“I won’t have anyone told,” he retorted. “Don’t bring food. I’ll manage.”

“Digory, have you thought any more about what I’ve said?”

“What?” he asked.

“That if you … harmed him … you would suffer just as much.”

“I wouldn’t be caught.”

Two days passed. I had not seen Rolf. I did not go to the stables because if I did I should surely see him and I should find it difficult not to tell him that Digory was in the woods. I longed to tell him that I knew the truth about that night now. But how could I explain without betraying Digory?

I was constantly worried about him. I had seen the purpose in his face and I knew that he was plunging to certain disaster.

I bought some cheese in the town.

“I’ll tell Kitty you’ve taken the Cheddar,” said Mrs. Glenn who ran the shop.

“Oh, that’s all right. I’ll tell her.”

And I thought how difficult it was to do anything in such a place without being detected.

What would Kitty say if she knew I had bought cheese?

I cut a piece off and put it in the larder, so that I should be prepared.

“Cheddar!” she would say. “Why did you buy that? I thought it wasn’t one of your favourites.”

But when Kitty came in she was so full of the news that she did not notice the cheese.

“What do you think? Luke Tregern has disappeared.”

I felt sick. I stammered: “Disappeared?”

“Yes. He left the house yesterday afternoon and he didn’t come back.”

“What do they think has happened to him?”

“That’s what they don’t know. Mrs. Tregern’s in a rare state, they say. They say she’s well nigh crazy. Annie, the maid there, says she thinks there was a big row.”

“And that … he’s left her?”

Kitty nodded. “You see, they both went out riding together yesterday afternoon … and when they come back she heard them shouting. She said … and Annie heard this with her own ears … ‘What are we going to do?’ just as though she was desperate like. Then after a while he went out … and he didn’t come back.”

Oh, God help him I thought. He’s done it. And I thought I was making him see the folly of it and what it would do to him.

“Do they think he has left her?”

“What else? There was all this trouble when they come in. They say she was white as a sheet … half out of her wits. I reckon he’s gone off. Of course they said he married her for Cador … he being only the manager of the Manor then. Well, I don’t know. You do see life in the country, after all.”

“So the general feeling is that he has left her?”

“Where’d he go, that’s what I wonder. They say he hasn’t taken anything with him. Just the clothes he’s standing up in. He just walked out … just like that … and he didn’t come back.”

I wanted to be alone. I went into my bedroom and shut the door. Where was Digory now? He wouldn’t be in the woods surely. He would have gone by how. He wouldn’t hang about. He wouldn’t want to be caught. There would be a search for Luke Tregern. They would not suspect murder at first. They would think he had just walked out of the house, left his wife.

Apparently they had quarrelled now and then, and yesterday there had been this big upset. They had been out together riding and when they had come back she had looked white as a sheet and half crazed; he was clearly disturbed. They had quarrelled and he had walked out. I was going over it as Kitty had told it.

Yes, I thought, he walked out to the woods where Digory was waiting and there he met his death.

I could not rest. I had to go to the woods.

To my amazement Digory was there.

I said: “You’ve done it then, Digory. You didn’t listen to me.”

He looked bewildered and just stared at me.

“I know,” I said. “The whole town knows he has disappeared. Where is he, Digory? What have you done with his body?”

He continued to stare at me. Then he said: “I can’t believe it … There she was, on her horse. He was with her … I couldn’t understand. I didn’t expect to see her … She knew me. She just stared at me. She was so white I thought she was going to fall off her horse. And he was there with her … Him … If I’d had me gun I could have killed him.”

“If you had your gun …” I stammered.

“Then she said my name. She said to me, ‘It’s you … ’ I could see she thought she was dreaming. The last thing she thought was to see me here. She hadn’t seen me for two years. I left when my term was done. I heard someone had been looking for me … and I was sorry. I wanted to know who it was. It was a mate of mine who told me. I run across him in Sydney and he said someone had asked him where I was. He’d told him I was at Stillman’s. He didn’t know I’d gone, he was trying to find me, see how I was. A real gentleman who was going to offer me something back in England. He couldn’t remember the name. Sir Something Somebody he said.”

