Mrs Bradley’s walk, although apparently aimless, was, in reality, guided by careful planning. She was extremely worried about Ed Brown. All her attempts to get him into a zone of safety had failed. Ed was already chafing so bitterly against his captivity that she had more than a suspicion that he escaped when Will North went out, and roamed the woods between Will’s lodge and the manor house. It could only be a matter of time, therefore, before the fact that he was alive and well was all over the village.

Having seen her chauffeur trudging faithfully in her wake, she stopped for him to catch up with her.

‘I am making for Rolling,’ she said, ‘and I shall be quite safe, George. However, if you would care for a walk of fifteen miles …’

George glanced down at his leggings.

‘Are you sure you’ll be safe, madam?’

‘Yes, George. My enemies are in London, conferring together. The police are faithfully trailing them. I am on my way to a rendezvous with Ed Brown. We are proceeding by devious and divers roads so that no one in the village will suspect what is in the wind.’

‘You have persuaded Brown to seek his own safety, madam?’

‘I don’t know. I doubt it. But he has something to tell me which I must hear from his own tongue and before witnesses. The fact is, George, I have discovered that Ed Brown’s life is not safe until it is generally known that he identified for Robert Emming and Tiny Fullalove the plant called deadly nightshade. We cannot meet openly, so I am relying upon Ed’s woodcraft to bring him across country. We shall have part of our talk in the Chief Constable’s stable yard.’

‘Yes, you would scarcely entice Brown into a house, madam.’

‘So I thought. We shall meet at the Greening crossroads and stroll gently stablewards. During our stroll I shall obtain from Ed the information I seek.’

‘Police witness will be required, madam, I take it?’

‘Yes. Ed Brown will not see them, but they will be there.’

‘I thought the bungalow had already been searched for belladonna, madam.’

‘It has, but it has not been searched for a preparation concocted by a gifted amateur from the fruit of the deadly nightshade.’

‘How do you think the poison was administered, madam?’

‘I did think of several possible ways: in mince pies, in rum, in blackcurrant jam, in coffee essence, in giblet soup. No doubt one could think of more—’

‘I wonder they didn’t use bamboo splinters or powdered glass, madam, Mr Tiny Fullalove having lived in India.’