The Salisbury Manuscript

Hogg’s Corner

Several miles away, in Northwood House, Fawkes was awakened by a shuffling and snorting from the horses. Fawkes — the coachman and valet and factotum to Percy Slater — chose to sleep in a loft above the stables rather than in the cold and cavernous main house. His master made no objection. Percy Slater ran an odd establishment, or more accurately he didn’t run it at all but let it fall to slow ruin about his ears. Fawkes might sleep where he pleased as long as he was available when required to convey his master about the place and for other odd jobs. So Fawkes had fashioned for himself quite a cosy area at the gable end which was once used for storage. He had equipped it with a simple bed and a chair and a little table. He liked the way he could look down on the world, even if it was no more than the world of the stables. It gave him the same feeling of apartness as driving a coach. He liked the privacy of the stables, the absence of visitors, not that anyone visited the main house. He probably preferred the company of horses to people. Percy Slater had once told him that he was like Lemuel Gulliver in the story but Fawkes did not know what the man was talking about.

Now Fawkes heard stealthy movements from down below and was wide awake at once. It was that sound which had disturbed the horses. Fawkes was used to the stable noises, the sound of exhaled breath, the creak of the wooden stalls during the night. But this was a human being.

He took hold of an iron bar which lay beside the bed, kept there for just these eventualities. A ladder led up from ground level to rest against one of a pair of cross-beams that supported the planks or flooring of Fawkes’s quarters. There was no light in the stables but Fawkes’s eyes were used to the dark, and he could just make out the uprights of the ladder from where he lay on his bed, snugged against the end wall. He listened as a first, experimental foot was placed on the bottom rung, then a second foot on the second rung, and so on. The ladder creaked slightly.

Fawkes waited, lying on his back, his head turned sideways to watch the top of the ladder, his right hand gripping the iron bar. Fawkes was not frightened. He did not scare easily. The advantage lay with him, since he was awake and the intruder did not know he was awake. Besides, he had an idea who it might be. In due course, a cap and a head appeared at the top of the ladder.

‘Stop right there, mate,’ he said. ‘I can crack you over the nut before you get a foot higher in the world.’

‘Why’d you want to do that, Seth Fawkes?’ said the head. ‘I mean you no harm.’

‘I know you and your games.’

‘Well, I’m a-coming up now.’

The head grew to a pair of shoulders, then added arms, torso and legs. There was something monkey-like about the figure which now drew itself over the edge of Fawkes’s living quarters. Meantime, Fawkes had swung from his bed and was fiddling with an oil lamp. But he kept the iron bar within reach just as he kept an eye on the new arrival until he had got the lamp hissing and glowing.

‘How’d you get in here?’ he said.

‘Through the door. And, before that, over the wall, Seth.’

‘It’s a high wall,’ said Fawkes. He was so unused to being called by his first name, rather than the more customary Fawkes, that to hear it was as odd as being addressed by a stranger. Yet the man sharing his little eyrie in the stables was, regrettably, no stranger.

‘Leaped it, didn’t I,’ said the intruder, referring to the wall.

‘Regular spring-heeled Jack, aren’t you, Adam?’

‘Enough of the complimenting. It’s a bloody cold night out. Got anything warm to drink?’

Fawkes had a bottle of port, filched from his master. Reluctantly, he uncorked it and passed it to the other man. He watched as Adam swung himself round so that he was sitting with his legs dangling into space. He observed that Adam was wearing a kind of knapsack, which gave him a hunched appearance. The other man threw back his head and tilted the bottle to swallow, exposing his neck and his Adam’s apple. A single blow there would do it, thought Fawkes.

Adam put down the bottle. He wiped his mouth. He looked slyly at Fawkes as he handed back the bottle.

‘I can guess what you’re thinking,’ he said.

‘Guess away.’

‘One quick push and I’d topple off here, wouldn’t I?’

Almost right, thought Fawkes, though it was more of a blow than a push that he was considering.

