'So Saturday's out for you, as well,' Geoff concluded. It struck me that he didn't look particularly upset by the news. 'Well,' he said, 'what a shame. I suppose that just leaves Julia and myself.'

'Aye.' Iain gave me a brotherly look. 'You want to watch him, Julia,' he told me. 'He may look harmless enough, but appearances can be deceiving.'

Geoff grinned. 'That's slander, that is. You know I always behave like a perfect gentleman.'

'Right then, Sir Galahad,' Iain said dryly. 'D'ye think you can spare a moment to help me mend that fencing at the west end of the orchard, like you promised?'

'Damn, I'd forgotten all about that. I suppose I did promise, didn't I?' 'Aye. And the sheep will be all out on the road and halfway to Beckhampton if I don't get it mended by nightfall.' He nodded at Geoff’s glass, trying not to smile at his friend's crestfallen expression. 'Drink up,' he advised solemnly.

Geoff finished his pint reluctantly and rose to his feet, stretching to his full height of six foot something. 'Ladies,' he said theatrically, 'I take my leave of you.' Turning to me, he added, 'Thanks for the company today.'

'Thank you for the tour.' I smiled back at him. 'I enjoyed it.'

'Anytime.' The warmth of his look was tangible. 'I'll give you a ring this week sometime and we'll get the arrangements for next Saturday sorted out, all right?'

'Fine.'

'Well,' Vivien said, heaving a sigh of relief as the men departed, 'at least he was smiling when he left. Iain, I mean. Honestly,' she told me, 'that man and his moods. He was parked on that stool there for the better part of the afternoon, drinking and smoking and looking blacker than the devil. I was hoping Geoff would come in, to shake him out of it.'

'They're very good friends, aren't they?' I mused. I was thinking, oddly enough, not of Geoff and Iain, but of a dark man on a gray horse, watching another man striding across the fields with an easy step, carrying a heavy traveling trunk on his shoulder as if it were a child's toy. That's Evan Gilroy, I heard Rachel's clear voice saying. He lives at the manor....

'The best of friends,' Vivien answered me, her tone emphatic. 'You'd think they'd known each other all their lives, to hear them talk.'

I frowned a little, tracing a pattern in the moisture on the side of my glass with one finger. 'Your aunt Freda,' I said, choosing my words carefully. 'Why did Geoff and Iain call her ... I mean, why do they both think that she's ...'

'A witch?' Vivien finished for me, flashing a smile. 'I don't know. Perhaps she is one, after all. She's always been something of a psychic, has my aunt. Always knew when I'd fallen out of a tree, or when I'd been up to something I shouldn't have. She just seems to know things, somehow. Besides which'—she leaned on the bar again, tilting her head to one side—'she's just a remarkable sort of woman. Earthy, if you know what I mean. She can heal wounded animals and birth a baby and talk to songbirds, and—again the smile flashed—'she grows bigger tomatoes in her garden than anyone else in the village. For all I know, that's what witchcraft is. Would you like another?'

I looked blankly down at my glass, and shook my head.

'No, thanks. I ought to be heading home, myself. I have some sketches to finish off, and my publisher will have a fit if I don't send her something this week to prove that I'm still hard at it. It's the country life,' I protested, stretching my shoulders. 'It saps all my energy.'

'It's like I told you.' She nodded. 'There's no stress here to worry about. Not like London. Nothing ever happens in a place like Exbury.'

I wouldn't have said that, exactly, I thought to myself several minutes later, as I plodded slowly back up the road toward my house, past thickening hedges and earth-scented fields. No, I thought, smiling a little to myself, I wouldn't have said that nothing ever happened here....

A sheep, perhaps a truant member of Iain's flock, had wandered onto the road and was busily devouring a young flowering shrub. It raised its head as I drew near and stared at me with placid, uninterested eyes. It made the perfect advertisement for Vivien's picture of the pastoral village life— lethargic and simple and deadly dull.

"You don't fool me,' I told it.

So much had happened to me in the past month that, had the animal stood upright and spoken back to me, I doubt I would have batted an eyelid. But it didn't. It just stood there and went on munching, staring at me with that blankly supercilious gaze that sheep have, looking for all the world as if it thought I was daft. It rained all the next day—a steady, depressing rain that pelted tirelessly against the window of my little studio. I was grateful, at least, that there was nothing to distract me from my work—no gently beckoning breezes laden with the scent of spring flowers, nor twittering birds to lure me out-of-doors with song. There was only the rain, and a dark-gray sky, and a wicked wind that rattled the windowpanes and set the trees to shuddering.

By supper time I had finished painting my sketches for the Korean folktale, the thick pages boasting a kaleidoscope of watercolor tints. I rinsed out my brushes with cramped and aching hands, tidied my paints away, and went downstairs to the kitchen for a meal of cold meat and cheese. Carrying my tea into the library, I selected a favourite murder mystery and settled myself in the leather armchair for a relaxing evening read. I was asleep before the detective had even discovered the body.