Just then, two sharp cracks came from the wood; a cloud of birds rose up from it, and moved away to the left like smoke.
‘It’s fucking happened,’ I said.
‘You will not …’ said the wife, but I was straight back into the woods and crashing through the branches as a third shot came.
‘You there!’ I called out. ‘Police! Stop firing!’
I felt panic as I clashed through the trees, but my curiosity was stronger than my fear.
‘Give over, mister!’ came a high voice through the trees – a boy’s voice. ‘It’s only t’ rabbits I’m after.’
It was Mervyn Handley, the kid from the inn, but I had to march on for a good half-minute more until I clapped eyes on him. He stood amid fallen trees in the woodsman’s clearing I’d seen from the train, and he held a double-barrelled shotgun pointed down. His powder flasks and shot pouches were too near the fire that bent the warm air behind him. His ferret – which was tied to the skeleton frame of a steam saw – was too near the terrier that was tied to the thickest branch of a fallen log, the result being that the dog was barking fit to bust, and the ferret was giving a constant thin scream. In the clearing, patches of ferns grew, and there were two dead-straight rows of sunflowers. Some of the timbers had been used to make a low shelter with a tarpaulin slung over the top. At the entrance, I saw a dead rabbit, a woodsman’s bill-hook, a funny paper for boys and a sack.
The boy was calming the dog – and so also the ferret – as I spoke up.
‘Do you know of a John Lambert?’ I asked him.
The boy nodded.
‘Stops up at …’
‘Where?’
‘Up at t’ all.’
‘The Hall? Is he the squire, so to speak?’
Mervyn Handley frowned.
‘Well … there’s t’ new man.’
But surely, I thought, John Lambert – being the eldest son – would have inherited the house? He would be the new man. But this might be a rather complicated matter. I tried a different tack.
‘John Lambert’s father died, didn’t he?’
‘Aye, mister,’ the boy said, and he looked at me levelly. After an interval, and still eyeing me, he said, ‘Shot to death.’
‘And who shot him?’
Silence for a space. Then the boy said:
‘His son. Master Hugh.’
‘He’s about to swing, en’t he?’
The lad nodded.
‘Why did it take so long to come to a hanging?’
‘Master Hugh made off. France, and all over.’
‘When did they lay hands on him?’
‘Last back end.’
‘And you knew the man accused – Master Hugh?’
A long beat of silence.
‘I knew him, aye.’
I was going in strong here. I knew the kid didn’t want to be asked, but then again I knew he would answer. So I kept on.
‘What did you think of him?’ I asked, and he shot back the answer directly: ‘Liked him.’
The wife was pacing about near the fire; she had entered the clearing only a few seconds after me, so she’d been privy to the whole conversation. I began to hear the sound of a river rolling past.
‘Why did you like him?’
No sound but the rushing river.
Mervyn said:
‘He’d give me presents.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like a dormouse,’ said the kid, this time fast, and he turned his head once again to the side. ‘There now,’ he said, and nodded two or three times.
The wife cut in to spare the lad more of my questions:
‘What’s your dog called, Mervyn?’
‘Alfred,’ he said.
‘Is it safe to stroke him?’ she asked.
‘It’ll be safe for you,’ he said, which put the wife in a fix, leaving her no option but to go over to the animal.
The wife was stroking the dog, which seemed more bored than anything else by the attention.
She asked, ‘What is this place, Mervyn?’
‘This?’ he said, looking about him. ‘It’s t’ set-up.’
‘The set-up?’
Mervyn coloured up at hearing his name for the place repeated, but Lydia’s more amiable questions gradually put him at his ease, and it all came out.
The set-up was his seat of operations against rabbits, or a place he’d come to eat his snap after a morning’s toil in the fields or at the inn. He was half pot boy at the inn, half farmer’s boy, for he would do turns at all the local farms, helping at harvest and threshing, picking thistles in summer and stones in winter. The Handleys had once farmed land leased from the Hall, but the man later murdered – Sir George Lambert – had turned them out and given them the pub instead. When I asked why, the boy said, ‘Not rightly sure.’