‘Why would I want to do that?’ he said, aloud.

‘To pay me back for that little joke on Salisbury station,’ said Adam.

‘Joke? Oh, that little joke. You pushed me on to the line.’

‘You were not pushed but fell. Just toppled off the platform when you saw me coming.’

‘You speak as if you was out strolling. Saw you sneaking up rather.’

‘Anyway, there was no danger, no train coming. You got up and vanished. No harm done. Just my bit of mischief after a good day out.’

Fawkes recalled that recent day out. He’d come in by train from Downton to visit a certain padding-ken or low boarding house run by a Mrs Mitchell. Fawkes had an understanding with Mrs Mitchell which went back many years. After their session together he’d ended up in the pub called The Neat-Herd (but universally known as The Nethers). There he had encountered Adam, not for the first time. They’d drunk quite a bit before Fawkes had to leave for the Downton train. Adam had been in an especially sprightly mood and had accompanied Fawkes to the station, darting around in the black garb he favoured. He was like a devil on wheels. Fawkes thought he’d got rid of him finally but his shadow had played that last trick on him on the station platform, bursting out to surprise him like some silly kid. Fawkes had been pissed enough to topple on to the track but retained enough of his wits to scramble out of the way pretty damned quick.

‘You do like mischief and games, don’t you, Adam?’ said Fawkes now, squinting down his forefinger as if he were aiming a gun. ‘You always have liked a spot of mischief.’

‘Keeps me going,’ said the other happily.

There was an irritating bounce to Adam, as if he was never going to be troubled or put down by anything. Seth Fawkes knew that bounce only too well. He said, ‘What do you want here?’

‘Your master asleep?’

"Spect so. Most honest people are at this hour.’

‘Your master honest? Ha!’

‘Beware of your tongue.’

‘I know Mr Percy Slater and his honesty. Didn’t he commission me to do a little job of breaking and entering a man’s room in a hotel because he wanted to know what documents that man was carrying? Letters and such to do with the honest Slaters.’

‘You should thank me for that commission, Adam. It was me as put your name forward to my master, knowing he wanted a spot of dirty work done.’

‘Well, thank you, Seth Fawkes. I am forever obligated to you. That shows you don’t bear me any hard feelings for that bit of larking about at Salisbury station. Your mistress now, is she at Northwood House tonight?’

‘Mrs Slater is not here from one year’s end to another, as you know. She stays in London.’

‘What about the old woman?’

‘You mean Nan? You can say her name.’

‘Does she sleep tight?’

‘Don’t know, Adam. She don’t sleep here in the stables anyway.’

‘We won’t be disturbed then.’

‘Disturbed in what?’

‘We’re going on a little search,’ said Adam.

He shrugged the knapsack off his shoulders and unstrapped it. He drew some sheets of paper from it and began to study them.

‘Pardon me,’ said Fawkes. ‘You may be going searching, but I am staying here. For I have noticed that it is the middle of the night.’

‘Then we shan’t be seen.’

‘We won’t be able to see neither.’

‘We shall. The night is clear. No mist, no fog. There is a little moon to light our way.’

‘Whatever you want to do you can do by daylight.’

‘Too much risk. Besides, you know I like the dark. I work better then.’

‘I’m staying here,’ said Fawkes, but he spoke without conviction.

‘Pardon me but you are not staying here. I need your head. You know the way to Hogg’s Corner?’

‘It’s not a corner but a few oak trees behind the house. I don’t know why it’s called Hogg’s Corner.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ said the other. ‘That’s where we’re going.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve got a little scent that’s atickling my nostrils, a scent coming from Hogg’s Corner. You can bring that lamp with you.’

‘Don’t need a light. I know this place like the back of my hand.’

‘But I don’t after all this time,’ said Adam. ‘Besides I may want to do a spot of reading later. You got a spade in here?’

‘There’s a shovel for mucking out with,’ said Fawkes.

