Crybbe aka Curfew

battle.'

'Oh dear,' Alex said. 'Poor chap.'

' 'Oh, we has to let the RSPCA deal with it. We has to abide by the Procedures.' 'Bollocks,'' I said. 'Send the RSPCA round to see me.' '

'No contest,' Alex said.

'Listen, that guy is seriously weird. His features are too small for his head and they never alter. So I just opened the shed door and walked off, and the dog followed me. Wynford's left standing there, face getting redder and redder, like a pumpkin with a light inside on Hallowe'en.'

Arnold was pottering around the room, sniffing uncertainly, huge ears pricked.

'It's remarkable really, he doesn't seem to have been injured at all, though I don't suppose bruises would show up on a dog. Psychologically, though…'

'Yes, it's a damn shame. But Fay…'

'… psychologically, he could be in pieces.'

'But he can't stay here, Fay.' Alex sat up, trying to look authoritative. 'Grace would have a fit. She wasn't at all fond dogs. And neither's old Rasputin.'

'Dad' – Fay was wearing that expression – 'Grace is bloody dead. Anyway…' She squatted down beside Arnold, and cradled his black and white snout in her hands. Long black whiskers came out between her fingers. 'If he goes, I go too.'

Canon Alex Peters took a long swig of cold Heineken.

'Splendid,' he said.

CHAPTER VI

People kept looking at her.

This was not usual. Normally, on these streets, even if you were greeted – 'Ow're you' – you were not looked at. You were observed, your presence was noted, but you were not directly examined.

Maybe, she thought, it was the dog. Maybe they recognize the late Henry Kettle's dog. Or maybe they'd never before see a dog on the end of a thin, red, plastic-covered clothes-line that the person on the other end was now wishing she hadn't adapted because, every time the dog tugged at the makeshift lead, her right hand received what could turn out to be third-degree burns.

'Arnold, for Christ's sake…'

With Henry Kettle he'd appeared ultra-docile, really laid back. Now he was like some loony puppy, pulling in all directions, wanting to go nowhere, needing to go anywhere. And fast.

You had to make allowances. He was disoriented. He'd had a bereavement. In fact, the worst thing that could happen to a one-man dog had happened to Arnold. So allowances definitely were called for. And one of the people who was going to have to make them was Canon Alex Peters. In Fay's experience all this cat-and-dog incompatibility business was grossly exaggerated. Even Rasputin would, in time, come around.

But another animal was another root in Crybbe. And you don't want that, Fay, you don't want any roots in Crybbe.

Bill Davies, the butcher, walked past with fresh blood on his apron, and he stared at them.

Fay was fed up with this. She stared back. Bill Davies looked away.

Maybe they were all afflicted with this obsession about dogs fouling pavements. She'd have to buy one of those poop-scoop things. On the other hand, did that kind of obsession really seem like Crybbe, where apathy ruled?

'For God's sake, Arnie, make up your mind.' They'd come to the square and he seemed to want to turn back. He circled miserably around, dragging the clothes-line and winding it round the legs of a woman bending over the tailgate of a Range Rover, shoving something in the back.

'Oh hell, I'm really sorry. Look, if you can stand still, I'll disentangle you. I'm very sorry.'

'No problem,' the woman said, looking quite amused. She was the first person who hadn't stared at them, which meant she must be from Off.

Of course she was – she was Max Goff's PA, Ms Coolly Efficient.

'We're not used to each other,' Fay explained, it's Henry Kettle's sheepdog, the poor chap who… I'm looking after him.'

'Oh, yes.' Rachel Wade stepped out of the loop of clothesline. 'You're from the radio.'

'We all have a living to make,' Fay said and then, making the most of the encounter, 'Look, can I talk to you some time? I'm being hassled by my boss to find out what's happening to the Court.' That hurt, referring to Gavin Ashpole as a boss, which he wasn't and was never going to be.

'Sure,' Rachel said, surprising her.

'When?'

'Now if you like. We could go over to the Court, Max is out seeing people.'

'Great.'

'Hop in then,' Rachel said. But Arnold didn't want to. In the end Fay had to pick him up and dump him on the back seat, where he flattened himself into the leather and panted and

trembled.

'Sorry about this.' Fay climbed into the passenger seat. 'He's – not surprisingly – more than a bit paranoid. He was in Henry's car when it… you know.'

'Oh dear, poor dog. I didn't know about that.' Rachel started the engine, 'it's rather a mystery, isn't it. About Mr Kettle. Do you think he'd been drinking?'

'I didn't know him very well. I think a heart attack or stroke or something seems more likely, don't you?'

'He was a nice old man.' Rachel swung the Range Rover off the square into the street that wriggled down past the church, the graveyard on the right, a few cottages on the left. The street narrowed and entered a wood, where the late afternoon sun was filtered away and the colours faded almost to grey, 'I don't believe all that dowsing stuff. But he was a nice old man.'

'Don't you? I thought…'

'Oh, Max does. Max believes it. Good God, yes. However, I don't get paid to share his wilder obsessions. Well, he thinks I do…' Rachel exhaled a short, throaty laugh.

They came out of the wood. A track to the left was barred by a gate with a metal sign. COURT FARM. Where the Preece farmed. Jack, son of Jimmy, the Mayor, and Jack's two son She'd seen Jack once, slinking almost furtively out of the church, his nightly duty accomplished.

'And what exactly is Mr Goff's obsession with the Court?'

'I'll show you in a minute,' Rachel said affably.

This was too easy. Fay was suspicious. She watched Rachel Wade driving with a languid economy of movement, like people drove in films, only you knew they weren't in real, moving vehicles. This was the kind of woman who could change a wheel and make it look like a ballet. Made you despair.

Rachel said, is that your father, the old clergyman? Or your grandfather or something?'

'Father. You've met him?'

'In the Cock. We got into conversation after my lighter fell off the bar and he picked it up.' Rachel smiled, in fact, if he'd been considerably younger, I'd almost have thought…'

Fay nodded wryly. 'The old knocking-the-lighter-off-the-bar routine. Then he carries out a detailed survey of your legs while he's picking it up. He's harmless. I think.'

'He's certainly a character.' Rachel pulled up in a walled courtyard amid heaps of sand and builders' rubble. Before them random grey-brown stones were settled around deepset

mullioned windows and a dusty oak door was half-open.

Fay took a breath.

'Crybbe Court,' Rachel said. 'But don't get too excited.' She snapped on the handbrake. 'Leave the dog in the car, he won't like it. Nobody does, really, apart from historians, and even they get depressed at the state of it.'

She wondered what had made her think it was going to be mellow and warm-toned like a country house on a