It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs.
Shears’s house. Its eyes were closed. It looked as if it was running on its side, the way dogs run when they
think they are chasing a cat in a dream. But the dog was not running or asleep. The dog was dead. There
was a garden fork sticking out of the dog. The points of the fork must have gone all the way through the
dog and into the ground because the fork had not fallen over. I decided that the dog was probably killed
with the fork because I could not see any other wounds in the dog and I do not think you would stick a
garden fork into a dog after it had died for some other reason, like cancer, for example, or a road accident.
But I could not be certain about this.
I went through Mrs. Shears’s gate, closing it behind me. I walked onto her lawn and knelt beside the dog.
I put my hand on the muzzle of the dog. It was still warm.
The dog was called Wellington. It belonged to Mrs. Shears, who was our friend. She lived on the opposite
side of the road, two houses to the left.