‘That’ll have to do. Get it as we go. And give me a swig from that bottle again. Have one yourself while you’re about it.’

Fawkes handed over the bottle of port, marvelling at the cheek of the man. Offering him to drink out of his own store! Once again, as Adam tilted back his head to swallow, he was tempted — very tempted — by the idea of striking him on the exposed throat. But he did nothing apart from take a draught from the bottle after Adam had returned it, in his own good time. Adam stuffed the papers back into the knapsack and slung it over his shoulder as a sign that he was ready. Then he shot out his arm and did something odd. He pressed his thumb into the great dimple on Fawkes’s chin.

‘There,’ he said, ‘been wanting to do that for a long time, brother.’

‘Keep your dirty hands to yourself,’ said Fawkes. ‘Don’t be so familiar.’

The two men clambered down the ladder to the ground floor of the stable and made their way past the stalls. The horses — there were only three of them since Percy Slater kept as reduced an establishment in here as he did elsewhere — moved uneasily at the presence of a stranger.

Fawkes found the shovel. He was quite glad to be holding something which might double as a weapon even if it was awkward carrying both shovel and lamp. He took care to walk behind Adam, holding up the lamp to throw some illumination ahead of them both. They entered the yard and Fawkes paused before unlatching the gate, wondering whether Adam had really come over the wall of the stable yard. They stepped out into the open.

‘What now?’ he said.

‘Kill that light,’ said Adam.

‘There’s no one to see,’ said Fawkes, though he’d earlier claimed not to need a light.

‘Even so.’

Fawkes obediently doused the light. They waited for a few moments until their eyes grew used to the dark. As Adam had said, the night was for once free of mist or fog. A quarter moon hung in the sky. The bulk of Northwood House was to one side, beyond the wall of the stable yard.

‘Lead the way, my friend,’ said Adam. ‘Take us to Hogg’s Corner.’

This was what usually happened when Fawkes was in company with Adam. He disliked and sometimes feared the other, but he tended to comply with his suggestions or orders.

They rounded the house and skirted the terrace and the planted beds which extended beyond it. The area was as neglected as the rest of the estate. Weeds sprouted between the flagstones of the terrace and the flower beds were barren or bedraggled. Fawkes looked back at the house. No lights in any of the windows but then there were rarely lights in Northwood House.

There had once been a clear division between the cultivated area and the parkland beyond the terrace and flower beds and lawn, marked by a ha-ha as the land dropped away. But the grass had grown up on both sides and the stone of the hidden retaining wall had been allowed to crumble, so the division was no longer clear even by day-light. All that was left was an abrupt drop between the two levels.

Fawkes knew it was coming and he knew that the drop wasn’t much more than four feet or so. Placing shovel and light on the edge, he leaped off into the dark. He half hoped Adam might leap after him and sprain his ankle or worse. Adam did jump but he was so light and limber that he seemed to bounce back up as he hit the ground, like a jack-in-the-box.

‘See there,’ said Fawkes, once he’d retrieved the shovel and the lamp. He was pointing ahead of him. ‘Those trees there, that’s Hogg’s Corner.’

The two men set off across the rough ground in the direction of a cluster of trees which stood in isolation on a kind of knoll about two hundred yards away. The little hillock stuck up oddly, as if a great head adorned with a few wild tufts had abruptly thrust itself up through the ground. An owl hooted. The men’s breath frosted in the air. The grass underfoot was so thick and tussocky that they were almost wading through it. The moon gave off a feeble glow. As they approached the oaks the ground began to rise slightly. It was obvious that the trees were old from their outlines alone. The trunks were thick and the branches twisted like ropes. The trees were grouped in a rough circle on the fringes of the knoll but it was so ragged and incomplete that it did not seem as though they been planted deliberately in that way. There was a cleared space in the middle like a bald patch.

As Fawkes and Adam moved under the low-lying branches, their feet crunched on the nuts and mast strewn on the ground. Adam halted in the centre of the approximate circle.

