11: The meaning of the clue in the hat

Alcock thinks he knows what the page folded into (the false) Juggins’ hat is. It is a page from a guidebook to walks in the Yorkshire Dales, written by a famous grumpy man - though he loved animals - called Alfred Wainwright. Alcock has an old copy of the very book, although his, of course, still has that page in it.

But although that clears up what the page is, it does not explain another strange mystery or coincidence. The relevant page describes a walk in the village of Masongill, the very village that their colleague Masongill the mole originally came from. Wainwright angrily describes a very bad thing that happened to some of the village’s moles some years before. The ‘massacre at Masongill’.

Alcock wisely decides that it is best not to tell Masongill about this. He folds the paper back into the form of a hat and gives it to Lottie who will no doubt put it down and forget about it in probably the same sort of place she originally found it. No one wants to keep the hat, now.