CHAPTER 8
Love And The PoliceThe country round the Mill at Pontisbright at five o’clock on a June morning was of itself a spell. The near distance was dizzy with haze, the dew beads were thick on the grass, the waters were limpid and ringing, the birds sang with idiotic abandon, the air was scented with animals and a thousand flowers.
For Charlie Luke, the Londoner, who was wrestling with a whole assault of a force of unfamiliar furies most cruelly released within him, it was a merciless fairyland.
By five he had swum in the pool, been for a walk, examined his car, looked at the telephone, set his watch wrong by the grandfather clock, and made himself a daisy-chain. By six he had repeated the entire performance, save for the chain, which he had had to bury in case anyone found it, and
