“I thought you said you had to go away,” I said.

“I changed my mind.”

“I’m glad.”

“Anything else happen that I should know about?”

“Nothing, apart from someone shooting at me when we were out riding this morning.”

“Georgie—I thought I told you to stay put and be careful.”

“I was with Princess Elizabeth on the Balmoral estate. And there were policemen on the property.”

“Whoever is doing this is getting desperate,” he said.

“Yes, well, I have some idea now about who that person might be,” I said. “I tried to find Sir Jeremy but I couldn’t locate him.”

“You say you have an idea who is doing all this?”

“Only an idea,” I said, “but I believe it might be Major Padgett.”

“Padgett, who works on the royal estate? Ronny’s father?”

I nodded. “It does seem strange, doesn’t it, but he fits the picture and he had the opportunity.”

“But he’s been with the royal family for years,” Darcy said. “Why would he want to harm anybody?”

“I thought that he might be, you know, insane? There was some scandal about him and someone said he’d had a nervous breakdown, which was why he was sent up to Scotland. And he was there on the shoot, wasn’t he? And he did try to persuade the police not to investigate further.”

“Yes, but—” He broke off, then nodded. “All right. I’ll pass along the information if I get a chance.”

“Oh, and Darcy,” I said, “can you find out about someone called Maisie McPhee?”

“What about her? Accomplice?”

“No. She’s in an insane asylum, but she’s linked somehow, I’m sure. She’s probably in her late forties. Can you find out if she had a child about thirty years ago? Can you find out if she married?”

“That’s a tall order,” he said, “but someone will know how to check through the records in Edinburgh, I suppose.”

“You should get home. You’re shivering,” I said.

“I’ll have to stay until the police get here,” he said.

“Looks like there’s a bobby on a bike coming this way now,” Granddad called from the car. It was Constable Herries, red faced and peddling furiously. It turned out he had already summoned an ambulance and was going to stand guard until it arrived.

“Have you notified your superiors?” Darcy asked.

“No sir, we don’t usually bother them about a drowning,” Constable Herries said. I saw Darcy frown. “The boy told me that the body just bobbed up in the middle of the loch.”

“It did. We both observed it,” I said. “Mr. O’Mara swam out and dragged him into shore.”

“Poor fellow. I wonder how long ago he fell in and drowned?”

“I saw him alive yesterday,” I said.

Constable Herries frowned. “That’s unusual, that is. Usually they lie on the bottom until their stomach contents start fermenting and that takes days.”