‘Unseemly curiosity of an elderly psychiatrist,’ she said to herself as she spread out her waterproof, lay on it and peered cautiously over the top of the ancient mound. The four men were still working. This time Mansell had taken up a shovel and was as busy as the others. When the men spoke she could hear quite clearly what they said.

As she watched, Emming stopped work, wiped his face and then began to clean his tool with a stone which he had picked up. At this, Mansell consulted his wristwatch, and suggested that it was time to knock off for lunch. Emming went towards the village and the two friends struck off in the same direction, although soon Mrs Bradley could see that their path diverged from his. Ed Brown sat down on a pile of sacks which the excavators apparently had brought with them, and took out his countryman’s bundle of food and a can of tea.

Suddenly, from the woods to the right came Will North, as usual carrying his gun and with his gamekeeper’s bag slung over his shoulder, but without his dog Worry. He called out a greeting to Ed and came over to have a chat. The three men had quite disappeared. None of them had given so much as a glance towards where Mrs Bradley was lying, and she, to preserve secrecy, had prudently withdrawn so that the slope of the barrow hid her.

Will and Ed talked for ten minutes by Mrs Bradley’s watch. She had crept forward again. Then Will went off on his own errand, whatever that was, and Ed sat down again.

To the left there was a flurry of birds; then, (at the same instant, it seemed to Mrs Bradley), there were the sounds of two rifle shots, and Ed tumbled into the trench that he had been digging. Will North came running, and so did Mrs Bradley. Both knelt by the trench. Ed turned over very slowly and favoured Will with a wink.

‘If you wouldn’t mind acting like so be you thought I was done for, Will,’ he murmured, ‘you’d be doin’ me a favour like them there old birds over yonder.’

‘You aren’t hurt, then?’ enquired Will.

‘Not a hair singed, but that ain’t somebody’s fault,’ muttered Ed. ‘I knowed summat was up. Felt it all day, like. Felt it ever since that there old gun went off by Parson’s Gate.’

Mrs Bradley got up and gazed as though with compassion and grief into the trench. Save to a bird or from an aeroplane, Ed, she knew, was invisible except from very close range. She spoke to Will North.