Read [Wexford 01] From Doon & Death for Free Online

was worried about the condition of the sow. Five piglets had been delivered, but she seemed to be in difficulties and Traynor wanted the manager's consent to call the vet. Draycott had gone to the sties, looked at the sow and talked for a few seconds to Bysouth, who was sitting beside her on a stool, before telephoning for the vet himself. The vet arrived by four and from then until five-thirty the manager, Edwards and Traynor had remained together. During this hour and a half, Traynor said, Bysouth had gone to fetch the cows in and put them in the milking shed. In order to do this he had had to pass the wood twice. Wexford questioned him closely, but he insisted that he had seen nothing out of the way. He had heard no untoward sound and there had been no cars either in the lane itself or parked on the Pomfret Road. According to the other three men he had been even quicker than usual, a haste they attributed to his anxiety as to the outcome of the farrowing.
    It was half past six before the whole litter of pigs had been delivered. The vet had gone into the kitchen to wash his hands and they had all had a cup of tea. At seven he left by the same way as he had come, the front entrance, giving a lift to Edwards, Traynor and Bysouth, who all lived in farm workers' cottages at a hamlet called Clusterwell, some two miles outside Flagford. During the Prewetts' absence Mrs Creavey was staying at the farm overnight The manager performed his final round at eight and went home to his house about fifty yards down the Clusterwell Road.
    Wexford checked with the vet and decided that, apart from mystery story miracles, no one had had time to murder Mrs Parsons and conceal her body in the wood. Only Bysouth had used the lane that passed the wood, and unless he had abandoned his charges dangerously near a derestricted road he was beyond suspicion. To be sure, Mrs Creavey had been alone and out of sight from three-thirty until six-thirty, but she was at least sixty, fat and notoriously arthritic.
    Wexford tried to fix the time Bysouth had passed down and then up the lane, but the cowman didn't wear a watch and his life seemed to be governed by the sun. He protested vehemently that his mind had been on the sow's travail and that he had seen no one on the track, in the wood or walking in the fields.
    Dorothy Sweeting was the only one of them who might remotely be supposed to have owned the Arctic Sable lipstick. But there is a particularly naked raw look about the face of a woman in an unpainted state when that woman habitually uses make-up. Dorothy Sweeting's face was sunburnt and shiny; it looked as if it had never been protected from the weather by cream and powder. The men were almost derisive when Wexford asked them if they had ever seen lipstick on her mouth.
    ‘Y ou didn't go to the farm all day, Miss Sweeting?'
    Dorothy Sweeting laughed a lot Now she laughed heartily. It seemed that to her the questioning was just like part of a serial or a detective story come to life.
    'Not to it ’ she said, 'but I went near it. Guilty, my lord!' Wexford didn't smile, so she went on: ‘I went to see my auntie in Sewingbury after the lecture and it was such a lovely afternoon I got off the bus a mile this side of Pomfret and walked the rest of the way. Old Bysouth was bringing the cows in and I did just stop and have a chat with him.'
    'What time would that have been?'
    ‘F iveish. It was the four-ten bus from Sewingbury ’
    'All right, Miss Sweeting. Your prints will be destroyed after the check has been made.'
    She roared with laughter. Looking at her big broad hands, her forearms like the village blacksmith's. Burden wondered what she intended to do with her life after she had qualified for whatever branch of bucolic craft she was studying.
    Hang on to them by all means,' she said. ‘I’d like to take my place in the rogues' gallery ’
    They drove back to Kin gsmarkham along the quiet half-empty road. There was still an hour to go before the