‘Now light the lamp again,’ he instructed his companion.

When Fawkes had done as he was told, Adam crouched down and loosened the knapsack from his back. By the light from the lamp, he examined a sheet of paper which he drew from the bag and laid flat on the ground. He stabbed his finger at a point on the sheet. Fawkes stood behind him, holding the shovel. He might have brought it down on the other’s head. But he didn’t. Instead he followed the next lot of instructions.

There was a reason why Seth Fawkes did nothing to Adam, despite the provocation and the opportunities. There was a reason he did not strike him across his exposed throat or whack him over the head with a spade. It was because the two men were brothers and because the fraternal bond still held, frayed as it was. Seth Fawkes was the older by a little more than a year. Until recently, they had not seen each other since childhood. Both had been born to a couple who worked on the Northwood estate in old George Slater’s time. They came from a large family in which all the children were given Old Testament names. Discipline was strong but there was also some attempt at education by the mother. The children had been taught to read and write, in a rudimentary fashion. Despite the mother’s care, though, Seth and Adam were the only survivors.

In fact, Fawkes had long believed his brother Adam to be as dead as the rest of his siblings. Adam had got into frequent scrapes as a youngster, then the scrapes turned to petty crime. He drifted to the city of Salisbury, become involved with the law when acting as a ‘crow’ or lookout for robberies and, before long, disappeared into the smoke and anonymity of London. After a few years with no word or sign, Seth Fawkes assumed that his brother was dead or in gaol or transported. If he ever thought about it — which he didn’t much — then he was relieved rather than sorry. He’d always regarded himself as the respectable one, growing up on the Northwood estate when George Slater lived there with his various wives and continuing to work there even as the place decayed further under Slater’s son. Eventually there were only the two of them left, him and Nan (and Percy Slater of course), to occupy a great echoy house.

So you could have knocked Seth Fawkes down with a feather when, one evening in The Nethers scarcely a year before, he noticed a weathered individual eyeing him. The moment Seth caught his glance, the other moved towards him though he was plainly sitting and drinking and minding his own business in a corner. Seth wasn’t a great one for company but he did enjoy a jar or two after he’d been to visit Mrs Mitchell. He liked to wet his whistle and sink himself in memories of Mrs Mitchell’s frowsty bed before it was time to return to Northwood House and the stables.

‘Mind if I join you?’ said the weather-beaten man with a crooked grin.

Seth Fawkes looked round. The place was full of laughter and smoke. There were other empty seats and benches. He shrugged, although when the other sat next to him on the bench Fawkes instinctively shifted a few inches away. He would have moved further but he was wedged into a corner.

‘You don’t know me, do you?’ said the man, placing his pint carefully on the table before tapping his fingers on the battered surface.

‘No.’

‘I know you though. . Seth.’

Fawkes looked at the other man properly. ‘Mr Fawkes to you,’ he said. His companion wore an expression that wasn’t so much cheerful as filled with glee. He said, ‘It’s like a birthmark on you, that hole. Can’t get rid of it this side of the grave.’

Automatically, Seth Fawkes’s hand flew to his shaven chin, to the great dimple that sat in the centre of it.

‘Mind you, you could grow a beard to disguise it,’ said the other. ‘I have found that small things are the best disguise, Seth. Even a change of name can work a trick. Spectacles now, they’re good. When people look at a face, see, they notice the spectacles but they don’t take notice of what lies beneath ’em. Or you can change the colour of the hair with a dye. I recommend a touch of rastik, comes from the East and gives a reddish tinge to the hair. Women of a certain sort use it but I always say why should we be denied the benefits available to the fairer sex, eh? Then, afterwards, you wash it out, see — ’

‘Why are you talking to me?’ said Fawkes. But there was a sinking in his guts even as he said the words.

