“Oh, Georgie, you are a bore.” She disappeared into the house while I waited, moving impatiently from foot to foot as I stared into the trees and listened for telltale sounds. But nothing stirred apart from wisps of fog that curled up, swirled and then melted. Belinda appeared remarkably quickly for her—now wearing a jacket instead of her dressing gown and with what to her might pass for sturdy shoes.

“Come on, then. Let’s get this over with. I’m dying for breakfast,” she said as we set off down the hill and into the trees. “I’m only coming with you because the sheriff can’t think she’s too dangerous if he let her go. . . . Oh my God. You don’t think she escaped, do you? Is that why we have to catch her?”

“I’m not quite sure what to think yet,” I said. “I think I can safely say that Stella Brightwell did not kill Mr. Goldman, if that makes you feel any better.”

“Let me see,” Belinda said, picking her way through scrub and tall bleached grass. “It might make me feel better about chasing Miss Brightwell, but it does little to reassure me about the various animals that are now lurking all around us.”

“I have a stick with me,” I said. “I’ll protect you.”

“A stick won’t do much to protect me from a charging rhinoceros,” Belinda said.

“I don’t think he has any rhinoceroses . . . or is it rhinoceri?”

“You don’t know. He could have a pack of lions for all we know.”

“A pride of lions, Belinda. Get it right.”

“Oh shut up,” she said, then muttered a naughty word that no lady should know as her jacket caught on a thorny bush. “I don’t know why I agreed to do this. It’s insane. And anyway, won’t she hear us coming?”

“I want her to,” I said. “I want her to know we’re after her. It may make her panic. Come on.”

“Oh yes. A potential murderer who panics. That’s very reassuring,” Belinda said.

We plunged on. The forest became denser. Belinda grabbed me with a gasp as two zebras trotted out of a bush in front of us and ran off.

“You see. I told you they were more frightened of us,” I said.

“How do you know that? I’d say I was quite frightened. Pretty bloody frightened if you want to know. My heart leaped right out of my chest.” Then she added, “Look, Georgie. There she is.”

And we picked up a flash of a black jacket darting among the trees.