The Shepherd’s Hook at Haydown Cross
The fête had been running since half past ten, and by noon the smell of crushed grass and hot pasties had settled over Haydown Cross like a familiar old blanket. Agnes Prewitt stood at the jam and preserves stall, adjusting a label on a pot of blackcurrant, and watched the rest of the village enjoy itself. Children shrieked near the coconut shy. The brass band played something approximating Elgar. A border collie of advanced years slept beneath the raffle table, undisturbed by anything.
Agnes noticed things. She always had. Forty-one years of teaching in a village primary school had made her attentive in ways she could not switch off, even in retirement.
What she noticed now was that Gerald Fitch, the oldest working shepherd in the county, was standing beside the display of his own craftsmanship with his hands pressed flat against the trestle table, and the shepherd’s crook he had carved from a single piece of hazel was gone.
She was beside him in under a minute.
“Gerald. When did you last see it?”
He did not look at her. His eyes moved slowly across the crowd. “It was here at eleven. I went for tea. Quarter of an hour, no more.”
The crook had been carved over thirty years, he had once told her. Not literally, not all at once. But he had returned to it, shaped a little here, smoothed a little there, until the handle had the precise curve of a wave caught mid-break. He had never sold it. He had brought it today only to display it alongside the three he was selling. It was not a saleable thing. It was his.
Agnes looked at the remaining crooks, then at the crowd. “Did anyone speak to you about it this morning? Show particular interest?”
Gerald’s jaw tightened. “Young Marsden. The one who bought Colley Farm last spring.”
Agnes knew the name rather better than she wished to. Oliver Marsden had arrived in February with money and opinions. He had immediately set about renegotiating every arrangement the previous owner had made with neighbouring farms, including the grazing agreement under which Gerald Fitch’s sheep had wintered on Colley’s lower field for the past eighteen years.
“What did he say?”
“Asked the price. I told him it wasn’t for sale. He smiled and walked away.” Gerald finally looked at her. The skin around his eyes was deeply lined, and his hands on the table had not moved. “He had a canvas bag over his shoulder.”
Agnes gave Gerald’s arm one brief, firm press. Then she went to find Oliver Marsden.
She spotted him near the beer tent, talking to a man she didn’t recognise. Marsden was broad-shouldered and well-dressed in a way that suggested he had researched what country people wore. His canvas bag hung from his left hand. It was full. The shape of something long and curved pressed against the fabric from inside.
Agnes walked directly to him.
“Mr. Marsden. What a pleasant afternoon.” She smiled the smile she had used on children who had definitely broken the classroom window.
He returned it with the confidence of someone who had never been a child caught at anything. “Mrs. Prewitt, isn’t it? Gerald Fitch’s old teacher, I understand.”
“I taught him, yes. Forty years ago. He was an exceptionally observant child.” She let her gaze rest on the bag. “Lovely day for the fête. Heavy bag for such a warm afternoon.”
A pause. Something moved behind his eyes.
“Just a few things I’ve picked up.”
“Gerald’s crook is missing,” she said pleasantly. “The carved hazel one. Irreplaceable, of course. He’s rather devastated. Sergeant Hollowell is on his way across now.” This last part was not strictly true yet, but it would be in approximately three minutes, because Agnes had sent the boy from the raffle table to fetch him before she had even left the preserves stall.
Marsden’s companion found somewhere else to be.
The silence stretched. A gust moved through the bunting overhead, setting it flapping with a sound like a slow clap.
“I picked it up by mistake,” Marsden said. “Thought it was one I’d paid for.”
“How easy to do,” said Agnes. “Though you did ask the price of that particular one and were told it wasn’t for sale, so perhaps your memory is working less well than usual today.”
Sergeant Hollowell arrived, slightly out of breath, and Agnes stood aside.
The crook was returned to Gerald Fitch seven minutes later. Gerald ran his thumb along the curve of the handle, checking it as a person checks the face of someone who has been in an accident, looking for damage. He found none.
Agnes returned to the jam stall and straightened a pot of gooseberry that didn’t need straightening.
At two o’clock, the brass band played something that might have been a march, and the border collie slept on, and the afternoon sun lay warm across Haydown Cross in the particular way it did in early July, gold and a little heavy, like something almost too good to last.
Gerald found her at the end of the day, as the stalls were coming down.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Nonsense,” said Agnes, folding a tablecloth with great attention. “I only noticed a thing or two. As one does.”
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