Nic went off-duty and left the pub. She went away to the east of the village to go to her sick child in Greenwood Cottage.
Matt came back into the bar after she had gone, and talked with Kenton for a while; Kenton wouldn’t serve him, and sent him out for some fresh air.
Justin arrived breathing fire, Kenton talked him down, and Justin left some minutes later.
Matt was walking along the road with goes north-south through the village, nowhere even slightly near Greenwood Cottage, when he was knocked down.
Even allowing for the really extreme unlikeliness of Nic knocking someone down with her car, going over to check the body, and then leaving them to die in the ditch – particularly someone against whom she actually had no animus whatever apart from the invented one of not wanting to store his suitcases behind the bar that evening – and driving off with a squeal of tyres, why would Nic have been on that road at all?
And would the damage to her car have been unnoticed by Will? Not a snowball’s chance on a hot tin roof.
< Crawford >Yeah yeah< /Crawford >
Little st nic had to zoom off to her mother’s gaff or hovel to pick up the ailing Poppay (I know, but bear with me). What route would that have brought the tedious drip in by? Actually, please don’t exert yourself over the map, o Fish, because I am quite sure no other bugger is doing so. And as to dents in cars, pah! If Bums got himself sort of seconded to CID a bit for the investigation, I am quite sure that little detail can be hammered out.
The suggestion could be that Poppy was at Grange Farm, which would explain Nic being on that road; but the timing is still all wrong. Either she would have been on the road 'way before Matt was, or she did this hit-and-run, including getting out and going to have a look and still not calling the cops, with Poppy in the back of the car.