Maggots Crag, where I intended to investigate Lady Bentwing, had seemed close when spied from the hotel. Had I been a crow it would have been. However, the route digressed for crops of barley, skirted purple fields of bilberry and avoided murky clumps of forest. Mud-dunged farmyards flung lingering stinks of horse, pig and cow.

Through this bucolic heritage I buzzed ahead of the pursuers until, rounding a sharp corner, I had to brake smartly for a slow-towed caravan. Where do they come from? To where do they crawl? It is one of the mysteries of this ancient domain. Today, however, I guessed the answer. Like me and everybody, the vehicle ahead was bound for Maggots Crag.

At journey’s end, I saw that others had preceded our bumper chain up a leafy hill and were parked around a local version of Stonehenge. The view from this circle of monoliths lay like a crumpled quilt, forever England to the horizon. Lady Bentwing stood on a central mound, the ancient tomb of a Viking named Maggot. The weathered columns leaned to each other as if discussing the weird rituals now occurring.

Men, women and children wore a motley of tracksuits or shorts, vests, halter-tops, sunglasses and hats, although these two latter items seemed unnecessary in the willing yet tepid English sunshine. Lady Bentwing wore a feathered Robin Hood hat and green tights and she brandished a sturdy longbow to welcome young and old. I had come to watch her for signs of remorse, anticipating that her overnight guilt would have replaced the triumph of the kill and her imperious rantings to sycophants in the hotel's tea lounge.

Barely an hour after the murder, I had observed her seizing and demolishing the last cream goody, and chatting to her social minions without apparent qualms, yet conscience should have kicked in by now. I studied her features for traces of it. Sometimes, facial muscles betray a remorse all their own, with no prompting from the guilty.