The Hanging Tree

''The original crossroads used to run by here,'' Sam told Rafferty. ''Legend has it that this was the old Hanging Tree.''

When Inspector Rafferty first hears the report that a bound and hooded body has been seen hanging from a tree in Dedman Wood, he dismisses it as a schoolboy hoax, especially when police at the scene find nothing out of the ordinary.

But his anxiety rises sharply when the witness turns out to be a respectable local magistrate, who identifies the corpse as Maurice Smith, a man once accused of four child rapes. Thrown out on a legal technicality, Smith''s case had become a cause célèbre which had generated much ill-feeling within the community.

Then the body turns up again in the woods. Could there be a self-appointed executioner at work, meting out his own form of justice on the legendary Hanging Tree?