‘I apologize most humbly,’ said Tiny at once. He kept his eyes on Jonathan’s face. ‘It was … well, dash it, you must know how these things happen. It certainly won’t occur again. Just a moment’s sheer idiocy … I’m really most terribly sorry. I wouldn’t for the world have been offensive.’

‘All right,’ said Jonathan. ‘So long as that’s completely understood. And I shall also be obliged if you’ll refrain from clouting kids you find on my land.’

‘They were doing damage, you know, and I am your agent,’ said Tiny, with considerably more assurance.

‘Take their names, then, next time, and keep your hands to yourself.’

‘Damn it, Bradley …’

‘All right. But don’t forget.’ Jonathan, feeling relief at ridding himself of his temper, suddenly grinned. ‘Look after that knee, now, and let’s soon see you hopping around. Oh, and Mrs Dalby Whittier’s being looked for. She seems to have done a disappearing trick. As far as is known, she never turned up in London – at least, the police don’t think she went anywhere near her relatives.’

‘Good Lord!’ cried Fullalove. ‘I hope nothing serious has happened! She would take the short cut through the woods and over the estate! I told her to go round by the road!’

‘Well, there it is!’ said Jonathan. ‘And, of course, it wasn’t snowing then!’

Fullalove looked at him closely, but Jonathan gave nothing else away.

CHAPTER 8

Reappearance of a Housekeeper

‘My tale was heard, and yet it was not told;

My fruit is fallen, and yet my leaves are green.’

Chidiock Tichborne

Chiefly because her niece Sally proposed to extend her visit into February, Mrs Bradley was persuaded to stay on at the manor house much longer than she had intended. There was already, even at the end of January, the faintest feeling of spring, and what with that, the fact of Sally’s visit and the even more important fact that Deborah wanted her to stay as long as she felt she could spare the time from her work, Mrs Bradley became almost one of the family and was soon as well known in the village as Jonathan himself.

There were no more anonymous letters, and there was no more news about a possible exhumation. The whole subject of the death and of the poison pen might have been allowed to drop, in fact, but for Sally, who said one day, when she and her aunt were walking briskly back to the house after their morning constitutional:

‘Talking of anonymous letters, did you know we had a maid once who wrote them?’

‘No, I didn’t know.’

‘I thought not. Mother would hate the family to think that she’d engaged an unsatisfactory servant.’

‘How did you discover what was happening?’