‘I haven’t finished yet, Mr Fawkes. Let me finish and the answer to your question will be clear. And you might learn something useful. The point of using this dye on your bonce, this rastik, is that people remember reddish hair just like they remember spectacles. And that will be how you’re described afterwards if there’ve been any witnesses, described as ‘a fellow with red hair’, see. By that time naturally you’ll have washed all the red out and, well, nobody is going to know you from Adam. From Adam, I say. Do you know who I am yet, Seth?’

As if to reinforce what he’d just said about dyes, the man took off his cap and ran his hand through his short, sandy-coloured hair.

‘Jesus,’ said Fawkes. ‘It can’t be.’

‘You’re right there, mate. It’s not Jesus.’

‘You bugger,’ said Fawkes.

‘Closer,’ said the weather-beaten man, replacing his cap. ‘I’ve been called worse in our own tongue and in many other tongues besides.’

‘Adam, it’s you,’ said Fawkes. ‘Jesus.’

The man called Adam made to stretch out his hand towards Seth’s face. He seemed to want to touch the dimple in his bare chin, the mark by which he’d been able to identify him, although it was more of a mocking gesture than an affectionate one. But Seth jerked his head away and rammed himself further into the corner.

‘Aren’t you pleased to see your long-lost brother, Mr Fawkes?’

‘I’d rather you’d stayed lost.’

‘Well, there I cannot oblige you. Fact is, I have decided after a lifetime of wandering round this great globe of ours to return to the land of my birth, to the very town where I first saw the light of day.’

‘How can I be sure you’re who you say you are?’ said Fawkes. He knew the truth well enough but was desperate to pick holes in it.

‘Oh-ho, like the Claimant, is it? You think I mightn’t be who I say I am?’

‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Fawkes. He had an inkling, though. Like the rest of England he had heard of the Tichborne Claimant but he did not read the papers and was not interested in long-running law cases.

‘This geezer who everyone thought went down with his ship off South America somewhere but, lo and behold, he turns up in England after many years trying to claim a fortune. Lord, Seth, I have been away many years and I’m better informed than you are. But if you want to be certain I am Adam, then let me tell you this. . and this. . ’

And he went on to reel out a string of family details about their dead parents and their dead siblings (Abel and Shem and Abigail and so on) — details of which any trace or memory, apart from with these two, had long since dropped off the face of the earth. Seth Fawkes admitted defeat. He took a long draught from his pint and, sighing, screwed himself further into his corner. Adam grew more cheerful or gleeful and went off to get their pots refilled.

When he came back, Seth said, ‘What do you want here, Adam Fawkes?’

‘I admit to Adam but not to Fawkes, no, it’s. . something else instead. I have enjoyed a variety of surnames. Let me see. I have been called Farmer in Australia and Quarles in Canada and Leigh-Smith in the United States and other things in other places. But I’ve always kept the name of Adam through thick and thin, ’cept once when I passed as a woman. Wasn’t Adam then, oh no.’

‘None of that tells me what you’re doing back here,’ said his brother, both disturbed and faintly disgusted by the other’s account of his false identities.

‘Now, Seth, the way you say those words tells me you think I’m up to something.’

‘You’re always up to something, Adam. Mischief and the like.’

‘Nothing could be further from my mind,’ said Adam with a twinkle in his eye. ‘I wanted to breathe my native air, return to the bosom of my family or all the family that’s left me. By the way, I hear you’re not married, Seth, you’ve got no woman, no little nippers to trouble your slumbers.’

‘Suits me,’ said Seth Fawkes, realizing with irritation that his brother must have been asking questions about him.

‘I heard old George Slater had died quite a while ago and that Percy lives in Northwood now. I always had a soft spot for Percy. He comes here sometimes for the ratting in the barn, doesn’t he?’

Seth said nothing. He wanted to keep Adam out of his life even though the younger man had only just elbowed his way back into it. He certainly did not want his brother returning to Northwood House and attempting to strike up some sort of acquaintance with Percy Slater. Perhaps he feared they might hit it off.

