The Ashgrove Exposure

It was raining hard.

The wire had come in a little after eleven: a man dead at the observatory on the hill, and the village constable asking for someone from town. I took the trap as far as the foot of the hill, where the driver shook his head and said no horse would manage that road in this. The rest I walked.

The road was a stream of mud. Twenty minutes up it my boots were full of water and my breath was short. When I lifted my head there was the observatory on the ridge — built out here, away from the village, so that nothing would spoil the dark for it. Tonight the dome sat against the sky like something blacker than the sky. There was one light on the whole hill: a window in the small house beside the gate, where the housekeeper lived.

I walked towards it.