‘So you have come round to my point of view.’
‘He must be pretty reckless to have stuck to the tandem. He must have known it would be recognised sooner or later,’ said Ribble.
‘He may have felt safe at first when he knew you had rounded up the dancers and placed them in a position which approximated to their being held in custody. As soon as he found out that you had let them go, he co-opted this girl Marion, thinking that nobody would be looking for two people on the tandem.’
‘I suppose she is in no danger from him?’
‘None at all, unless she wounds his amour propre, and from what I saw of the two of them in the forest clearing, there is little chance of that at present.’
‘We used to have a marvellous cook who was also quite a character,’ said Jenny to Erica. ‘Her name was Mrs Ditch. Of course she’s been dead for some years now, but we still have her son, known to all as Our Walt. He is Carey’s pig-man now and has three underlings to whom he acts as a benevolent despot. I don’t know what we should do without him.He’s a first-class handyman as well. His wife is the present cook and she’s good, too.’
‘I wish she would show me how to make a bacon pudding and how to do pig’s fry.’
‘She’ll be delighted to, if you ask her. What about her recipe for black pluddings? What are the others doing this morning? I haven’t seen them since breakfast.’
‘Isobel needed exercise and has walked to Oxford. She said she might do some shopping. I expect that means she’ll look at the University booksellers and take a taxi back here to be in time for lunch. You said it would not be until two, so she thought she would have time. She’ll be back all right. She isn’t scatty, like young Tamsin. Tamsin is sketching pigs.’
‘I hope she is well wrapped up. It’s a bit chilly sitting about at this time of year.’
‘Oh, yes, she’s got a windcheater and a scarf. She’ll be all right. Hermione is more or less with her.’
‘Only more or less?’
‘I think she said she was going the rounds with Our Walt.’
‘I didn’t intend her to start work again while you three girls were here. Carey has gone to Oxford, too. I want some household things and he’s ordering feed, so I thought he could combine the two. If only he had known, he could have taken Isobel in the car.’
‘Oh, she wanted to walk. Perhaps they will meet and he will bring her back. I think I ’ll take a stroll myself and see how Tamsin is getting on.’
‘Are you worried about yourself and the others? What did Aunt Adela tell you? She telephoned me, you know, when she heard from Hermy that you were all coming here to finish your holiday.’
‘She told me that we weren’t safe so long as we stayed in the forest cabin. She said she thought Tamsin was the most vulnerable, Isobel the least, and Hermione in less danger than myself. She told us all not to trust anybody we had met while we were in the forest and, except that I don’t scare easily, she would have had me scared, because, of course, we did get well acquainted with a hefty young man named John Trent, who seemed rather interested in young Tamsin.’
‘Aunt Adela did not name any particular person, though, did she?’
‘Well, yes, she did, but it seems so improbable that he could be a danger to any of us. The only ones who seem to have upset him are a company of folk-dance people. They are the ones he seems to have it in for, not us.’
‘If Aunt Adela said that you four were in danger, she meant it,’ said Jenny. ‘You say that Isobel is not particularly vulnerable, but ought she to have walked into Oxford alone?’
‘You can’t argue with Isobel and she’s very sensible. She’ll be all right once she gets to Headington. That’s the way she was going to take. It’s about five miles, she thought, to get right into the city.’
At this point, before the conversation could continue, Our Walt’s wife appeared.
‘The poultry be at the door, missus, and want to know what about a fowl for Sunday, loike.’
‘We shall need two, Mrs Ditch. I’d better see him.’ She went out to the back door and Erica followed her plan of going out to see how Tamsin was progressing with her pencil sketches of the pigs.
She found the youngest member of their party outside Lucifer’s pen. Tamsin looked round and said, ‘He won’t keep still long enough for me to draw him properly. I think he can smell one of the sows.’
‘He’s not supposed to be able to,’ said Hermione, coming up to them. ‘He probably objects to an alien presence and perhaps he’s got a “thing” about having a picture made of himself. Boars are very primitive, I always think, unlike sows and young pigs, who are very intelligent and good-humoured. Did you ever see a pig smile? They do, you know, and they can say “Thank you” when you feed them. Think of Empress of Blandings when some kind person picked up a potato she’d dislodged and returned it to her trough. Why don’t you let Lucifer settle down a bit and go and sketch Sunspot?’
‘Which is Sunspot?’
‘She is that lovely Gloucester Old Spot over there. She’s only a young gilt and hasn’t farrowed yet. She’s as docile as a pet dog. We are thinking of breeding Gloucesters.’
‘Do you really like pigs, Hermy?’ asked Tamsin, accompanying her friend across the rough grass.
‘Love them. They’re clean and they’ve got such a sense of humour. Besides, I was brought up with them.’
She saw Tamsin settled and watched the first confident strokes of the pencil. Sunspot came to the front of the sizeable wired pen, looked enquiringly at Tamsin and Hermione through the meshes and then went to the wooden gate through which she was sometimes allowed to pass while her domain was mucked out. On these occasions she was kept happy and from straying by the present of a succulent cabbage or some other interesting tit-bit and for some reason she seemed to think that Tamsin’s activities promised something pleasant of this nature. She scrabbled at the woodwork with her little front trotters and made pleading little anticipatory grunts, snorts and snuffles.
Tamsin got up from her stool and looked over the four-foot door which was hung between two higher iron posts.
‘I can’t sketch you if you’re going to stay there,’ she protested. Hermione laughed and said that she would go and get the pig an apple. Erica volunteered to accompany her and as they made towards the house the pigmen joined them to go in for their mid-morning snack. At the same time as they and the girls disappeared, a young man came out of the woods and walked up a miry but well-marked path which led to a five-barred gate in a wired-up hedge. The gate and hedge marked Carey’s boundaries on that side of the pig-farm.
The man stood looking over the gate for some minutes, but as soon as the coast was clear, with Hermione, Erica and the pigmen out of sight, he climbed over the gate. Tamsin, who was completely absorbed in looking over the top of Sunspot’s gate and trying to cajole that engaging animal into going into the open run, was surprised, but not startled, to hear a shout of ‘Hi!’ She turned to see Adam Penshaw coming towards her. Her first feeling was one of disappointment. She had been hoping for John Trent to come and look them up. She was pretty sure that, when he found she was not in her own home, he would have got the Oxfordshire address from her mother.
When she recognised Adam her reaction was one of anger. It was intolerable that he was still determined to pester her. She shouted, ‘Go away! You’re trespassing!’
He continued to advance, calling out, ‘Come for a walk in the woods. I want to talk to you!’
‘Go away! You’re being a nuisance,’ she called back. He halted.