Jonathan thought this an unreasonable and prejudiced statement, so he nodded non-committally and started on his way home. Just as he began to mount the lane which led to the house he met the Fullaloves’ gardener, a fellow named Anstey.

‘The governor’s bust his leg, sir,’ said Anstey, ‘and wondered whether you could go on up and see to him. I had a message. I wasn’t to go up there myself. I was to come straight along here. Note pushed under my door.’

‘All right,’ said Jonathan. ‘What’s the other Mr Fullalove doing? – Mr Bill?’

‘Called away to Gloucester, sir, or so the governor said yesterday. Don’t see how he’s going to get through. Here’s the key, sir. The governor can’t get to the door, so ’e says in the note. His leg must be pretty bad, I reckon. Anyway, I’m forbid to do aught except fetch you along.’

‘Where’s Mrs Dalby Whittier? Can’t she let me in?’

‘Gone to London for Christmas, sir, and the governor told me he’d wrote and told her particular she wasn’t to try and come back in all this snow.’

‘Right. Well, go on up to my house and tell them I’ll get back as soon as I can. Then you’d better come up to Fullaloves’ and help me.’

He opened the note and frowned at it. It was typewritten and ended in a couple of typewritten initials. Now had Jonathan not known that Tiny Fullalove did not possess a typewriter, and had he not received the scurrilous anonymous note about Deborah, and had Tiny Fullalove not been mentioned in it, he might have acted very differently from the way in which he did act. He turned left up the hill at first to go to the Fullaloves’ bungalow, but, on a second thought, he climbed the fence which bordered Groaning Spinney and made his way back among the trees to his own house. He thought that he could at least test the information he had received. He did not propose to be hoaxed into taking the long, uphill walk through the deep snow to the bungalow if this should not be necessary. In other words he decided to telephone Tiny before he took any further steps.