*

It was Fran who found him. She came from the house carrying a basket containing a bottle of cold tea and some of the scones Mrs Darwin had made that morning.

‘You and Mr Justin can have a lovely picnic by the river,’ the cook had said with a smile. ‘It’s a beautiful afternoon now the rain’s stopped. Shall you take a blanket to sit on, Miss Fran? Just in case the ground’s still damp?’

Fran thought this was a good idea and went back upstairs to find one. Carrying the basket, she draped the blanket round her shoulders and set off along the footpath. When she reached the river, she soon saw where Justin had been fishing. His fishing box containing reels, flies and extra line was on the bank, his landing net lying on the shingle beach, but there was no sign of Justin.

He must have moved along the river, she thought, but he can’t have gone far without all his fishing kit. At first she walked a little way upstream to where the river straightened out, running through the water meadows. From this vantage point she could see for two or three hundred yards, but the banks were deserted, with no sign of a fisherman. She turned back, and leaving the picnic basket and the blanket beside Justin’s things, she began to walk the other way. It was only a couple of hundred yards before she heard the sound of the water plunging over the weir. Suddenly alarmed, she hurried forwards, calling Justin’s name as she went. Beyond the pool, she realised there was nowhere he could stand and fish. With dread in her heart she hurried along the bank until she was standing on a little promontory above the weir. For a moment she watched the relentless flow of the river, seeing nothing but the swirl of the water as it flung itself in a cloud of spray over the ledges. She was about to turn back, thinking he must have gone the other way after all, when she caught sight of something, floating in a pool of calmer water beyond the weir, beneath the branches of a weeping willow.

With a cry of anguish, she jumped down and followed the bank round to the tree.

Surely, she thought, it must be some sort of debris brought down by the storm, but as she approached the edge of the pool she saw that her worst fears had been realised.

Justin lay face down in the water, out of the current now, bobbing gently against the bank.