away?'
And so on and on, throughout the night. Rabbett must be habitually nocturnal. He left Hoare, at least, only a few minutes in which to nap. Whenever he woke, Thoday was sitting opposite him, awake, erect, and silent, and Rabbett was talking.
The bodies of the Captains Getchell, Hoare had been told, were reposing at the Church of All Angels. Here the chaise drew up before sunrise, just as a sleepy sexton trudged into sight.
The sexton made no trouble about letting them see the two corpses. The weather had been mercifully cool, so the odors of corruption were still faint. Nevertheless, Rabbett gagged and pressed a kerchief to his face.
'Have the relatives of the dead men been notified, do you know?' Hoare whispered to the sexton.
'Ye needn't whisper, sir. There's only one of 'em as 'as ears to 'ear with, and 'e ain't listenin'.'
For, as Hoare had already been told, only a ragged stump remained on one of the bodies, windpipe and neck-bones projecting obscenely with the shrinkage of the tissue from around them. The other head had been replaced on the neck, where it no longer seemed to fit. The owner had been struck fiercely from behind, his occiput being crushed and part of his brains splattered. The single pair of eyes that remained, now mercifully closed by those who had found the bodies, must have almost bulged from their sockets. Blood and brains stained both uniform coats, suggesting to Hoare that the missing head would display the same injuries. Their coats had been stripped of their gold braid and buttons, their shoes were missing, and their stockings- and their breeches, of course-stained and ruined. Coat and breeches pockets had been turned out.
'Oh, dear me,' Rabbett said from behind Hoare and Thoday. The latter looked at each other and shrugged; there was little these sad, dead shapes could tell them. As they turned to leave, Hoare saw Thoday cross himself. This explained something about the gunner-but hardly everything.
'You did not answer my question… except with an untimely impertinence,' Hoare whispered to the sexton. 'Kindly restrain your misplaced humor and give me a civil answer. Have the relatives been notified?'
'I don't know, sir,' the sexton said. 'Ye'd be better talking with Vicar, or the Capting. He be crowner, he be.'
'The Captain?'
'Aye. Capting Spurrier. Ye don't know the Capting? Well, 'e'll put you right, 'e will.'
'His whereabouts?'
The sexton cackled. 'Ye'll find him in town hall, if anywhere.'
But Hoare's itch to view the scene of the crime was too strong to resist. Captain Spurrier must wait to 'put him right,' whatever that meant. Rabbett knew that Mr. Trowbridge was vicar at the Church of All Angels but could not enlighten Hoare about Captain Spurrier. Hoare directed the chaise's driver to take them west to Winterbourne Abbas.
The morning sun, still low, was casting shadows ahead of them when the chaise put the scattered cottages of Winterbourne Abbas behind it. The Circle, a broken ring of high gray fangs, appeared out of the ground fog, reminding Hoare of a giant's skeletal lower jaw buried to the teeth in sand, except that here the 'sand' was cropped greensward. Once there, and a wandering shepherd found, the two seagoing men needed Rabbett to interpret the heavy local dialect. No, this man was Emmon Tredegar. It was his wife's cousin Dym they wanted, for it was Dym and his dog Boye who had found the horror in the ring. Dym and his flock were probably down over the coombe yonder. The man pointed vaguely northward.
There was no road that way, only a path that wound lazily off into the distance. The three left the chaise in its driver's charge and plodded on in single file, half-asleep, pausing every so often to negotiate a stile. At last, the barking of a dog brought them fully awake. Hoare caught sight of a man standing lofty among his surrounding sheep, their owner's reddle mark blood-red above their dirty tails. Between the strangers and the flock it owned, the dog stood its ground, calling, War! Fear! Foes! at the top of its lungs. Rabbett, who happened to be in the lead, uttered an odd whistle that appealed to Hoare's ear instantly. Apparently the dog was of the same mind, for it quieted, sniffed Rabbett's hand and then, in a more intimate manner, that of each of the two other intruders, and led the way through the flock of its bored-looking, bleating charges to its master, tail waving proudly in a victory signal.
