She had one of those curious thoughts, not exactly irrelevant, but mistimed and misplaced. I didn’t need to bring my woolly cardigan! The church, which on a sunny afternoon in spring had struck with such a deathly chill and which, even last Sunday, had been only just comfortably warm, tonight was like a hothouse. The heat struck as it would from the open door of an oven. In the hot darkness she waited again, and then at last, plucking up her courage, pressed the knob on the torch, directing the beam towards the ground. Off again, and in darkness she covered the space she had measured with her eye, stood, waited and listened; on again, another small journey planned and in darkness undertaken, and finally she had reached her objective, the little room in the base of the tower.

She had made sure, long ago, when her suspicion first centred on the church, that in the base of the tower, below the heavy timbers that made the ceiling of the little room, there were none of the narrow, round-headed windows. Whoever had built the tower for a place of defence had chosen to shoot down upon his enemies. Therefore, she could now have a light; not safely, for nothing was safe, but without undue risk. She set the torch on the floor behind the door, which she dared not close because she must listen sharply in case anyone came. In its limited light she opened the mackintosh bag and took out the cine-camera which had cost so much money, and which a pleasant, pimply young man had yesterday taught her to handle. He had been amused by her demand for a ‘quiet’ one. Never before in his experience had any buyer of a camera been concerned about the noise it made, but this funny little creature – an unlikely customer, in any case – had acted as though she were buying a musical instrument, saying, ‘Let me hear that again.’ And her final choice of a model, the most expensive of all he had to show her, had been dictated not by its virtues as a camera, but by the fact that after several tests, as she had said, ‘This one makes less noise.’ And in a way that was true, as it would be true of an expensive car.

Against the all-pervading roar of the London traffic, the difference in volume between one succession of little clicks and another might seem extremely unimportant, but Miss Mayfield knew that in Walwyk it might mean the difference between success and failure.