‘I don’t feel like going out.’
‘Not feeling seedy, are you?’
‘No, just disinclined to leave the house, that’s all.’
‘Suit yourself. It’s no good letting this wretched drowning get you down, though, you know. If that man had not tried to steal poor old Fret, he would still be alive, no doubt.’
‘I know. I just don’t fancy going out, that’s all.’
‘You ought to watch yourself, Morpeth.’ Bryony looked at her sister with sympathy mixed with slight exasperation and a certain amount of anxiety. ‘Once you start this kind of opting out, you may find it grows on you. You don’t want to end up with agoraphobia.’
‘You always fly to extremes when you criticise me. The fact is, I can’t get that strange Ozymandias man out of my head. I don’t intend to get mixed up with him again, and somehow I can’t help connecting him with this drowning.’
‘Absolute nonsense!’
‘Suppose he were to pop out on me when I was out with the dogs and begin gibbering at me! I should be shattered with terror.’
‘Good gracious! The hounds would chew him up if he threatened you.’
‘There might be other conclusions about Sekhmet if any of the hounds savaged Ozymandias.’
‘Oh, forget about that lunatic. Look here, I’ll take Amon and Anubis for their run, if you like. I shan’t be all that long. That inquest ate into the morning. Put lunch back a bit, will you? I’ll be back at half one.’
Morpeth accompanied her to the door. They found Sekhmet with her nose against it. As it was opened, she shot past the pair of them and made for the drawing-room. Bryony followed, ousted her unceremoniously from an armchair and said, ‘No!’ The bitch looked at her meltingly, but Bryony hustled her off the chair and conducted her into the garden.
‘A fine mess you seem to have got us into,’ she said to the dog severely, ‘you and your damned aniseed.’
Sekhmet dropped her tail dejectedly as Bryony conducted her to her kennel. When she rejoined Morpeth, Bryony said, ‘There never was any smell of aniseed in that shed so far as I could ever detect.’
‘I suppose it’s very volatile,’ said Morpeth. ‘I’ll come with you as far as the gate.’
‘I don’t know what has come over you, Morpeth. You’ve taken your hounds out every day since Susan found the body. Why suddenly change like this?’
‘I don’t know. The inquest has upset me.’
On the way through the wilderness they called the garden they met Susan.
‘Hullo,’ she said, noting Bryony’s Wellingtons and Morpeth’s sneakers. ‘What’s afoot, then? Swopping partners or something?’
‘Bryony is going out today instead of me.’
‘Oh, why is that? Aren’t you well?’
Morpeth gave her the reason she had given Bryony. ‘The inquest upset me, I think.’
‘Well, I must say the influence it had on me was to buck me up. No accounting for reflexes and reactions. The verdict completely exonerated old Fret. She looks a bit dejected. Come on, Fret! Raise your flag!’
Bryony left her with the bitch and she and Morpeth collected the two hounds; Bryony passed out of the grounds with them and headed for the moor. Curiosity, however, and some other impulse which she could not define, caused Bryony to diverge from the usual track and take a path which led to the bridge over the river and the wicket-gate which opened up the way to Watersmeet. Here she slipped the leads.
Nothing loth, the hounds poured themselves through the aperture and were soon enjoying themselves among the trees and bushes. Bryony kept to the path alongside the water and looked at the river, silver in the light, flecked with foam on the wilder reaches and dappled under the banks by the sunshine glinting through the trees.
It was about a mile and a half to Watersmeet. Here she stopped and gazed at the confluence of the two streams. The rapids lacked the depth and grandeur of Aysgarth Force, the beauty of the Falls of Rogie or the cascading hill-top tumble and roar of Ardessie, all of which Bryony had seen, but, although they were on a smaller scale, the rapids at Watersmeet were reminiscent, because of their woodland surroundings and the way they foamed over the boulders, of the Falls of Bracklinn, she thought.
They were also not unlike the Falls of Dochart, either, Bryony decided, remembering holiday photographs she had taken when she and her sister had gone with their father on holiday to Scotland, although the scene at Watersmeet certainly lacked the backdrop of the mountains behind Killin.
She stood there for some time and then whistled up the hounds, intending to walk on for about half a mile to where a rustic bridge led across the upper waters to a hotel where she could get a drink at the bar. Amon came at her call, but Anubis did not appear.
‘Find!’ commanded Bryony of the obedient hound. ‘Find Nubi!’ She went with the dog, calling the other’s pet name; still Anubis did not appear. The other hound, however, knew where he was, for he led Bryony beyond the belt of trees and bushes, and there was Anubis with his nose to a hole in the bank of soft earth.
‘If you think I’ve brought you out to go rabbiting, you’ve got another think coming. Anyway, that isn’t a rabbit hole, fathead!’ Bryony put a lead on the dog’s collar and hauled him away. Beyond the trees the bank was in full sunshine. Bryony looped the lead over a bush and wondered what Anubis had found. She rolled up her sleeve and reached into the hole. In it she unearthed a sharp, heavy piece of stone. The pointed end of it was stained as though with rust. Bryony, whose fingers could reach where the dog’s muzzle could not go, had soon prised the stone out of its resting place. She inspected it closely. Then she spat on it and rubbed the damp little patch with her handkerchief. The coagulated blood yielded a dirty reddish stain.
‘Oh, Lord!’ said Bryony under her breath. ‘That’s torn the verdict at the inquest, my God it has!’ She carried the stone over to the river, waded in (thankful that she was wearing Wellingtons) and dropped it into the water in
