Fox and McGuiness crouched over the lamp. Presently it flared. The area became explicit in a white glare. The sergeant spent some time regulating the flame. Fox stood up and his gigantic shadow rose against the trees. The lamp hissed. Fox lifted it and put it by the grave. They waited to make sure it was in good order.

“Right,” said Alleyn at last. “Give us eight minutes to get down, Fox, and then start. Don’t look into the light, Sergeant, it’ll blind you. Come on.”

The shadow of the church was intensified by the light beyond it and the steps took longer to descend than to climb. When they were back at the car Alleyn murmured: “Now, I’ll show you the lay-by. It’s in the hedge across the lane and a little to our right. About four yards further on there’s a gap at the top of the bank with a hurdle-gate. You can ease round the post, go through into the field and turn back to the lay-by. If by any chance somebody comes down the lane and gets nosey we’re looking for a missing child thought to be asleep near the hedge. Here we are. Make sure you’ll recognize it from the other side. There’s that hazel plant sticking up above the level of the hedge.”

They moved along the hedge until they came to the gap.

“Through you go,” Alleyn whispered, “turn left and then back six paces. You’ll have to crawl in, helmet and all. Give one low whistle when you’re set and I’ll go on into Stile Lane. That’s when your obbo begins.”

He watched the shadowy sergeant climb the bank and edge his bulk between the gate-post and the hedge. Then he turned about and looked up at the church. It was transformed. A nimbus of light rose behind it. Treetops beyond the Passcoigne plot started up, uncannily defined, like stage scenery and as he watched, a gargantuan shadow rose, moved enormously over the trees, threw up arms, and the sweeping image of a shovel, sank and rose again. Mr. Fox had embarked on his pantomime.

The sergeant was taking his time. No whistle. The silence, of a countryside, breathed out its nocturnal preoccupations: stirrings in the hedgerow, far-distant traffic, the movements of small creatures going about their business in the night

“Sst!”

It was the sergeant, back in the gap up the hill. His helmet showed against Mrs. Black’s lighted window in Stile Lane. Alleyn climbed the bank and leant over the hurdle.

“Artie is there,” breathed Sergeant McGuiness. “In his bidey-hole. Curled up. My Gawd, I nearly crawled in on top of him.”

“Asleep?”

“Sound.”

“It doesn’t matter. Come back into the lane and lean into the hollow in the bank below the lay-by. Your head will be pretty much on a level with his. I simply want to check that he could, have seen what he said he saw and heard. Back you come.”

The sergeant had gone. Alleyn slipped into the lane and walked up it, treading on the soft margin. Fox’s shadow still performed its gigantic ritual against the tree-tops.

Alleyn turned left into Stile Lane and walked a little way up it. He was now quite close to Mrs. Black’s cottage. The light behind the window was out. He waited for a moment or two and then retraced his steps, walking, now, in the middle of the road. He wondered if Claude Carter had worn his crepe-soled shoes last night. He wondered, supposing Daft Artie woke and saw him, if he would repeat his eldritch shriek.

Now he was almost opposite the lay-by. Not a hint of the sergeant, in blackest shadow under the hedge.

Alleyn paused.

It was as if an ironclad fist struck him on the jaw.

iii

He lay in the lane and felt grit against his face and pain and he heard a confusion of sounds. Disembodied voices shouted angrily.

“Mr. Fox! Come down here. Mr. Fox.”

He had been lifted and rested against a massive thigh. “I’m all right,” somebody said. He said it. “Where’s Fox? What happened?”

“The bloody kid. He chucked a brick at you. Over my head. Gawd, I thought he’d done you, Mr. Alleyn,” said Sergeant McGuiness.

“Where’s Fox?”

“Here,” said Fox. His large concerned face blotted out the stars. He was breathing hard. “Here I am,” he said. “You’ll be all right.”

A furious voice was roaring somewhere out on the hillside beyond the hedge. “Come back. You damned, bloody young murderer. Come back, till I have the hide off of you.” Footsteps thudded and retreated.

“That’s Bruce,” said Alleyn, feeling his jaw. “Where did he spring from? The cottage?”

“That’s right,” somebody said.

Fox was saying: “Get cracking, Sarge. Sort it out. I’ll look after this!”

More retreating footsteps at toe run.

“Here, get me up. What hit me?”

“Take it easy, Mr. Alleyn. Let me have a look. Caught you on the jaw. Might have broken it.”

“You’re telling me. What did?” He struggled to his knees and then with Fox’s help to his feet. “Damn and blast!” he said. “Let me get to that bank while my head clears. What hit me?”

“Half a brick. The boy must have woken up. Bruce and the sarge are chasing him.”

Fox had propped him against the bank and was playing a torch on his face and dabbing it very gently with his handkerchief. “It’s bleeding,” he said.

“Never mind that. Tell me what happened.”

“It seems that when you got as far as here — almost in touching distance of the sarge — the boy must have woken up, seen you, dark and all though it is, picked up a half-brick from his fireplace and heaved it. It must have passed over the sarge’s head. Then he lit off.”

“But, Bruce?”

“Yes. Bruce. Bruce noticed the light in the graveyard and thought it might be vandals. There’s been trouble with them lately. Anyway, he came roaring down the hill and saw the boy in the act. How’s it feel now?”

“Damn’ sore but I don’t think it’s broken. And the sergeant’s chasing Daft Artie?”

“Him and Bruce.”

“No good making a song and dance over it: the boy’s not responsible.”

“It’s my bet they won’t catch him. For a start, they can’t see where they’re going.”

“I wonder where his home is,” said Alleyn.

“Bruce’ll know. It must,” said Fox, still examining Alleyn’s jaw, “have caught you on the flat. There’s a raw patch but no cut. We’ll have to get you to a doctor.”

“No, we won’t,” Alleyn mumbled. “I’ll do all right. Fox, how much could he see from the lay-by? Enough to recognize me? Go and stand where I was, will you?”

“Are you sure—?”

“Yes. Go on.”

Fox moved away. The light still glowed beyond the church. It was refracted faintly into the centre of the lane. Fox was an identifiable figure. Just.

Alleyn said: “So we know Artie could have recognized Carter and I suppose, me. Damnation, look at this.”

A window in the parsonage on the far side of the green shone out. Somebody opened it and was revealed as a silhouette. “Hullo!” said a cultivated voice. “Is anything the mattah?”

The Vicar.

“Nothing at all,” Alleyn managed. “A bit of skylarking in the lane. Some young chaps. We’ve sorted it out.”

“Is that the police?” asked the Vicar plaintively.

“That’s us,” Fox shouted. “Sorry you’ve been disturbed, sir.”

“Nevah mind. Is there something going on behind the church? What’s that light?”

“We’re just making sure there’s been no vandalism,” Alleyn improvised. It hurt abominably to raise his voice. “Everything’s in order.”

By this time several more windows along the lane had been opened.

“It’s quite all right, sir,” Fox said. “No trouble. A bunch of young chaps with too much on board.”

“Get that bloody light out,” Alleyn muttered.

Fox, using his own torch, crossed the lane. The lych-gate shrieked. He hurried up the steps and round the church.

“You don’t think perhaps I should just pop down?” the Vicar asked doubtfully, after a considerable pause.

“Not the slightest need. It’s all over,” Alleyn assured him. “They’ve bolted.”