‘What happened to that holy joe brother of his?’

‘He’s in the Church,’ said Seth, squinting down his finger at Adam as though he was sighting a gun and half wishing that he was holding an actual weapon. ‘He’s what they call a canon in the cathedral.’

‘Is he now?’

‘There’s no place for you here, Adam,’ Seth suddenly declared. ‘Northwood isn’t like it was when — when you last saw it. The place has gone downhill. There’s only me and Nan left now — ’

‘Nan? That old bat. She must be a hundred and six if she’s a day.’

‘Percy’s wife is never there but passes her time in London.’

‘Do not trouble yourself, brother,’ said Adam, patting his neighbour on the shoulder. Again, the gesture was more mocking than reassuring. ‘I haven’t come back to go and bury myself at Northwood. The place was a country hole all those years ago and I don’t suppose it’s any different now. Although there was one thing. .’

He fell silent for a moment and, to cover whatever he’d been about to say, sank his face in his pint-pot. Then he went on, ‘Tell the truth, I’ve come back to these parts for a bit of peace and quiet. Last place I was in I had to get out of a bit smartish for reasons we needn’t go into. So now I’ll just find myself a cosy billet in town and won’t trouble you at all. Though it would be nice to meet sometimes, wouldn’t it, brother? Talk about the old times.’

‘I’ve got to be going to the railway station now, Adam,’ said Seth, pushing himself out of the corner and waiting for Adam to shift himself. ‘Got to be getting the train back to Downton.’

‘I’ll keep you company,’ said Adam.

And so he did, jigging and skipping and jawing while they made their way through the outskirts of the town and Seth wondered how he could shake him off. Fortunately, he left Seth before they reached the station. Adam asked his brother if he could recommend a good bed-house in the town or — as he said they called it in the United States — a cat-house. Seth pretended not to know what his brother was talking about.

If Seth had hoped not to see Adam again he was to be disappointed. However, his brother did not cause any overt trouble — at least, not to his knowledge — and he assumed that he must have found his cosy billet. Seth didn’t ask him where and Adam didn’t volunteer any information.

They encountered each other from time to time in The Nethers and Seth’s animosity towards Adam started to fade. He had no wife or children or friends apart from Mrs Mitchell (who was a paid friend), he preferred the company of the horses in his master’s stable if he was honest. Nevertheless he had a brother.

Adam let slip little hints of how he’d passed the intervening years, not honestly it seemed. He’d done his share of thieving and he hinted at darker business. Occasionally at their meetings Adam would pass over an item as a kind of peace offering. It would be a thing of such small value, like a toasting fork, that if Adam had stolen it Seth wondered why he went to the trouble. Nevertheless he accepted it because, in part, he was slightly afraid of Adam and this seemed the best way of keeping him quiet.

And so when he learned that his master Percy Slater wanted to find out what was in the personal luggage of a certain young lawyer from London, Seth indicated to his brother that there could be a little job for him. Now he regretted that closer involvement with Adam. For it seemed to have led to this moment now when the two of them were crouching by moonlight in Hogg’s Corner.

Back in Northwood House, Percy Slater was not asleep although it was well after midnight. He was not even in his bedroom. Instead he had been slumbering in his smoking room, over the dying fire, the guttering candles and a couple of near-empty bottles. Slumbering until some sound awoke him. His hearing was good, whatever else about him had decayed. It was a sound from outside. He hoisted himself to his feet and moved unsteadily towards the window. There was a little moonlight. By it, he could just see, pressing his gaze to the pane and screwing up his eyes, the silhouette of a figure standing on the untended ground beyond the terrace and by the ha-ha. For an instant the figure was poised there and then it dropped out of sight. Percy rubbed a hand over his eyes. When he looked again a second shape was wavering against the darkness before it too fell from view. Slater stared out into the night for several more bleary minutes, not quite sure of what he’d seen or whether, indeed, he’d seen anything at all.

