My brother raised himself from his pillows and turned to look in our direction. “Georgie,” he exclaimed with delight, and held out his hand to me. “What a lovely surprise. And how good of you to come. You heard about your poor brother’s accident and rushed to his side, did you? I call that splendid family loyalty.”

Whatever Fig had been told of the reason for my sudden arrival, she had kept wisely silent. I went over and kissed his forehead. He looked rather pale, and there was an improvised cage over his left ankle that was swathed in white linens.

“I’ll leave you two to chat then,” Fig said. “I’m off to bed. Those Americans have completely worn me out.”

“Sleep well, old thing,” Binky called after her. He looked back at me. “She’s been having a beastly time of it. Glad you’re here to keep her company.”

“How about you? I hear you’ve turned poacher,” I said. “Messing around with traps.”

“I like that. I nearly lose my foot and my sister makes jokes about it.”

“Only because I’m worried about you,” I said. I perched on the bed beside him. “What a rum thing to happen, Binky.”

“It most certainly was. I still can’t fathom it. I mean, if someone wanted to come and poach on our estate, they wouldn’t bother to walk a couple of miles from the boundary, would they? They’d nip under the fence and lay their traps in the woods where they wouldn’t be noticed. This was left out among the heather on that little path up the mountain that I like to take in the mornings. You know, the one that gives the good view over the estate and the loch.”

I nodded. “I used to ride up there sometimes. Lucky you weren’t on horseback or it would have snapped the horse’s leg.”

“It damned near snapped mine,” Binky said. “In fact if I hadn’t been wearing what grandfather used to call his ‘good stout brogues,’ I’d have lost my foot, I’m sure of it. As it is, I have to keep soaking it and having revolting poultices to prevent infection, but luckily no bones were broken.”

“Have you any idea who’d want to do a thing like this?” I asked.

“Some idiot who thought that the animal he was trying to trap habitually used that particular path,” Binky suggested. “But as to what animal that could be, I’ve no idea. We’ve a couple of grand stags on the property at the moment but nobody could be crass enough to bring down a stag in a trap, could they?”

“If they were hungry enough and poor enough, I suppose.”