“I’ve put him in my study.” Sir Oswald gave me a commiserating smile.

I went through and found Inspector Newcombe sitting there. He rose to his feet as I came in.

“Oh, good afternoon, my lady,” he said, “and please forgive me for calling you ‘miss’ last time. Slip of the tongue, I’m afraid. And I’m sorry to disturb you on Boxing Day, but I wanted to ask you some questions about the man who disappeared during the hunt today. I’m told you found his horse, up by Barston Mere.”

“I did,” I said. “It was just wandering aimlessly and it had obviously hurt itself, because it was lame in the left foreleg.”

“Did you see what happened before that? Where he might have fallen off?”

“No, not at all. He passed me some time before and my horse was being so antisocial that I rather lost touch with the rest of the hunt and found myself alone with no idea where I was. Then my horse was spooked by a horrible flapping noise and a big white thing came at me. I suspect now it might have been a swan on the lake, but at that point I didn’t even know that I was near any water.”

“So you saw no trace of where he might have fallen?”

I shook my head.

“Nobody else anywhere near?”

“Well, yes. I saw the woman they call Wild Sal. She stepped out in front of my horse and told me I was going the wrong way and set me on the right path down. If she hadn’t appeared, I might have ended up in the bog.”

“Ah,” he said, nodding.

“You think that’s what might have happened to the master, don’t you?” I asked.

“My men have been up there with dogs, scouring the moor all afternoon, and have not found a trace of him,” he said. “Now I’ve looked at the horse and its foreleg is quite badly cut. And what’s more, there were bits of bracken caught in its mane, so I have to assume it fell at some stage. And the other strange thing—the cut is quite a clean one. Not a skinned knee, which would have happened if it had clipped the top of a wall.”

He looked at me, waiting for me to say something. “And we found some traces of blood between two Scotch pine trees.”

“I saw that row of trees,” I said. “I wouldn’t have ridden between them myself. Too many branches sticking out at odd angles. But if the master did—” I paused. “A clean cut, you say. Is it possible that somebody put a trip wire between those trees? They say he was rather reckless—so somebody might have guessed that he’d take that route—a shortcut really.”