“It’s the mark of the second weapon,” Alleyn said. “It’s the mark of a shooting-stick, Br’er Fox.”

“Attractive house,” Alleyn said as they emerged from the Home Coppice into full view of Nunspardon, “attractive house, Fox, isn’t it?”

“Very fine residence,” Fox said. “Georgian, would it be?”

“It would. Built on the site of the former house, which was a nunnery. Hence Nunspardon. Presented (as usual, by Henry VIII) to the Lacklanders. We’ll have to go cautiously here, Br’er Fox, by gum, we shall. They’ll have just about finished their breakfast. I wonder if Lady Lacklander has it downstairs or in her room. She has it downstairs,” he added as Lady Lacklander herself came out of the house with half a dozen dogs at her heels.

“She’s wearing men’s boots!” Fox observed.

“That may be because of her ulcerated toe.”

“Ah, to be sure. Lord love us!” Fox ejaculated. “She’s got a shooting-stick on her arm.”

“So she has. It may not be the one. And then again,” Alleyn muttered as he removed his hat and gaily lifted it on high to the distant figure, “it may.”

“Here she comes. No, she doesn’t.”

“Hell’s boots, she’s going to sit on it.”

Lady Lacklander had in fact begun to tramp towards them but had evidently changed her mind. She answered Alleyn’s salute by waving a heavy gardening glove at him. Then she halted, opened her shooting-stick and, with alarming empiricism, let herself down on it.

“With her weight,” Alleyn said crossly, “she’ll bloody well bury it. Come on.”

As soon as they were within hailing distance, Lady Lacklander shouted, “Good morning to you.” She then remained perfectly still and stared at them as they approached. Alleyn thought, “Old basilisk! She’s being deliberately embarrassing, damn her,” and he returned the stare with inoffensive interest, smiling vaguely.

“Have you been up all night?” she asked when they were at an appropriate distance. “Not that you look like it, I must say.”

Alleyn said, “We’re sorry to begin plaguing you so early but we’re in a bit of a jam.”

“Baffled?”

“Jolly nearly. Do you mind,” Alleyn went on with what his wife would have called sheer rude charm, “do you mind having your brains picked at nine o’clock in the morning?”

“What do you want with other people’s brains, I should like to know,” she said. Her eyes, screwed in between swags of flesh, glittered at him.

Alleyn embarked on a careful tarradiddle. “We begin to wonder,” he said, “if Cartarette’s murderer may have been lying doggo in the vicinity for some time before the assault.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t see him.”

“I mean really doggo. And as far as we know, which is not as far as we’d like, there’s no telling exactly where the hiding place could have been. We think it might have been somewhere that commanded at any rate a partial view of the bridge and the willow grove. We also think that it may have overlooked your sketching hollow.”

“You’ve discovered where that is, have you?”

“Simplicity itself, I promise you. You used an easel and a sketching stool.”

“And with my weight to sustain,” she said rocking, to his dismay, backwards and forwards on the shooting-stick, “the latter no doubt left its mark.”

“The thing is,” Alleyn said, “we think this person in hiding may have waited until he saw you go before coming out of cover. Did you stay down in your hollow all the time?”

“No, I had a look at my sketch several times from a distance. Anaemic beast it turned out, in the end.”

“Where exactly did you stand when you looked at it?”

“On the rise between the hollow and the bridge. You can’t have gone over your ground properly or you’d have found that out for yourself.”

“Should I? Why?” Alleyn asked and mentally touched wood.

“Because, my good Roderick, I used this shooting-stick and drove it so far into the ground that I was able to walk away and leave it, which I did repeatedly.”

“Did you leave it there when you went home?”

“Certainly. As a landmark for the boy when he came to collect my things. I dumped them beside it.”

“Lady Lacklander,” Alleyn said, “I want to reconstruct the crucial bit of the landscape as it was after you left it. Will you lend us your shooting-stick and your sketching gear for an hour or so? We’ll take the greatest care of them.”

“I don’t know what you’re up to,” she said, “and I suppose I may as well make up my mind that I won’t find out. Here you are.”

She heaved herself up and, sure enough, the disk and spike of her shooting-stick had been rammed down so hard into the path that both were embedded and the shooting-stick stood up of its own accord.

Alleyn desired above all things to release it with the most delicate care, perhaps dig it up, turf and all, and let the soil dry and fall away. But there was no chance of that; Lady Lacklander turned and with a single powerful wrench tore the shooting-stick from its bondage.

“There you are,” she said indifferently and gave it to him. “The sketching gear is up at the house. Come and get it?”

Alleyn thanked her and said that they would. He carried the shooting-stick by its middle and they all three went up to the house. George Lacklander was in the hall. His manner had changed overnight and he now spoke with the muted solemnity with which men of his type approach a sickroom or a church service. He made a further reference to his activities as a Justice of the Peace but otherwise was huffily reserved.

“Well, George,” his mother said, and bestowed a peculiar smirk upon him, “I don’t suppose they’ll let me out on bail, but no doubt you’ll be allowed to visit me.”

“Really, Mama!”

“Roderick is demanding my sketching gear on what appears to me to be a sadly trumped-up excuse. He has not yet, however, administered what I understand to the the Usual Warning.”

“Really, Mama!” George repeated with a miserable titter.

“Come along, Rory,” Lady Lacklander continued and led Alleyn out of the hall into a cloakroom where umbrellas, an assortment of galoshes, boots and shoes, and a variety of rackets and clubs were assembled. “I keep them here to be handy,” she said, “for garden peeps. I’m better at herbaceous borders than anything else, which just about places my prowess as a water-colourist, as, no doubt, your wife would tell you.”

“She’s not an aesthetic snob,” Alleyn said mildly.

“She’s a damn’ good painter, however,” Lady Lacklander continued. “There you are. Help yourself.”

He lifted a canvas haversack to which were strapped an easel and an artist’s umbrella. “Did you use the umbrella?” he asked.

“William, the boy, put it up. I didn’t want it; the sun was gone from the valley. I left it, standing but shut, when I came home.”

“We’ll see if it showed above the hollow.”

“Roderick,” said Lady Lacklander, suddenly, “what exactly were the injuries?”

“Hasn’t your grandson told you?”

“If he had I wouldn’t ask you.”

“They were cranial.”

“You needn’t be in a hurry to return the things. I’m not in the mood.”

“It’s very kind of you to lend them.”

“Kettle will tell me,” said Lady Lacklander, “all about it!”

“Of course she will,” he agreed cheerfully, “much better than I can.”

“What persuaded you to leave the Service for this unlovely trade?”

“It’s a long time ago,” Alleyn said, “but I seem to remember that it had something to do with a liking for facts.”

“Which should never be confused with the truth.”

“I still think they are the raw material of the truth. I mustn’t keep you any longer. Thank you so much for helping us,” Alleyn said and stood aside to let her pass.

He and Fox were aware of her great bulk, motionless on the steps, as they made their way back to the Home Coppice. Alleyn carried the shooting-stick by its middle and Fox the sketching gear. “And I don’t mind betting,” Alleyn said, “that from the rear we look as self-conscious as a brace of snowballs in hell.”