But Washburn was practical. She gently touched the other woman’s arm and said, ‘I’m fine now, Von, thank you.’ Turning to Hirsch she said, ‘Give me twenty minutes, okay? Both of you wait on the veranda while I reassure Radish and the others.’

They did as they were told, watching Nan tip a haybale and a bag of oats into a bouncy green barrow and wheel it through the paddock gate and down to the far corner, slowing her pace as she neared the surviving horses, calling in a singsong voice. Radish reacted first, snorting, scraping at the dirt with his front hoof, but then, like an elegant machine set in motion, he walked to greet her, his big shoulders rolling. The ponies trotted behind.

Nan rested the barrow and went to each animal, stroking, patting, crooning. They responded with nudges and head tosses, before passing on either side of her, bound for the tucker. She hauled the hay onto the dirt, cutting the twine, separating the compressed stalks into clumps, breaking these apart with her shoe. Then she poured a long, thick runnel of oats along the ground and stood, watching, as her horses began to eat.

Hirsch looked on, and wondered if a man—or a kid—with a taste for mutilating animals might one day want to try it on humans.

The questioning took place at the kitchen table. ‘You didn’t hear anything?’ Hirsch asked, gesturing at the world beyond the room, simultaneously glancing at Yvonne Muir, wondering how much she should be a part of this.

‘I took a sleeping pill,’ Nan said, regret on her face.

‘Do you have any thoughts on who might have wanted to harm you?’

Nan blew on the surface of her tea. ‘I know you have thoughts, Paul. You’re thinking Daryl and/or Adam.’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think some people might say those boys had a motive, they felt humiliated because they had to give a formal apology, but…really? It’s not as if I rubbed their faces in it. I didn’t quibble, didn’t insist on taking it further, didn’t go complaining to their parents, nothing like that. And the apology was your idea.’ She shook her head. ‘When it boils down to it, they’re basically good kids.’

In Hirsch’s experience, a kid like Adam Flann might consider the apology an insult, and Nan Washburn a softer target for revenge than a policeman. ‘You raise pedigrees, right? They’re valuable? You win prizes with them, you sell to other breeders?’

She glanced at him shrewdly. ‘Yes.’

‘Is it a cut-throat business?’

Too late, he realised what he’d said. Nan gave him a crooked smile. ‘I take it you mean figuratively? It’s not. I suppose some of the other breeders might be envious, but I can’t see any of them hurting any animal.’

‘Perhaps you sold someone a dud pony and didn’t offer a refund?’