‘Attractive house,’ Alleyn said as they emerged from the Home Coppice into full view of Nunspardon. ‘Attractive house, Fox, isn’t it?’

‘Very fine residence,’ Fox said. ‘Georgian, would it be?’

‘It would. Built on the site of the former house which was a nunnery. Hence Nunspardon. Presented (as usual, by Henry VIII) to the Lacklanders. We’ll have to go cautiously here, Brer Fox, by gum, we shall. They’ll have just about finished their breakfast. I wonder if Lady Lacklander has it downstairs or in her room. She has it downstairs,’ he added as Lady Lacklander herself came out of the house with half a dozen dogs at her heels.

‘She’s wearing men’s boots!’ Fox observed.

‘That may be because of her ulcerated toe.’

‘Ah, to be sure. Lord love us!’ Fox ejaculated. ‘She’s got a shooting-stick on her arm.’

‘So she has. It may not be the one. And then again,’ Alleyn muttered as he removed his hat and gaily lifted it on high to the distant figure, ‘it may.’

‘Here she comes. No, she doesn’t.’

‘Hell’s boots, she’s going to sit on it.’

Lady Lacklander had, in fact, begun to tramp towards them but had evidently changed her mind. She answered Alleyn’s salute by waving a heavy gardening glove at him. Then she halted, opened her shooting-stick and, with alarming empiricism, let herself down on it.

‘With her weight,’ Alleyn said crossly, ‘she’ll bloody well bury it. Come on.’

As soon as they were within hailing distance Lady Lacklander shouted: ‘Good morning to you.’ She then remained perfectly still and stared at them as they approached. Alleyn thought: ‘Old basilisk! She’s being deliberately embarrassing, damn her.’ And he returned the stare with inoffensive interest, smiling vaguely.

‘Have you been up all night?’ she asked when they were at an appropriate distance. ‘Not that you look like it, I must say.’

Alleyn said: ‘We’re sorry to begin plaguing you so early, but we’re in a bit of a jam.’

‘Baffled?’

‘Jolly nearly. Do you mind,’ Alleyn went on with what his wife would have called sheer rude charm; ‘do you mind having your brains picked at nine o’clock in the morning?’

‘What do you want with other people’s brains, I should like to know,’ she said. Her eyes, screwed in between swags of flesh, glittered at him.

Alleyn embarked on a careful tarradiddle. ‘We begin to wonder,’ he said, ‘if Cartarette’s murderer may have been lying doggo in the vicinity for some time before the assault.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I didn’t see him.’