Then his attention was caught by a spark of light, a tiny flicker that appeared from amid a circle of trees in the park. Percy began paying attention now. He knew the location of the light. It was coming from the little knoll known as Hogg’s Corner. The flicker went out for an instant and Percy realized that it was someone passing in front of it.

Without troubling to light a candle, Percy crossed the smoking room and unlocked the glass cabinet which contained a pair of shotguns. He took one from its resting place and hefted it in his hand. He opened a drawer and, again working by touch, drew a handful of cartridges from a box and slipped them into his trouser pocket. Then he left the smoking room and went down the flagged passage to the kitchen quarters. He found his way with the merest brush of his free hand against the wall.

In the lobby he took a coat from a peg and let himself out of the side door of the house. The night air blew away the fustiness in his drink-fuddled head. He paused for an instant then loaded the shotgun, knowing that if he delayed until he was closer to his quarry the sound of the action would carry across a still night. ‘Quarry.’ The word amused him but it also stirred something within.

Slater crossed the yard and made a circuit round the side of the house. Like his man Fawkes, he was very familiar with the house and grounds. It was where he’d grown up and although he’d never had his brother Felix’s taste for rummaging about the estate, he could still have found his way about blindfold — or after dark.

Percy Slater stood on the weed-encrusted terrace and stared into the night. The light on top of the hillock known as Hogg’s Corner glowed with a fire-fly’s persistence. Percy considered for a moment summoning Fawkes from his snug in the stables to deal with these trespassers. But he was fairly sure that one of the shapes he’d seen dropping over the ha-ha was Fawkes himself. Something about the angle of the body, its outline, caused Percy to think that one of the night wanderers was indeed his own man.

Percy trusted Fawkes. Or, perhaps more accurately, he had never had any reason to distrust him. Fawkes had worked for his father, as had Nan, and on George’s death he had inherited the old retainers along with the estate. Fawkes was of a similar age to himself but whereas Percy had grown slow and was running to fat, the coachman had kept a youthful slightness even as his face had become more aged and disagreeable.

If it was Fawkes out there in the cold and dark, on top of Hogg’s Corner, then the question was, who was his companion? At once Percy remembered that odd and unsettling fellow who Fawkes had claimed could get into that lawyer’s room in The Side of Beef, the fellow who’d popped up out of nowhere at the dog-fight the other night. Not only had Percy taken against him personally, the fellow hadn’t even discovered anything in Ansell’s room. But if it was Fawkes together with Adam creeping about the edges of Northwood, what were they doing there?

There was only one way to find out. Percy Slater felt some old instinct uncoil inside him, the instinct to follow a trail, to track down its source, to. . kill.

Moving lightly on his feet, for all his bulk, and wide awake now, Percy Slater reached the boundary between the garden and parkland. He placed the shotgun carefully on the upper ground and slipped, almost tumbled, on to the rougher grass beneath. When he’d recovered his breath and smoothed his clothes down, he retrieved the gun and set off.

The light in the centre of Hogg’s Corner vanished as he drew nearer, since the lie of the land got in the way. But there could be no doubt that there was someone up there. Scraping and scrabbling sounds alternated with subdued grunts or curses. Percy Slater gripped the shotgun in both hands and moved closer still, his breath coming shorter with the exertion and anticipation. He heard a hissing, and the sounds of scraping ceased. Something about the hissing enraged him. If it was his man Fawkes up there, he’d soon sort him out. Him and his companion. Let them know what was coming to them.

‘Fawkes!’ he said. He was almost shouting. Why shouldn’t he shout? This was his house, his land.

If, a few minutes after this, you had been standing on the terrace of

Northwood House, you would have heard the sounds of voices raised in threat or anger. It was a still night and the sound travelled easily from Hogg’s Corner. The next sound you would have heard from inside or outside the house, since it was the boom of a shotgun going off. Would have heard, unless you were Nan, whose hearing was poor and who slumbered on undisturbed in her room.