‘Well, although the poison was administered at the bungalow, Emming must be an accessory both before and after the fact, and would be found guilty, I have no doubt, equally with Tiny Fullalove, by any responsible jury. I wish we could find those dogs!’

‘So we wait and see. I don’t much like the sound of that, you know. Are you really going to do nothing more?’

‘My nephew tells me that I am going out hunting,’ Mrs Bradley replied.

‘I believe the local hunt can show quite good sport. The pack is small – and the whole thing not a bit like the Cotswold proper, I believe – but if you don’t object to chasing wild creatures I think you may enjoy yourself quite heartily.’

‘I have no very strong feeling either for or against the fox,’ Mrs Bradley explained. ‘But I dislike to hunt otters and deer.’

‘Deer I can well understand, but why otters?’ Miss Hughes enquired. ‘They are surely as destructive of fish as foxes are of poultry.’

‘Yes, I know, but I don’t care for fish,’ said Mrs Bradley. Her hearers refused to accept this unreasonable answer, and a long and animated discussion on hunting, shooting and fishing went on until Mrs Bradley had to go home.

Sally had come to meet her with the car.

‘It isn’t far, I know,’ she said, ‘for you to walk, but it’s getting dark, and Jon and Deb are anxious. Besides, I’m going back home tomorrow morning, so I might as well see as much of you as I can. Jon says he brought you here, and he would have come for you, too, but he’s had to go over to Greenstreet. Dinner will be a bit late. He’ll be back about half-past seven.’

‘That reminds me,’ said Mrs Bradley to Miss Hughes, ‘although I really don’t know why it should, of a very minor but still fascinating mystery in connection with this case. After the typed anonymous letters began to come in, my nephew feloniously purloined from the Fullaloves’ bungalow this engaging piece of typescript.’

She produced the typed quotation which the executors had found in the natural history book.

‘Why,’ said Miss Bagthorpe, ‘isn’t that what Robert Emming typed out on Miss Bathwell’s little machine when he came one day for our advice on an oratorio that he proposed to write for the church choir to sing?’

‘Oh, of course, there is a typewriter in the College,’ said Mrs Bradley.