There really was something quite Old Testament about him, she thought, with his black hair falling to the collar, his white face, his bright, angry eyes. Moses would have looked much the same with the golden calf. Or Joshua storming the walls of Jericho. ‘They’re going to cut down Dingle Dell!’‘What are you talking about?’ Henrietta had made two cups of tea. She put them down and moved further into the room.‘Sir Magnus Pye has sold it for development. They’re going to build a new road and eight new houses.’‘Where?’‘Right here!’ The vicar gestured at the window. ‘Right at the bottom of our garden! That’s going to be our view from now on – a row of modern houses! He won’t see them, of course. He’ll be on the other side of the lake and I’m sure he’ll leave enough trees to form a screen. But you and me …’‘He can’t do it, can he?’ Henrietta went round so that she could read the headline. NEW HOMES FOR SAXBY-ON-AVON. It seemed to be a remarkably up-beat interpretation of such an act of vandalism.
