“Lovely view, isn’t it?” said the Vicar. He had come alongside Verity, unobserved.

“Isn’t it? Although at the moment I was looking at the person behind the box hedge.”

“McBride,” said the Vicar.

“I thought so, by the trousers.”

“I know so. They were once my own.”

“Does it,” Verity asked, after a longish pause, “strike you that he is sustaining an exacting pose for a very long time?”

“Now you mention it.”

“He hasn’t stirred.”

“Rapt, perhaps, over the wonders of nature,” joked the Vicar.

“Perhaps. But he must be doubled over at the waist like, a two-foot rule.”

“One would say so, certainly.”

“He gave Sybil notice this morning on account of health.”

“Could he be feeling faint, poor fellow,” hazarded the Vicar, “and putting his head between his knees?” And after a moment: “I think I’ll go and see.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Verity. “I wanted to look at the rose-garden, in any case.”

They went out by the french window and crossed the lawn. The sun had come out and a charming little breeze touched their faces.

As they neared the box hedge the Vicar, who was over six feet tall, said in a strange voice: “It’s very odd.”

“What is?” Verity asked. Her heart, unaccountably, had begun to knock at her ribs.

“His head’s in the wheelbarrow. I fear,” said the Vicar, “he’s fainted.”

But McBride had gone further than that. He was dead.

ii

He had died, the doctor said, of a heart attack and his condition was such that it might have happened anytime over the last year or so. He was thought to have raised the handles of the barrow, been smitten and tipped forward, head first, into the load of compost with which it was filled.