Death on a Branch Line(75)

‘That’s exactly why he’s wearing two,’ I said.

A third ball was bowled. The wicket keeper failed to stop it, and he looked down at his white boots as if he’d never seen them before while another fellow went into the woods to collect the ball.

‘The umpire might end up wearing any number of hats and woollens,’ I said. ‘The players give him whatever they don’t need.’

Another ball was bowled, and the batsman stopped it dead. He did the same again twice more, and then there was a general collapse into chaos as everyone began walking long distances in different directions.



‘What’s going on now?’ said the wife, sounding quite alarmed.

‘End of the over,’ I said.

At the end of the disturbance another bowler stood ready, but the wife was still interested in the umpire.

‘He’s the man in charge of the game?’

‘He is.’

‘How can he command any respect if he’s wearing two hats?’

‘I suppose he must rely on force of character.’

I turned towards the wife, but she was walking away again along the boundary.

‘Hold still,’ I called, for another ball was about to be bowled.

‘Why?’ she called, turning about.

‘You shouldn’t move behind the bowler’s arm,’ I said. ‘It’s distracting.’

‘How can I distract him if I’m behind him and being perfectly quiet?’

‘It distracts the batsman.’

‘What rot,’ the wife said, and she set off again.

Well, we were just lingering out the hot, grey afternoon, wasting the time. I could not influence the wife in the slightest degree, let alone prevent one death and solve the mystery of another. For want of anything better to do I counted the men on the fielding side, going clockwise from the vicar, who stood only a little way from my boundary position. Having counted them once, I did so again.

I could make them only ten.

I began pacing the boundary, as though I might discover another player by viewing the game from a different angle. I had not seen one of them make off during the game. Had they arrived at the ground as ten? But no, the vicar wouldn’t have stood for that.

… It was just that I was that bloody tired. I started counting again as another ball was bowled, and the batsman smashed it for six into the woods. The fielder nearest to me put his hands on his hips and said, ‘Oh my eye.’

One by one, most of the fielding players disappeared into the edge of the woods. The ball was lost. The two batsmen met in the middle of the pitch for a confab, and the wicket keeper took one of his gloves off and examined his hand, which was evidently just as fascinating as his boots. The wife came wandering up to me again.

‘What’s happened now?’

‘They’ve lost the ball.’

She rolled her eyes.

One of the fielders, on the border of the woods, was looking agitated and calling to the others, but it wasn’t until the two batsmen broke off their talk that I knew something was up. I half-ran, half-walked across the pitch, and when I came to the edge of the woods, I saw the players gathered around some object. I could not at first make it out, for they surrounded it, and it lay in long grass. I pushed my way through, and saw in the grass a dead dog. Half its head was perfect, and the other half was not there.

‘Shotgun,’ said one of the cricketers, eyeing me.

The dog was a terrier – Mervyn’s, name of Alfred.





Chapter Thirty


When the players went back onto the pitch, I counted a full complement of eleven fielders.

‘I’m sure there was one less before the dog was found,’ I said to the wife, and at that instant the sky darkened yet further, and the rain started again. The players at first walked towards the pavilion, but as the rain came faster they began to run.

‘I don’t think there’s anything for it but to get out into the woods and look for Mervyn,’ I said as, five minutes later, we made our way under the rain back towards the second village green of Adenwold. ‘I’ll borrow an oilskin from the pub.’

‘We’ll be soaked through if we walk in this,’ she said. ‘Let’s sit in the church.’

But it turned out that the Reverend Ridley kept the door locked; so we sat on the two bench seats in the porch, and talked over what had happened and what might happen. At twenty to six, we heard the bolts being released on the inside of the church door, and it swung open to reveal a face I could not at first place: it was Moffat, the amiable man who kept the baker’s shop. He had entered the church by another door. Some muttering between him and the wife revealed him to be a reader at the church or a helper of some sort, or there again perhaps standing in for the verger, who was in Scarborough. At any rate, he passed us hymn books, and showed us to a front pew. Evening Prayer was in the offing.