They had reached the second terrace. At each end of this terrace, between the potato-field and the woods, were shrubberies and young copses. From the bushes on their left hand came a thin intermittent wailing; very dolorous. They paused uncertainly, staring at each other. The wailing stopped, and into the silence welled the accustomed sounds of the countryside—the wintry chittering of birds and the faint click of naked branches.

‘Would it be some kind of bird, should you say?’ Fox speculated.

‘No bird!’ Alleyn began and stopped short. ‘There it is again.’

It was a thin piping sound, waving and irregular and the effect of it was peculiarly distressing. Without further speculation they set off across the rough and still frost-encrusted ground. As they drew nearer to it the sound became, not articulate, but more complex, and presently, when they had drawn quite dose, developed a new character.

‘It’s mixed up,’ Fox whispered, ‘with a kind of singing.’

Goodbye poor pussy your coat was so warm,

And even if you did moult you did me no harm.

Goodbye poor pussy for ever and ever

And make me a good girl, amen.

‘For ever and ever,’ the thin voice repeated, and drifted off again into its former desolate wail. As they brushed against the first low bushes it ceased, and there followed a wary silence disrupted by harsh sobbing.

Between the bushes and the copse they came upon a little girl in a white cap, sitting by a newly-turned mound of earth. A child’s spade was beside her. Stuck irregularly in the mound of earth were a few heads of geraniums. A piece of paper threaded on a twig stood crookedly at the head of the mound. The little girl’s hands were earthy, and she had knuckled her eyes so that black streaks ran down her face. She crouched there scowling at them, rather like an animal that flattens itself near the ground, unable to obey its own instinct for flight.

‘Hallo,’ said Alleyn, ‘this is a bad job!’ And unable to think of a more satisfactory opening, he heard himself repeating Dr Withers’s phrase. ‘What’s the trouble?’ he asked.

The little girl was convulsed, briefly, by a sob. Alleyn squatted beside her and examined the writing on the paper. It had been executed in large shaky capitals.

KARABAS,

R.S.V.P.

LOVE FROM PANTY.

‘Was Carabbas,’ Alleyn ventured, ‘your own cat?’

Panty glared at him and slowly shook her head.

Alleyn said quickly: ‘How stupid of me; he was your grandfather’s cat, wasn’t he?’