The flock decides to investigate George’s death

The flock’s decision to investigate George Glenn’s death turns bereavement into a collective claim to justice. Faced with a shepherd killed by a human act, the sheep refuse to leave the question of responsibility to the people around them: they will identify the perpetrator themselves, beginning with Miss Maple’s examination of the body and eventually asserting their own choice of who should represent them.

Discovery and grounds for inquiry

George was found lying motionless in the green Irish grass beside the Hay Shed, near a path through the fields. A crow had settled on his Norwegian sweater, while the sheep held their meeting farther away, close to the cliff edge. The flock had managed to stay calm that morning, although its first alarm included fears about who would bring hay and whether a wolf was nearby. Miss Maple steadied them with practical distinctions: it was midsummer on a rich pasture, and a spade driven into a body did not resemble the work of even a sophisticated wolf.

The possibility of illness was quickly dismissed. Maude observed that George had been healthy the day before, and Sir Ritchfield pointed out that a spade was not an illness. His blunt conclusion made the death a human problem rather than a natural misfortune. Othello, the flock’s only black sheep, sharpened that inference with knowledge drawn from his youth at Dublin Zoo: the act could have been done by a human, or by an exceptionally large monkey. The monkey remained a wry possibility, but the sheep’s attention had shifted decisively toward human responsibility.

The flock makes its decision

Miss Maple argues that the flock owes George an investigation because he had acted as their shepherd. When a fierce dog took one of their lambs, George had tried to find the culprit; now the sheep can return that standard of care. In her view, no one had the right to drive a spade into him. She names the act as murder and treats it as conduct belonging to the wolfish world of violence, not to the ordinary order of the pasture.

Heather asks what the sheep will do once they find the person responsible. Othello answers with a call for justice, and the others join him. Their collective response does more than express grief: it makes a decision. George Glenn’s flock appoints itself to solve the killing. That commitment is striking because the sheep are not merely witnesses waiting for human authorities to interpret what they have seen. They understand the death through their own relationships and obligations, and they set themselves the task of pursuing it.

The first examination and the missing weapon

Miss Maple’s inquiry begins at the body. She approaches reluctantly, since George has already begun to smell in the summer heat, but reluctance does not stop her from examining the evidence. She circles him at a respectful distance, waits as the crow flutters away, and then moves closer to inspect the Spade and sniff his clothes and face. At last she puts her nose into the wound and roots around. The rest of the flock watches from a huddle at a safe distance; when Maple returns, there is blood on her muzzle. The scene makes the cost of her role physical, while establishing observation—not guesswork—as the flock’s first method.

The inquiry continues the next day around George’s caravan and vegetable garden. The garden had been fenced off, and George’s watchfulness had kept the sheep from eating its lettuces, peas, radishes, cress, tomatoes, endives, buttercups, and chives. With him gone, Lane pushes back the bolt and the flock strips the beds. Afterward, the sheep fall silent and return to the meadow, ashamed of what they have done. Othello, who did not join the raid, draws Miss Maple’s attention to the usual place where George’s garden spade leaned: behind the caravan, only the whitewashed wall and a few flies remain. The missing tool gives the earlier examination a practical next question. The flock’s ordinary appetites and its search for a murderer occupy the same landscape, but the absence of the Spade makes the garden itself part of the investigation.

A wider conflict and the question of representation

The killing is set against arguments over what George’s pasture is worth. Harry and Tom accuse him of obstructing development and allege that he made money through nighttime boats bringing contraband ashore, which was then taken to the caravan and driven away. These are the villagers’ claims, not a conclusion established by the flock’s initial decision. Their presence nevertheless shows why identifying a killer is not the only stake surrounding George’s death: the land, its possible commercial uses, and the story told about its former owner are contested too.

The flock’s later dealings with George’s will extend the logic of its self-appointed investigation into decisions about its future. The will leaves the remainder of his fortune to the sheep so they can go to Europe as promised, but the lawyer says they need an authorized human representative to accompany them. That role carries concrete duties, including reading stories aloud, and the lawyer is to check that its conditions are met. When he asks whether anyone else will volunteer, Rebecca steps forward. Gabriel’s soft Gaelic does not draw the flock to him: Othello moves toward Rebecca, and the others gather around her. Their choice does not itself solve the murder, but it shows the consequence of the sheep’s insistence on agency: even within a human legal arrangement, they act together to decide who will speak and care for them.

Rebecca’s later story of a girl with both a secret father and an unsecret one brings the investigation’s personal stakes into focus. She describes a quarrel, a long silence, and a father who waits himself to death after writing that he hopes to see his daughter before travelling to Europe. The tale connects George’s promised journey with the estrangement between father and daughter. Set beside the flock’s decision to investigate, it makes justice more than the naming of an attacker: the sheep’s pursuit of the truth unfolds within a family history marked by missed reconciliation, as well as within a community disputing what George and his land meant.