I said: “Digory. It was my father.”

“It don’t matter now … It’s them … But this fellow gave my address to your father or what he thought was my address. But it wasn’t, see, ’cos I’d left there two years before.”

I was thinking of the entry in the notebook. “Was this address Stillman’s Creek?”

“That’s it. That’s where she was. There was three of us sent there. There was Tom James who gave your father this address and Bill Aske … He was educated. He’d been in a lawyer’s office. Forging, that was what he was picked up for. The three of us landed up at Stillman’s.”

“Tell me all about it please, Digory.”

“She was there. She worked for her father. She was mad about England. She used to make me talk to her … all about it. About the green fields and the rain and the houses, too. She wanted to know all about the big houses … so I used to tell her. I could stop work and talk to her. Talking was easy. Over and over again she’d make me tell her … so I told her all about what you’d showed me in the big house.”

“She was Maria Stillman,” I said.

“That’s her.”

“And did you know her mother?”

“’Course. She was old Stillman’s missus. Stillman came out to settle and Mrs. Stillman came out on one of the ships … a convict. She went to Stillman’s to work and he married her. She was an old tartar she was.”

“Maria Stillman is living at Cador now, Digory,” I said, “because she says she was my father’s daughter and that he wasn’t really married to my mother.”

“She was old Stillman’s daughter. She took after her mother, she did. She got Aske to forge her father’s signature. Something about money. She used to say one day she was going to England. She was going to live in a grand house like Cador.”

I felt dazed. It was much a tangled web of lies and deceit and who would have thought that Digory would be linked to it and should be the one to bring me the truth?

“I’m sorry, Digory,” I said. “I can’t think clearly. This is such a revelation. Oh, Digory, why did you have to do it? Why couldn’t you have seen it was no good? We would have looked after you … given you a start.”

I heard the sound of horse’s hoofs.

I said: “Someone is coming. Perhaps they’re looking for you. You’d better hide.”

I tried to pull him towards the shelter of the shed, but I was too late.

Maria was there. Deliberately she slipped off her horse and tied it to a bush. We stared at each other.

She said: “They’re both here. What luck. It makes it easier.”

She seemed as though she were talking to herself.

“You’ve told her then,” she said to Digory.

“Yes, he has told me,” I answered. “I always knew it was false but now I know the truth and how you were able to do what you did.”

“You’re the only one who knows … well, the two of you … and that’s how it’s going to stay.”

Calmly she brought out a small pistol.

“What are you doing?” I cried. “Do you think you’ll get away with this?”

“Yes,” she said, “I do.” And quietly: “I have to.”

I saw that her hand was shaking. She was a very frightened woman, and that knowledge gave me courage. She does not want to kill, I thought. She is a cheat, a liar, fraud, but she does not want to commit murder.

I said: “They will catch you. They will hang you for murder, hang you on a gibbet.”

I saw her lips twitch. “They won’t catch me.”

“Of course they will.”

“No …” She shook her head. “There’s been a prowler in the woods. Everyone’s talking. They’ll think … And I’ve got to.” It was as though she were speaking to herself. “I can’t lose Luke. I can’t lose Cador …”

She had lifted her hand. Digory moved clumsily towards me as the shot rang out. I felt something touch my shoulder and then there was another shot. The grass was rushing up to meet me and Digory was lying on top of me. I saw flashing lights; something was happening to my shoulder … and then there was darkness.

When I regained consciousness I was in an unfamiliar bed. There were people in the room. I could vaguely hear their voices; they moved about me like shadows. Then I slipped once more into darkness.

This was my condition for several days, although I was unaware of the passing of time.

Then I awoke one morning to acute discomfort. I was swathed in bandages and aware of nothing but pain.

A woman came to my bedside. I did not know her.

She touched my forehead. “Go to sleep,” she said.

I shut my eyes obediently. It was what I wanted to do.

They gave me something to drink and I was very, very drowsy.

When I awoke someone was sitting by my bed. A voice: “Annora … dearest Annora.”

“Hello, Rolf,” I said. I felt I was beginning to come back to life.