next bend. Suddenly they heard a screech of brakes, a chorus of baa-ing, and a loud bang!
‘Holy Mother!’ exclaimed Filmer, hitting the brake hard.
They went round the bend in a fairly controlled skid, coming to a halt aslant the road with a jerk that threw Wield and Filmer against each other and flung Digweed forward with his arms wrapped round the front-seat head restraints.
The van hadn’t been so fortunate. It was halfway through the hedge, straddling a narrow but deep drainage ditch, with steam jetting up from beneath the buckled bonnet.
Ahead, the road was packed with sheep milling around in panic. A man was ploughing through them bellowing what sounded like abuse but turned out to be commands to a pair of Border collies.
‘You both OK?’ said Wield. Filmer grunted laconically but Digweed was no Spartan in either suffering or speech.
‘OK? Not content with depriving me of two hours of peaceful and profitable existence, you finally attempt to rob me of existence itself, and you ask if I am OK?’
He paused rhetorically, his face flushed with a rage which made him look a lot healtheir than his usual scholarly pallor. He was, Wield decided, OK.
‘Let’s take a look at Ernie,’ said Filmer.
At this moment the door of the van opened and the driver staggered out. His face was covered in blood and he let out a terrible cry and slumped sideways as his feet touched the ground.
Fearing the worst, Wield got out and hurried forward.
‘Don’t move,’ he cried, recalling his emergency medical training.
The mask of blood turned towards him.
‘Don’t move? I’ve smashed me fucking van and broken me fucking nose and now I’m up to me hocks in freezing fucking water and you tell me don’t move? Who the hell are you? Jeremy fucking Beadle? Gi’s a hand out of here, it’s sucking me down.’
The farmer had arrived too. He was a man of medium height with a breadth of chest and shoulder which seemed to have bowed his legs. He had a shepherd’s crook in his right hand, its handle carved from a ram’s horn into a beautifully detailed hawk’s head. He proffered this to the postman and hauled him on to the road.
‘You’ve knackered that hedge, Ernie Paget,’ he said. ‘Who’s going to fettle it, that’s what I want to know.’
‘Sod your hedge. I were lucky it weren’t your wall.’
‘Nay,’ said the farmer. ‘You’d likely have bounced off the wall. By gum, you’re quick off the mark for once in your life, Terry Filmer. Last time I called police, they were an age coming. You going to arrest him for speeding?’
‘You by yourself, George?’ said Filmer. ‘You know the law when you’ve got stock on the highway. One man up front, one behind.’
‘Oh aye? Happen I’m a bit short-handed today. Like you lot, I hear!’
Wield noted the sarcasm, but was too busy checking Paget to try to follow it up. He couldn’t find any damage apart from the nose and some bruised ribs, but it would take a proper hospital examination to check if there was anything broken.
‘Let’s get him into the car,’ he said to Filmer, ‘and you can call up some help.’
‘Hang about. I’ll just sort these sheep, then you can come up to the house for a mug of tea,’ said the farmer.
He turned and began to bellow instructions again, rather unnecessarily it seemed to Wield, as the dogs had been quite happily turning the flock through an open gate into the field beyond the wall. There was a cold wind blowing down the valley and Wield shivered. The farmer seemed unaffected even though he was wearing only a short-sleeved tartan shirt and his close-cropped head was hatless. Wind and weather had cured his skin to the consistency of leather. His trousers, which were tied round his waist with baling twine and looked as if they could walk by themselves, were tucked into a pair of odd wellies, the left black, the right green.
‘I’m not going to hang around here any longer,’ declared Digweed, who had preserved an unnatural silence for the past couple of minutes. ‘I can be comfortable in my own house long before you get this lot sorted out.’
‘Do us a favour, Mr Digweed,’ said the postman as Filmer helped him to the police car. ‘Tell Mr Wylmot at the Post Office that I’ve been held up.’
‘Certainly,’ said Digweed. ‘I hope you’ll be all right, Mr Paget.’
Wield felt, though he did not show, surprise at this faint glimmer of human feeling. He said, ‘Hold on, Mr Digweed, and I’ll walk into the village with you.’
He
