"But where is Mary, then?" Marchbanks insisted in a great voice, upon which Merode slumped forward in a faint. As she rang the bell on the desk for Miss Birks, and started up out of her chair, Ma Marchbanks thought, oh dear, to faint right away while I was questioning, how will that look, oh dear, but the poor child.

Mr Rock went out with the bran to summon Ted, his goose. It was unusual for the bird not to be at hand, waiting.

"Ted," he called, "Ted," in exactly the swill man's voice he had used to announce his presence in the kitchen, only louder. He turned this way and that, but there was no sign. Then he saw a sergeant of police push his bicycle onto the path from the road. The blue uniform gave Mr Rock a jolt. Already, he asked himself, so soon?

The old man's cottage stood, like the hub of a wheel, on a spot at which several rides met. As he watched the policeman he saw, out of the corner of an eye, his goose come in a rush, absurd sight, its neck outstretched, wings violently beating to help cover the ground it had never left. Sun now made the bird a blaze of white.

"Morning, Mr Rock," the sergeant said. "Might turn out warm," he said.

"Yes," the older man replied and then, as Ted came up hissing, the policeman walked round his bike to put this between the goose and himself.

Mr Rock threw balls of bran as if to sow dragon's teeth.

"She'll do you fine at Christmas," the sergeant said.

The sage, who had no intention of ever killing Ted, merely grunted.

"Did I hear you call her Ted?" the policeman asked. So much a detective he should be in plain clothes, Mr Rock sneered to himself. "Because it's a funny thing," the man went on. Would be, Mr Rock shouted in his mind. "Yes, very strange," the sergeant mused aloud. "We have a cat at home, a torn, and we call her Paula."

"Poorer?" Mr Rock enquired, in his deafness.

"Why how's that?" the policeman asked.

"I don't know," the old man answered, putting on an idiotic look, as he often did. He knocked the bran tin against a boot to clean it.

"What I was going to ask was, if I could leave my bike against your shed, thanking you Mr Rock?"

"Shall you be long?"

"I've to go up to the house, that's all."

"Then why not ride there?"

"I came this way," the policeman said.

"Who are you going to arrest in any case?" Mr Rock asked. He was being made garrulous by his dread for Elizabeth and the cottage.

"Likely they'll kick up a fuss when they see me," the sergeant answered at a tangent, and laid his bike down on the grass. "It's only a matter for a few enquiries, but Miss Marchbanks would have it the Inspector must come himself. Didn't want another. But he's hard pressed, that man is. And of course he's not the only one."

"They've found the one," Mr Rock announced, as though he had been questioned. He was watching the policeman, from behind his spectacles, with the same idiot look.

"How's that?" this man enquired, carefully expressionless, eyes on a now peaceful goose.

"Close to here," Mr Rock said. "Hurt her leg."

"You found her and she'd hurt her leg?" the sergeant echoed, reaching into a pocket for what the older man was sure would be the official notebook, but which turned out to be his handkerchief.

"No," Mr Rock said, and warned himself that he should be careful. There was a pause.

"I just wondered," the policeman said. "The lady came so serious over our telephone how nothing should get about. Close by, was it?" His manner, all at once, Mr Rock thought, was no other than threatening.

"Yes," the old man agreed.

"Then, I'd best get on up, of course," the other said. "Take particulars," he added, but did not move off.

"There's another of their girls missed yet," Mr Rock volunteered. "A nasty business," he said, with decision.

"How's that, sir?" the sergeant asked, mildly this time, giving him the courtesy because, after all, they did say he had been someone.

"Well, if you live on a place you take part in the day to day affairs," Mr Rock said. The goose, having finished what there had been, made off, wagging its tail.

"Ah, news gets about," the policeman agreed mistakenly.

"You come to feel part of it," Mr Rock corrected.

"Still missing, eh?"

"They have a dance tonight. This has made them nervous," Mr Rock volunteered.

"How come, sir?"

"They're to celebrate the Anniversary of theirs. Only natural."

"As to that, Mr Rock, I couldn't say. And it was you found the one?"

"Mr Birt, who is a tutor, did. Together with my granddaughter. There's a holiday today, they were out for a stroll before breakfast. Brought her back here," Mr Rock explained quite freely, because he knew this would be eagerly reported later. "Gave her a cup of tea," he added, to make it all seem most harmless.

"You gave her a cup of tea?" the sergeant echoed in a blank voice. Mr Rock did not bother to correct him.

"Tea," he agreed.

There was a pause.

"Well then, if I could leave the old bike, I'd best be on my way over," the policeman said, having missed his cup, and made off. He left the machine where it lay on the ground. Mr Rock noticed, with a dreadful reluctance, that its uppermost pedal still revolved.

Not long after, and several hours before the usual time on Wednesdays, Baker and Edge were driven back into the Park in their little red State tourer, which hummed up the main Drive at twenty miles an hour. A cloud of white dust attended it, was always at a respectful distance, following behind.

"I love this Great Place," Miss Edge shouted to her companion as though the lady were as deaf as Mr Rock, then put her face out of one side. With the colour of the car, with the driver, a stout woman in black livery, and the smallness of the back and its occupants, then with the great sun beating stretched earth as a brass hand on a tomtom, they seemed no less than wicked, up to date fairies in a book for younger girls who had just started reading.

But it was not entirely in search of malice that Edge scanned the now high, almost unbroken ramparts of flowering rhododendron which whisked past in vast, red and white splodges, it was not, say, for a sight of decapitated frogs the artificial cherries, which matched the car's paintwork, bobbed and scraped to either side of her black London hat, nor could it even have been for the perfume of those eunuch scentless flowers that her thin nostrils opened and shut like a rabbit's, and little blue eyes, continually darting sideways to catch up with the car's speed, found no repose or a girl's face anywhere on which they could read the answer to the question she dared not put, where was Mary, where Merode? She turned back to Baker.

"I hope they have at least got ahead with our decorations," she said.

"If they've had time," Miss Baker dryly answered.

"I was watching to find if they might have cut any on this exquisite Drive," Edge excused herself. "I had blamed myself for telling Marchbanks they were to take care, when they robbed nature, that it should be where we could not see. For you know how it is, Baker. Usually one has only to suggest what must not be done to find it carried into practice far quicker than any order, however sensible my dear, but there."