Calfhill gaped as if at a cunning trick, then took a step backwards. 'What the devil-?'

The man discharged the weapon without ceremony. There was a surprisingly soft explosion and a small puff of smoke. The lead ball struck Calfhill square in the chest. He staggered backwards like a clumsy dancer, then lowered his head and blinked curiously at the wound, from which blood spurted as if from the bung-hole of a wine cask. He raised his hands to staunch it, but the front of his doublet had already darkened and his face was as white as a goose. His mouth opened and closed as if forming one last outraged objection. It never came, for with a smooth, almost balletic manoeuvre he executed a half turn and crumpled into the reeds at the water's edge.

The man tucked the pistol away and, five minutes later, reached his two companions, who were waiting for him beyond the crest of the rise. For a mile the three of them followed one of the sheep tracks on the downlands. Then they swung inland on to a narrow post-road. By this time a half-dozen sand crabs were scuttling across the shingle towards Calfhill's body, over which the tallest osiers were bent like mourners. His corpse would not be discovered for several more days, by which time the trio of riders had entered the gates of London.

Chapter Three

The only way to reach Crampton Magna in those days was to follow the road from London to Plymouth as far as Shaftesbury and then turn south along an ill-defined and seldom-used network of trackways leading towards the distant coast. On its way to Dorchester, one of the most rustic of these passed round the edge of a village of ten or twelve timber-built houses with sooty, moss-dripping thatches, all crouched in a snug fold of low hills. Crampton Magna-for this, at last, was it-also contained a decrepit mill with broken sluices, a single inn, a church with an octagonal spire, and a shrunken, peat-coloured stream that was forded in one spot and crossed in another, some hundred yards below, by a narrow stone bridge.