September

'Just a wee troot or twa, ken…' But that wasn't what Willy had come to say. 'Your Land Rover. It's there. And the lady's furry coat…'

And then Willy did a strange thing. He took off his cap, an instinctive and touching gesture of respect. He held it, twisted in his hands. Archie had never seen him bareheaded before. Willy's cap was part of his image, and rumour had it that he even slept in it. But now he saw that Willy's head was balding, and his sparse white hair lay thin over the defenceless scalp. Without the rakish slant of his bonnet it was as though the graceless poacher had been disarmed; no longer the well-kent villain, slouching about the place with his pockets full of ferrets, but simply an old countryman, uneducated and at a total loss, struggling to find the words to tell the untellable.

'Lucilla.'

The voice came from a long way off. Lucilla decided to ignore it.

'Lucilla.'

A hand on her shoulder, gently shaking. 'Lucilla, darling.'

Her mother. Lucilla groaned, buried her head in the pillow and slowly awoke. She lay for a moment and then rolled onto her back and opened her eyes. Isobel was sitting on the edge of her bed, her hand on Lucilla's T-shirted shoulder. 'Darling. Wake up.'

'I am awake,' Lucilla mumbled. She yawned and stretched. Blinked once or twice. 'Why did you wake me up?' she asked resentfully.

'I'm sorry.'

'What time is it?'

'Ten o'clock.'

'Ten o'clock. Oh, Mum, I wanted to sleep until lunch.'

'I know. I'm sorry.'

Lucilla slowly came to. The curtains had been drawn back, and morning sunlight slanted into the far corner of her room. She looked at her mother with sleepy eyes. Isobel was dressed, wearing a pullover and a husky, but her hair was untidy, as if she had not found time to do more than run a comb through it, and her expression seemed strained. But then, she would be tired. Lacking sleep. They had none of them got to bed before four o'clock.

But she was not smiling.

Lucilla frowned. 'Is something wrong?'

'Darling, I had to wake you. And yes, something is wrong. Something's happened. It's very sad. I have to tell you. You've got to try to be brave.' Lucilla's eyes widened in apprehension. 'It's Pandora…' Her voice faltered. 'Oh, Lucilla, Pandora is dead…'

Dead. Pandora dead? 'No.' The instinctive reaction was one of denial. 'She can't be.'

'Sweetheart, she is.'

Lucilla was now awake, all trace of drowsiness shattered by shock. 'But when?' Noel Keeling had driven Pandora home from the dance. 'How?' She imagined Pandora, like a wraith, not breathing, still, on her bed. A heart attack, perhaps.

But not dead. Not Pandora.

'She drowned herself, Lucilla. We think she drowned herself…'

'Drowned herself?' The implications were too horrifying to take in.

'In the loch. She took Dad's Land Rover. She must have driven herself up the road. Right past Gordon Gillock's house, but the Gillocks never heard a thing. The gates of the deer-fence were bolted shut. She must have shut them behind her.'

Pandora drowned. Lucilla thought of Pandora somewhere in France, skinny-dipping in a deep and fast-flowing river, swimming against the current, calling to Jeff and Lucilla that it was lovely, the water was lovely, why didn't they come in?

Pandora drowned. Bolting the heavy gates behind her. Surely that in itself was proof that she had not taken her own life? Surely no one, under such circumstances, would painstakingly trouble to close the deer gates.

No.

'It must have been an accident. She would never, never have killed herself. Oh, Mum, not Pandora…'

'It wasn't an accident. We hoped it was. That she'd come home from the dance, and taken it into her head to go for a swim. It was just the sort of dotty decision that she was quite capable of taking. An impulsive whim. But by the loch they found her mink coat and her sandals; and an empty sleeping-pill jar, and the last of a bottle of champagne.'

And the last of a bottle of champagne. The last of the wine. Like a final, terrible celebration.

'… and when we went to her room, there was a letter for Dad.'

Lucilla knew then that it was true. She was dead. Pandora had drowned herself. She shivered. An old cardigan lay on a chair beside her bed. She sat up, reached for it, wrapped it around her shoulders. She said, 'Tell me what happened.'

Isobel took Lucilla's hands in her own. 'Willy Snoddy was up at the loch early, all set to lift a few trout out with the first rise. He'd walked up from the village with his dog. He saw the Land Rover parked by the boat-house. And then her coat, lying on the bank. He thought, like us, that perhaps someone had just gone for a midnight swim. And then he saw her body, washed up against the sluicegates. '

'I can't bear it for him. Poor old man.'

'Yes. Poor Willy. But for once in his life he did the right thing, and came straight to Croy to find Archie. By then it was seven o'clock, and Dad was out with the dogs. He never went to bed after the dance. Just took a bath and dressed again. And he was out with the dogs, and he saw Willy coming, and Willy told him what he'd found.'

Only too clearly, Lucilla could imagine the scene. She thought about her father, and then could not think about him, because Pandora was his sister, and he had loved her, and longed for her to come home to Croy. And she had come, and now she was gone for ever.

She said, 'What did Dad do?'

'I was still sleeping. He woke me. We went along to Pandora's room, and she'd broken her bottle of scent in the bathroom basin. She must have knocked it over. The basin was filled with broken glass, and the smell filled the room, overpowering, like a sort of drug. So we drew back the curtains and threw open all the windows, and then we thought we must look for some sort of clue. We didn't have to look very far because she'd left an envelope on the desk, and there was a letter for Dad inside.'

'What did it say?'

'Not very much. Just that she was sorry. And… something about money. Her house in Majorca. She said she was tired and she couldn't go on fighting any longer. But she didn't give any reason. She must have been so unhappy, and none of us knew. None of us had the slightest suspicion, the least idea of what was going on in her mind. If only I'd known. I should have been more perceptive, more sympathetic. I might have been able to talk to her… to help…'

'How could you? You mustn't for a moment blame yourself… Of course you didn't know what Pandora was thinking. Nobody could ever know what she was thinking.'

'I thought we were close. I thought that I was close to her…'

'And you were. Just as close as any woman could be to Pandora. She loved you, I know. But I don't think she ever wanted to get too near to people. I think that was her defence.'

'I don't know.' Isobel, clearly, was distraught and bewildered.

I suppose so.' Her grip on Lucilla's hands tightened. 'I have to tell you the rest.' She took a deep and steadying breath. 'After we found the letter, Dad rang the police in Relkirk. He explained what had happened, and the difficulties of the location, the road to the loch.

They sent, not an ambulance, but a police Land Rover, with a four-wheel drive. And the police doctor came with it. Then they drove on up to the loch…'

'Who went?'

'Willy. And Dad. And Conrad Tucker. Conrad went with them. He was up and about by then, and he offered to go with Dad. So kind of him, such a kind man, because Archie didn't want me to go, and I couldn't bear the thought of his being on his own.'