‘Some sheep knocked me down and ran over me. Two dogs stampeded them; one was Mr Frisby’s Lassie. But, Canon Thorby, that is only a small part of the whole. You’ll see when I tell you . . .’

‘I’m not at all sure that you’re in any state to tell anything, Those cuts – do you mean to tell me sheep’s feet made those? Then it’s doubly urgent that they should be washed and disinfected. Probably you should have an anti-tetanus injection. Miss Mayfield, let me send you straight in to Wandford, with Baxter.’

‘You must hear me first,’ she said, struggling with the vibration of her jaw. ‘It’s all to do with Wesley Baines.’

‘Drink your coffee, then,’ he said in a resigned way. He lifted his own cup and sipped it.

Anxious not to sound sensational or dramatic and struggling hard to keep her voice under control, she told him everything in dry precise little sentences, terse as a telegram. She began with the finding of the sheet of exercise-book paper with its simple sentence and ended with the finding of the print of bare feet in the mud half an hour ago.

When she had been speaking for two minutes, Canon Thorby abandoned all pretence of drinking his coffee, leaned his elbows on the desk and put his chin on his fists. And for a moment after she had ceased speaking, he remained in that position, regarding her steadily. Then he moved, sat back in his chair and said:

‘You really believe this? You find it easier to credit that Wesley Baines followed his wife last evening, found her dancing barefoot with old Granny Rigby and her crew and was murdered than to believe that ever since the war he has been neurotic and melancholic and last evening drowned himself?’

‘It sounds fantastic, I know. It is that knowledge which has held me silent . . . for far too long. But I believe it. It fits in with everything else.’

‘Ah, maybe. But one should beware of this fitting in with a preconceived notion. Take a simple example. Primitive man believed that thunder was the voice of the Almighty, raised in displeasure, and that the lightning was His sword; consequently, when lightning struck, it all seemed to fit in. We know better.’

‘You don’t believe me,’ she said with a sinking feeling of defeat.

‘I believe that everything you have told me you have said in good faith. I cannot believe the theory you propound to me. I dare not. If I gave one moment’s credence to such superstition, I should be utterly unfit for the vocation I follow.’

‘Why? Many churchmen have admitted the existence of witchcraft.’

‘In the Dark Ages. Just as many doctors then believed in powdered bloodstone as a cure for haemorrhage. A doctor who prescribed it today would soon be in trouble.’