One of the gentlemen farmers she had most trouble with was Arthur Webber, although it wasn’t what Walter persisted in calling a trouser problem. It was more serious than that.
He was a retired journalist who’d come back to the village to run the family farm when his brother joined up. He was a well-educated man, tutored by the old vicar, gone to Oxford, and then all over the world reporting for his paper. She remembered him from her childhood; older than her, and a presence in the village.
By the time she came home, he’d gained a distinct reputation for eccentricity.
“I’m worried about him, if the truth be told,” his housekeeper, her old friend Annie Beelock, told her when they met by chance in the Post Office. “He’s losing weight and he’s a funny colour. I can’t get him to come down to
