HE STOOD, GATHERED himself, and set off at a brisk trot back to the Hall. He’d covered twenty yards when the shot rang out.
High and wide to the right, it cracked past his head sending him crashing to his knees. He rolled over twice into the deep shadow of an oak tree, coming to rest, breathless and alarmed, behind the four foot thick barrier of its trunk.
Who the hell?
NOT VIRBIO’S GUN. The first barrel of someone else’s. A poacher? One of his fellow guests revelling in early morning country pursuits? A resentful villager putting the wind up one of the Toffs up at the Hall? Probably their weekend sport. The comforting answers flooded in, the brain attempting to neutralise the unacceptable messages being sent by his senses. Joe rejected each one. Out there within easy range for any reasonable shooter was a man with a gun and a second shot up the spout. The gun was trained on him.
Or was it?
The bullet had smacked into the tree ahead of him, some twelve feet from the ground, he thought. He noted the place. The broad-leaved lime had stopped the bullet with all the solidity of its fine-grained wood. He didn’t want to imagine what it would have done to the soft spot between his shoulder blades. Bad aim or warning shot? Joe waited, listening. No sound. Flat to the ground, he risked an eye around the trunk. No movement. He rolled over and checked the other side. All clear. Silently he wriggled to his feet and picked up a stout twig. Plastering his front to the rough bark, he took off his cap and speared it on the end of the twig. Crouched, he held it up beyond the tree at head level and waited for the explosion. A crude trick, but it had worked with helmets on bayonets in the trenches. A keyed-up man with his finger on the trigger—even an experienced soldier—would instinctively blast away at the sudden appearance of exactly what he was looking for in the place he was expecting it.
No result. Joe performed the same manoeuvre on the other side in case the shooter was moving around in an arc. His cap remained intact. Feeling embarrassingly like a boy scout on a wide day out in the woods with the troop, he next hurled the stick into a thicket behind and to one side of the tree. It landed with a satisfying crunch and a movement of the bushes. Joe was pleased with the result but the gunman wasn’t falling for that either.
Joe began to breathe more steadily. Common sense was telling him that if the gunman genuinely wanted him dead, then dead he would be by now. Unarmed as he was, there was only one thing he could do.
Cap firmly back in place, imaginary swagger stick tucked under his right arm, left arm swinging with military precision, Joe marched out from his shelter. Whistling “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary,” he presented a ram-rod straight back to the enemy.
THE MARCH BECAME a trot as he stayed on his feet and the trot a fast zigzagging dash when he emerged from the cover of the trees and headed across the seemingly endless open stretch of mown meadow grass in front of the Hall.
Past caring who he was disturbing, he went into the telephone room off the hall, calling out loudly for Timmy as he went.
Timmy bustled up minutes later to find the policeman at the desk, grim-faced, putting sheets of paper into an envelope. “Ah, there you are! Can you ride the Swine, Timmy?… Thought so. Look, go and get it out and take this note as fast as you can down to Superintendent Hunnyton. You know where he …” Timmy was already out of the door and running.
JOE WONDERED IF Hunnyton would come to the same conclusion as himself. It had been plain enough to Joe as he read the letter. If you want someone to swallow a thumping great lie, conceal it between two slices of verifiable truth and add a little garnish. It was a device he’d used himself. But Virbio was less skilled, evidently. He’d overdone the garnish. He looked at his watch and reviewed his schedule, which was tightening uncomfortably. Eight o’clock. His fixed points in the morning were: a visit to the stables, a confrontation in the graveyard at nine thirty, the welcoming of Truelove and his party some time before the parade of horses on the front lawn at eleven o’clock. Three hours at the outside before he greeted Dorcas. Three hours to come up with the solution to three murders. Phoebe Pilgrim, Lavinia Truelove and Robin Goodfellow. Better get on.
He went in search of Styles. He caught the butler about to carry a tray of early morning tea along the corridor. He smiled at Joe. Shiftily? No. Joe would have said rather: shyly. “For Mrs. B. I always take it along to her room myself. We do our best to relieve the staff as much as we can on a Sunday.”
“A moment please, Styles. There’s something you must know and I’d like you to convey it to Mrs. Bolton along with her cup of Assam.”
In the quiet of the telephone room Joe delivered a brief account of Goodfellow’s death.