‘I mean really doggo. And as far as we know, which is not as far as we’d like, there’s no telling exactly where the hiding place could have been. We think it might have been somewhere that commanded, at any rate, a partial view of the bridge and the willow grove. We also think that it may have overlooked your sketching hollow.’

‘You’ve discovered where that is, have you?’

‘Simplicity itself, I promise you. You used an easel and a sketching stool.’

‘And with my weight to sustain,’ she said, rocking, to his dismay, backwards and forwards on the shooting-stick, ‘the latter, no doubt, left its mark.’

‘The thing is,’ Alleyn said, ‘we think this person in hiding may have waited until he saw you go before coming out of cover. Did you stay down in your hollow all the time?’

‘No, I had a look at my sketch several times from a distance. Anaemic beast it turned out, in the end.’

‘Where exactly did you stand when you looked at it?’

‘On the rise between the hollow and the bridge. You can’t have gone over your ground properly or you’d have found that out for yourself.’

‘Should I? Why?’ Alleyn asked, and mentally touched wood.

‘Because, my good Roderick, I used this shooting-stick and drove it so far into the ground that I was able to walk away and leave it, which I did repeatedly.’

‘Did you leave it there when you went home?’

‘Certainly. As a landmark for the boy when he came to collect my things. I dumped them beside it.’

‘Lady Lacklander,’ Alleyn said, ‘I want to reconstruct the crucial bit of the landscape as it was after you left it. Will you lend us your shooting-stick and your sketching gear for an hour or so? We’ll take the greatest care of them.’

‘I don’t know what you’re up to,’ she said, ‘and I suppose I may as well make up my mind that I won’t find out. Here you are.’

She heaved herself up and, sure enough, the disc and spike of her shooting-stick had been rammed down so hard into the path that both were embedded and the shooting-stick stood up of its own accord.

Alleyn desired above all things to release it with the most delicate care, perhaps dig it up, turf and all, and let the soil dry and fall away. But there was no chance of that; Lady Lacklander turned and with a single powerful wrench tore the shooting-stick from its bondage.

‘There you are,’ she said indifferently, and gave it to him. ‘The sketching gear is up at the house. Come and get it?’