Stretched across the road was the body of a policeman.
On the way home one evening in the Romney Marsh, Bookseller Theodore
Terhune and friend Julia are caught in heavy coastal fog. A passing
lorry provides some guidance on the narrow country roads, but the night
ends with intentional mishap and a dead body. It becomes clear that the
constable's death was not accidental, but what possessed Tom Kitchen to
try to stop a lorry singlehandedly at 1am? His widow is frightened;
local farms vandalized; his home ransacked. Suspicion centres around the
Load of Hay, an ancient Dickensian pub full of unsavoury characters,
and Terhune finds the clues may lay in the history of 18th
century smuggling in the Romney Marsh.