Reaching the end of the Park wall he continued some way beside the fence of post and rails which succeeded it and which ran along the outskirts of the big wood. Reaching a wicket gate which opened onto a well-worn path into the wood he turned in, and as he closed the gate behind him was horrified to notice that the fence beside it had had two higher rails added above it for a space of five or six feet and that this structure, conveniently placed as it was by a path from which one might turn either towards the house or towards Glass’s cottage, constituted one of the gamekeeper’s gibbets. It was crowded with corpses in varying degrees of decomposition. The topmost rail held a row of small mammals, some of them hardly more than a leaf-like shape of dried skin or a bedraggled tail, moles mostly or squirrels, and next to them, some obviously more recently killed and still smelling powerfully of rotting flesh, were weasels and stoats, five or six of each. Below these were the black feathers and evil beaks of crows, magpies with their tail feathers gone and a couple of brightly coloured jays which could not have been there for more than a day or two. Below again came the multifariously speckled feathers of kestrels and sparrow hawks, miniscule and soft on their breasts, long and curved for swiftness of flight on their wings, their fine-boned heads mostly skeletal, eye sockets void; and beneath them hung the owls, three tawny owls and a barn owl, wings hanging open, swaying from time to time as the breeze touched them.

‘Cads,’ said Cornelius Cardew, facing the rows of dead. ‘Unspeakable cads.’

He turned away. Grasping more firmly his long blackthorn stick and the square of cardboard he held under one arm, he followed the path through the wood to where another less well-used track led away from it uphill. This he calculated must be the way to the boundary between the River Wood and the Park. He hurried, afraid that his estimate of the time it would take beaters and sportsmen to reposition themselves for the last drive of the morning might have been wrong, but when he came to the edge of the wood and paused he could see the beaters waiting at one side of a thick coppice of mixed ash, wych-elm and beech with a belt of dark spruce planted on the outskirts. Keeping to the shelter of the trees he fixed the piece of cardboard – on which was written in large red letters THOU SHALT NOT KILL – to the top of his stick and waited for the beaters to disappear into the wood. At a signal from Glass they began to move. As soon as they were well in among the trees, and screened from him by the thick spruce, Cornelius walked quickly across the intervening open space and into the wood at the corner furthest from the beaters. He had not yet seen any of the waiting guns, but peering now from behind a tree towards the Park on the other side of the coppice he could see Gilbert Hartlip not many yards away from him, with Albert Jarvis and a young boy attentive behind him. Further away stood Bob Lilburn and his loaders, with Tommy Farmer yet further on and Sir Randolph standing behind and between Gilbert Hartlip and Bob Lilburn. The sound of the beaters making their way through the wood could already be heard. The waiting figures were silent and alert. It was hard for a moment to remember that the keen concentration of their hunting instinct was not directed at their fellow man. Cornelius grasped his stick and waited.