Lambert parked it beside the tiny children’s playground, where swings hung motionless in the dank air. There was not a soul to be seen on Christmas Eve. Lambert was reminded of the mining disaster which had been one of his most difficult assignments as a young, uniformed policeman. The community then had shut itself off in its grief, as though outsiders, however sympathetic, were intruding upon emotions they could never understand. Only one man had died this time, but it was a small village, and he had been its vicar. Even in these harsh and hedonistic days, the cloth should afford a man some protection. And Peter Barton had been a man who had loved his flock and been loved himself. Perhaps his parishioners realized this only with his brutal removal from their midst. The thirst for revenge, that most primitive and insistent of human reactions, would gather force as the day drew to its close. But the village now was still shocked enough to resent intruders.
