Heather discovers the mysterious necklace

Heather discovers the mysterious necklace after George’s death and hides it first beneath a stone, then beneath the dolmen. What she treats as an entrancing human Thing becomes, through Miss Maple’s intervention, a possible link to the murderer and a new object for the flock’s investigation.

Discovery and Concealment

Heather finds the object in the meadow soon after George dies. Its appearance holds her attention: it resembles a chain, but is shorter than Tess’s chain and has no visible end. She notices two signs on it, like signs in books, and wonders whether it might be a story rather than a Thing. The circular shape gives her sense of endlessness a literal basis, though the meaning of the marks remains unknown.

Rather than leave it exposed, Heather rolls a stone over the object to keep it safe. On the day she finally tells the flock, she has picked it up in her mouth and hidden it under the dolmen while Sir Ritchfield is counting the sheep. Her explanation comes as a confession: she admits to having been fascinated by the object and says she is sorry, because she no longer wants to see it. The secrecy that protected her private fascination has also kept the object’s presence from the rest of the flock.

Maude identifies Heather’s contact with the object by scent. She notices that Heather’s nose smells of a human Thing, making the sheep’s keen attention to smell part of how the concealment is exposed. The discovery thus begins not with a human identifying or claiming the necklace, but with the flock reading a trace on one of its own members.

The Nighttime Expedition

The flock decides to retrieve the object from the dolmen and dispose of it, returning it to the world of Things and away from sheep. Yet the proposed expedition is not easy to staff. The sheep are afraid to go there at night, especially after the dancing wolf’s ghost was seen at the site. Cloud has trouble with her joints, Sara has to suckle her lamb, and Lane has a sneezing fit; Mopple the Whale tries to avoid the journey by pretending to be night-blind. His collision with a barn post does not excuse him: as the memory sheep, he has to accompany the party.

Sir Ritchfield leads the expedition on a mild, warm, moonlit night. From the shepherd’s caravan, the cliffs are visible, but the strong nocturnal aromas dull the sheep’s sense of smell. Maude stays outside the dolmen entrance to detect any wolf ghosts, while the others peer beneath its capstone. Othello scrapes away earth with his hooves, uncovering the object. At first, the sheep cannot see it clearly because their bodies cast shadows over the prehistoric tomb. They detect the smell of a sweaty hand and metal, along with a sharp scent they cannot identify.

Miss Maple persuades Mopple the Whale to step back. As he retreats, an open shaft of moonlight falls across the object and makes it visible. The scene replaces Heather’s private, prolonged looking with a collective inspection: the flock can now see what she had concealed, though its human purpose remains uncertain.

What the Object Reveals

The sheep had secretly expected something beautiful, or at least beautiful by the standards they apply to Things. Instead they find a thin chain with a piece of metal attached. It has no end only because it forms a circle. The revelation deflates Heather’s idea of endlessness without making the object ordinary to the sheep: its circular shape and the two marks still invite interpretation.

Sir Ritchfield examines the signs using his good eyesight, recovering some confidence after recently losing his train of thought. He describes one as sharp, like an upward-pointing bird’s beak crossed by a line, and the other as resembling a stomach on two legs. He takes the second to signify one of the Two Legs and judges the mark bad. His reading is an interpretation, not a confirmed identification; the episode leaves the signs unexplained. Mopple the Whale wants to throw the object off the cliffs, while also objecting to burying it where the flock might later graze above it. Their responses turn the question of what the object means into a practical dispute about what to do with it.

From Thing to Clue

Miss Maple rejects disposal. She reasons that the object appeared after George’s death and may have been dropped by his murderer, so the flock should keep it. Her comparison to droppings makes the human object legible through the sheep’s own way of tracking evidence: as their traces can point to their presence, a Thing might lead back to the human attached to it. Mopple the Whale notes that it does not smell like droppings, but Maple’s point is not that it resembles them physically; she is proposing that it can function as a trace.

Maple generalizes the deduction into a method: human beings are attached to Things, and Things attach themselves to human beings. If the flock watches such objects closely, she believes, they may find the murderer. The necklace consequently changes status—from Heather’s captivating secret, to an object the flock fears or wants to discard, to a possible piece of evidence. The episode does not establish who owned it, who left it, or whether it was connected to the killing. Its importance lies in Maple’s decision to preserve it and in the investigative principle she draws from it: following human attachments may help the sheep make sense of a human crime.