Mo puffed with laughter. ‘It was a joke! You’re a high flyer, you.’

Bridge forced a smile, curling her fingers through Craic’s mane, grateful at least that he made her feel miles high. ‘Sure I am.’

*

Peeling off his yard gloves in his small cottage kitchen, Lester fetched Stubbs’s feed bowl, shaking in the kibble and breaking an egg on top, before dousing it all with a splash of water from the kettle that he now refilled and switched on.

‘You’ll have to wait,’ he reminded the little fox terrier as it danced from paw to paw below, Lloyd George eyebrows shifting.

Lester folded the metal mesh rack around his slice of bread and wedged it between Rayburn range plate and lid. Leaving it to toast, he headed outside to fill the bowl in the hutch by the back door. Two vulpine eyes gleamed back at him.

Laurence the fox. The stud’s housekeeper Pip had named it – she was a big fan of the television series Lewis, starring an actor by that name.

Compton Magna Stud had been manned by an increasingly paltry staff in recent years, the breeding enterprise downscaled in the shadow of family tragedy, ill health and economic recession. Lester, recruited by the late Captain Jocelyn Percy during his national service days with the Household Cavalry, had worked there for over fifty years, and been stallion man for twenty, outstaying all others. Now, even the eager local housekeeper appeared to have deserted the sinking ship, claiming to be far too busy over Christmas to help out.

Despite finding chatty little Pip very wearying, Lester missed her baking. He hoped she would be back in the New Year, although Ronnie seemed to have the impression Pip was taking up a new career in private detection, no doubt inspired by her taste in small-screen whodunnits. Lester had never heard anything so ludicrous.

Then again, if such a far-fetched thing were true, he might be grateful for her services. Some strange things were going on around here. Initially relieved that Ronnie had decided to stay on in Compton Magna to take up the reins of her late father’s enterprise – pleased would be pushing it – Lester was extremely annoyed that she’d hired a stud manager who was coming over from Canada to run it with her for six months, no doubt bringing newfangled ideas and gadgetry. Moreover, while the man had yet to arrive, his possessions had been turning up throughout the Christmas period. First had been the mysterious boxes that had been delivered by international movers, sent by shipping container weeks ago, then a horsebox had rolled up to drop off more bags and boxes, an eventer friend laughingly sharing the joke with Ronnie that a rolling stone like Luca O’Brien gathered no moss because he left it all in other people’s barns. There had been several phone calls to the stud’s landline at very antisocial hours: a seductive female voice asking whether Luca had arrived yet; another, male and menacing, possibly South African, enquiring whether a Mr O’Brien worked there. And out hunting with the Fosse yesterday, Lester had found himself the focus of yet more unwanted attention.