Dym Tredegar, when they managed to communicate with him at last, squatted and offered around some of the hard, strong yellow cheese in his scrip. He must explain first that while he was, indeed, Emmon's wife's cousin, he was also Emmon's own cousin. That understood, he was happy to tell his tale once more to these strangers. He knew the story well, and he was a skilled raconteur, though sometimes unintelligible to foreigners like Hoare. At these points, Dym must turn to Rabbett for an interpretation.
' 'Twas was early mornin',' Dym said, 'just about the same time of day as it is now. Boye here got up to some tricks, and I could hear he was in the Ring, so I went to see what 'twas so moithered him.
'Well now, ge'men, what did I see but two other ge'men, a-wearin' coats almost like yours, sir'-he pointed at Hoare with his chin-'a-layin' on their bellies, there… and there, dead as the stones around 'em, in front of that there stone in middle of Circle. I didn't need to touch 'em none to know that, for I could see, plain as plain, they didn' 'a' but one 'ead between 'em. And that 'un 'ad been a-chopped off. It was like two butchers come up behind 'em like they was oxen for the slaughterin' and dopped 'em in back of their 'eads. And so down they'd went, a-dumpin' their blood all over the green in Circle, and the flowers a-layin' scattered roundabout, all in their garlands.'
'Where was the other head?' Hoare asked.
'Not to be seen, sir,' the shepherd answered through Rabbett.
'Their hats?' Thoday asked.
'Not to be seen, sir.'
'Their pockets?'
Dym glowered, stubborn as one of his sheep. Then, as if he realized that these men were not accusing him of looting the dead, he relaxed again.
'Their pockets was turned out, sir, if that's what you mean. And their shoes was gone, too. Wouldn't 'a' been first time that green's drunk 'uman blood, I'll warrant.' He shook his head. 'Nay. You ask Mye Dabbleworth about that; she be wise enough for all of us.'
Mye Dabbleworth, Dym explained, was a wisewoman who collected greens by night-moonlit nights especially, like the nights this week-and preferably there in the Circle.
'She coom all the way up from her darter's house in Dorchester. She used to live in Winterbourne over hill, but when Squire enclosed commons the folk was all evicted. Not that dere was that many…'
Hoare let Dym maunder on. He had found that one could never tell when a compulsive talker would drop a gem instead of a turgidity. But Hoare got no more good from Dym, nor apparently did Thoday, so they retraced their steps along the path and over the stiles to the Nine Stones Circle.
Once there, Thoday began to range the heavily trodden enclosure at an awkward stooping canter, grumbling to himself every so often as he went, while Hoare and Rabbett watched. Hoare almost thought to hear him snuffle as if he were a true sleuth, a bloodhound. He picked up some of the wilted garlands, sniffed them, grunted in a puzzled way, dropped them. He examined several of the stones closely, paying particular attention to the flat- topped ashlar that stood waist-high in the center of the ring, left the Circle to trot as far as the lane where their chaise and its driver still stood, inspected the ruts around the chaise, and returned inside the ring of watching stones. There he walked more cautiously around the enormous double bloodstain before the ashlar.
'It's a disgrace,' Thoday declared, 'how the men who took the bodies to Dorchester trampled the ground hereabouts. The tracks of their great feet are all over the Circle. They might have been trying to destroy the evidence.'
If they were Frobisher minions and Sir Thomas was what Hoare thought he might just be, they might well have been doing precisely that.
'But it's plain as the Great Charter,' Thoday declared. 'The carriage was held up somewhere east of here, possibly in Dorchester, and highjacked with its passengers. The man-thieves numbered at least a dozen; we can hardly call them kidnappers, can we, in light of their captives' mature years?
No more than jesting Pilate did Thoday pause for answer, but went on, 'The victims' arms were bound, and they were brought here. They were hauled out of the chaise here; their shoes were removed here; they were unbound and clubbed from behind like vermin in a drive as they attempted to escape-that way. Shots were fired. One ball struck someone sitting on the chaise-the criminals' driver, I should suppose.
'The killers then beheaded the bodies, robbed them, and clambered into the chaise with their dead
