Chapter Twelve
Deluge at the Ford

The next morning, they caught another bus to Welshpool. Once in Welshpool, they repaired to The Hog’s Tusk for a well-earned rest. The memory had receded of the original sinister cloaked figures, who had not been seen since the previous day. Nevertheless, the nine grad students, though now many leagues away, knew of Hapless and friends’ intended destination and had plans to lie in wait for them. The friends were heading towards a carefully planned ambush.

The front garden of Hogsendell was verdant and rich with the colour of roses. A woman happened to be gazing out of the window, observing the artistic skill of the sunlight in backlighting the leaves of a linden tree in a particularly attractive way. She wished for a few fleeting seconds that she was still young enough to walk the hills of Wales. She started to turn away, but then decided to remain at the window. Something had caught her attention. A shiver ran down her spine. There were shadows moving towards the house, keeping to the laurel bushes. As she watched, her face reflected, wraith-like in the glass, she observed several hooded and cloaked figures approaching the gate: four from the Bridge Inn, and five from the direction of the Privet and Shears end of Dursley Drive. Then, even as she raised her spectacles to see better, a horse box thundered past, spraying the figures head to toe as it displaced whole puddles full of dirty water and dead leaves. She thought she could just discern in the water the shapes of several dog turds in small plastic bags, which had been left there by people too stupid to know that they were stupid. With a general shaking of fists and a combined shout of “Bastard!”, the figures, and the horse box, were gone.