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wood was restored. At least in the minds of the villagers.
    The pity was that no one had troubled to record it as such under the 1965 Commons Registration Act, which would have given it status in law. Instead, unclaimed and unowned, it remained tantalizingly available to the first squatter who took up residence on it and was prepared to defend his right to stay.
     
    Contrary to the instructions he had given his convoy to stay put, Fox stole down the lane and prowled from house to house. Apart from the Manor, the only property of any size was Shenstead House, home to Julian and Eleanor Bartlett. It was set back from the road down a short gravel driveway, and Fox picked his way along the grass verge to deaden his footsteps. He stood for several minutes beside the drawing-room window, watching through a gap in the curtains as Eleanor made serious inroads into her husband's cellar.
    She was a good sixty, but HRT, Botox injections, and regular home aerobics were doing their bit to keep her skin firm. From a distance, she looked younger, but not tonight. She lay on the sofa, eyes glued to the television screen in the corner where
EastEnders
was playing, her ferrety face puffed and blotchy from the bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon on the floor. Unaware of a Peeping Tom, she kept delving her hand into her bra to scratch her breasts, making her blouse gape and showing the telltale sags and wrinkles around her neck and cleavage.
    It was the human side of a nouveau-riche snob and it would have amused Fox if he had any liking for her. Instead, it increased his contempt. He moved around the side of the house to see if he could locate her husband. As usual, Julian was in his study,
his
face, too, flushed with alcohol from the bottle of Glenfiddich on the desk in front of him. He was talking on the telephone and his hearty laugh rattled against the pane. Snippets of the conversation drifted through the glass. "…don't be so paranoid… she's watching telly in the sitting room… of course not… she's far too self-centered… yes, yes, I should be there by nine thirty at the latest… Geoff tells me the hounds are out of practice and saboteurs are expected in droves…"
    Like his wife he didn't look his age, but he kept a secret stash of Grecian 2000 in his dressing room that Eleanor didn't know about. Fox had found it on a stealthy tour of the house one afternoon in September when Julian had gone out and left the back door unlocked. The hair dye wasn't the only thing that Eleanor didn't know about, and Fox toyed with the razor in his pocket as he thought of his satisfaction when she found out. The husband couldn't control his appetites, but the wife had a vicious streak that made her fair game to a hunter like Fox.
    He abandoned Shenstead House to stalk the weekender cottages, looking for life. Most were boarded up for the winter, but in one he found a foursome. The overweight twin sons of the London banker who owned it were with a couple of giggly girls who clung to the men's necks and shrieked hysterically every time they spoke. The fastidious side of Fox's nature found the spectacle distasteful: Tweedledum and Tweedledee, with the sweat of overindulgence staining their shirts and glistening on their brows, looking to score over Christmas with a couple of willing scrubbers.
    The twins' only attraction for women was their father's wealth-which they vaunted-and the fervor with which the drunken girls were throwing themselves into the party spirit suggested a determination to be part of it. If they had any intention of emerging before their libidos wore out, Fox thought, they wouldn't be interested in the encampment at the Copse.
    Two of the commercial rents had staid-looking families in them, but otherwise there were only the Woodgates at Paddock View-the husband and wife team who looked after the commercial properties, and their three young children-and Bob and Vera Dawson at Manor Lodge. Fox couldn't predict how Stephen Woodgate would react