The head had rolled into a mound of sodden hay in a corner of the stall. And when he’d seen it…Oh God, the stealthy eyes of a barn rat glittered in the cavity-quite small, of course-but the quivering grey snout was brilliant with blood and the tiny paws dug! Our Father, who art in heaven…Our Father, who art in heaven…Oh, there’s more, there’s more and I can’t remember it now!

“Father Hart.” The blond man in the morning coat had removed his reading spectacles and had taken from his pocket a gold cigarette case. “Do you smoke?”

“I…yes, thank you.” The priest snatched quickly at the case so that the others might not see how his hand trembled. The man passed the case to the woman, who shook her head sharply in refusal. A silver lighter was produced. It all took a few moments, blessed time to allow him to gather together his fragmented thoughts.

The blond man relaxed in his chair and studied a long line of photographs that had been posted on one of the walls of the offi ce. “Why did you go to the farm that day, Father Hart?” he asked quietly, his eyes moving from one picture to the next.

Father Hart squinted myopically across the room. Were those pictures of suspects? he wondered hopefully. Had Scotland Yard seen fit to begin pursuing this malevolent beast already? He couldn’t tell, wasn’t even certain from this distance that the photographs were of people at all.

“It was Sunday,” he replied as if that would somehow say everything.

The blond man turned his head at that. Surprisingly, his eyes were an engaging brown. “Were you in the habit of going to Teys’s farm on Sundays? For dinner or something?”

“Oh…I…excuse me, I thought the report, you see…” This would never do. Father Hart sucked eagerly at the cigarette. He looked at his fingers. The nicotine stains climbed past every joint. No wonder he’d been offered one. He shouldn’t have forgotten his own, should have bought a pack back at King’s Cross. But there was so very much then… He puffed hungrily at the tobacco.

“Father Hart?” the older man said. He was obviously the blond’s superior. They’d all been introduced but he’d stupidly forgotten their names. The woman’s he knew: Havers. Sergeant, by her garments. But the other two had slipped his mind. He gazed at their grave faces in mounting panic.

“I’m sorry. You asked…?”

“Did you go to Teys’s farm every Sunday?”

Father Hart made a determined effort to think clearly, chronologically, systematically for once. His fingers sought the rosary in his pocket. The cross dug into his thumb. He could feel the tiny corpus stretched out in agony. Oh Lord, to die that way. “No,” he answered in a rush. “William is…was our precentor. Such a wonderful basso profundo. He could make the church ring with sound and I…” Father Hart took a ragged breath to put himself back on the track. “He’d not come to Mass that morning, nor had Roberta. I was concerned. The Teyses never miss Mass. So I went to the farm.”

The cigar smoker squinted at him through the pungent smoke. “Do you do that for all your parishioners? Must certainly keep them in line if you do.”

Father Hart had smoked his cigarette down to the filter. There was nothing for it but to stub it out. The blond man did the same although his was not half-smoked. He brought out the case and offered another. Again the silver lighter appeared; the fl ame caught, produced the smoke that seared his throat, soothed his nerves, numbed his lungs.

“Well, it was mostly because Olivia was concerned.”

A glance at the report. “Olivia Odell?”

Father Hart nodded eagerly. “She and William Teys, you see, had just become engaged. The announcement was to be made at a small tea that afternoon. She’d rung him several times after Mass but got nothing. So she came to me.”

“Why didn’t she go out there herself?”

“She wanted to, of course. But there was Bridie and the duck. He’d got lost somehow, the usual family crisis, and she couldn’t be settled down until he was recovered.”

The three others glanced at one another warily. The priest reddened. How absurd it all sounded! He plunged on. “You see, Bridie is Olivia’s little girl. She has a pet duck. Well, not really a pet, not in the actual sense.” How could he explain all of it to them, all the twists and turns of their village life?

The blond man spoke, kindly. “So while Olivia and Bridie were looking for the duck, you went out to the farm.”

“That’s so exactly right. Thank you.” Father Hart smiled gratefully.

“Tell us what happened when you arrived.”

“I went to the house first, but no one was there. The door wasn’t locked and I remember thinking that was strange. William always locked everything tight as a drum if he went out. He was peculiar that way. Insisted I do the same with the church if I wasn’t about.

Even when the choir practised on Wednesdays he never once left until every person was gone and I’d seen to the doors. That’s the way he was.”

“I imagine his unlocked house gave you a bit of a turn,” the blond man said.

“It did, really. Even at one o’clock in the afternoon. So, when I couldn’t raise anyone with a knock…” He looked at them all apologetically, “I suppose I walked right in.”

“Anything peculiar inside?”

“Nothing at all. It was perfectly clean, as it always was. There was, however…” His eyes shifted to the window. How to explain?

“Yes?”

“The candles had burned down.”

“Have they no electricity?”

Father Hart looked at them earnestly. “These are votive candles. They were always lit. Always. Twenty-four hours a day.”

“For a shrine, you mean?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what it is. A shrine,” he agreed immediately and hurried on. “When I saw that, I knew at once something was wrong. Neither William nor Roberta would ever have let the candles go out. So I went through the house. And from there, out to the barn.”

“And there…?”

What was there really left to report? The chilling tranquillity had told him at once. Outside, in the near pasture, the bleating of sheep and the cry of birds spoke of sanity and peace. But in the barn, the absolute quiet was the core of diablerie. Even from the door the rich cloying smell of pooled blood had reached him, over the mixed odours of manure and grain and rotting hay. It had drawn him forward with seductive, unavoidable hands.

Roberta had been sitting on an overturned pail in one of the stalls, a big girl born of her father’s stock, used to the labour of a farm. She was motionless, staring not at the headless monstrosity that lay at her feet but at the opposite wall and at the cracks that mapped its surface.

“Roberta?” he had called urgently. He felt sickness rising from stomach to throat and his bowels loosening.

There was no response, not a breath, not a movement. Just the sight of her broad back, her sturdy legs curled beneath her, the axe at her side. And then, over her shoulder, he’d seen the body clearly for the fi rst time.

“I did it. I’m not sorry,” the only thing she’d said.

Father Hart squeezed his eyes shut against the memory. “I went at once to the house and rang Gabriel.”

For a moment Lynley believed that the priest was talking about the archangel himself. The odd little man did seem a bit in touch with other worlds as he sat there painfully struggling through his story.

“Gabriel?” Webberly asked incredulously. Lynley could tell that the super’s patience was wearing thin. He fingered through the report for some indication of the name and found it quickly enough.

“Gabriel Langston. Village constable,” he said. “And I take it, Father, that Constable Langston phoned the Richmond police at once?”

The priest nodded. He looked warily at Lynley’s cigarette case and the other man opened it and offered another round. Havers refused and the priest was about to do so as well until Lynley took one himself. His throat felt raw, but he knew they’d never get to the end of the story unless the cleric was supplied with nicotine, and it appeared that he needed a companion in his vice. Lynley swallowed uncomfortably, longed for a whisky, lit up again, and let the cigarette burn itself to nothing in the ashtray.