The hunt was the shambles Julian Bartlett had predicted. The saboteurs had kept a surprisingly low profile at the start but, as soon as a fox was put up in Blantyre Wood, cars raced ahead to create avenues of safety by using hunting horns to divert the hounds onto false trails. Out of practice after the long layoff, the dogs quickly became confused and the huntsman and his whippers-in lost control. The riders circled impatiently until order was restored, but a return to Blantyre Wood to raise a second fox was no more successful.

Hunt followers in their cars attempted to block the saboteurs and shout to the huntsman the direction the fox had taken, but an amplified tape of a pack in full cry, played through loudspeakers on a van, drew the hounds away. The aggravation levels among the riders-already high-mounted alarmingly as saboteurs invaded the field and waved their arms at the horses in a criminal and dangerous attempt to unseat the riders. Julian lashed out at a foolhardy lad who tried to catch Bouncer's reins, then swore profusely when he saw he'd been photographed by a woman with a camera.

He circled and came up beside her, wrestling to keep Bouncer in check. "I'll sue if you publish that," he said through gritted teeth. "That man was frightening my horse and I was within my rights to protect myself and my mount."

"Can I quote you?" she asked, pointing the lens at his face and clicking off a fusillade of shots. "What's your name?"

"None of your damn business."

She lowered the camera on its neck strap and patted it with a grin, before pulling a notebook from her jacket pocket. "It won't take me long to find out… not with these pictures. Debbie Fowler, Wessex Times," she said, retreating to a safe distance. "I'm a neutral… just a poor little hack trying to make a living. So-" another grin-"do you want to tell me what you have against foxes… or shall I make it up?"

Julian scowled ferociously. "That's about your level, isn't it?"

"Talk to me, then," she invited. "I'm here… I'm listening. Put the hunt's side."

"What's the point? You'll paint me as the aggressor and that idiot there-" he jerked his chin at the skinny saboteur who was backing away, rubbing his arm where the crop had caught him-"as the hero, never mind he made a deliberate attempt to break my neck by unseating me."

"That's a bit of an exaggeration, isn't it? You're hardly an inexperienced rider, so you must have been in this situation before." She glanced around the field. "You know you're going to face the sabs at some point, so presumably taking them on is part of the fun."

"That's rubbish," he snapped, reaching down to ease his left stirrup, which had jammed against his heel in the fracas with the saboteur. "You could say the same thing about these blasted hooligans with their horns."

"I do and I will," she said cheerfully. "It's gang fighting. Sharks against Jets. Toffs against proles. From where I'm standing the fox seems fairly irrelevant. He's just an excuse for a rumble."

It wasn't Julian's habit to back away from an argument. "If you print that you'll be laughed out of court," he told her, straightening again and gathering in his reins. "Whatever your views on the fox, at least credit all of us-saboteurs and huntsmen alike-with doing what we do for love of the countryside. It's the wreckers you should be writing about."

"Sure," she agreed disingenuously. "Tell me who they are, and I'll do it."

"Gyppos… travelers… whatever you want to call them," he growled. "Busloads of them arrived in Shenstead Village last night. They muck up the environment and steal off the locals, so why aren't you writing about them, Ms. Fowler? They're the real vermin. Focus on them and you'll be doing everyone a favor."

"Would you set your dogs on them?"

"Damn right I would," he said, wheeling Bouncer away to rejoin the hunt.

Wolfie was crouched in the woodland, watching the people on the lawn. He thought it was two men until one of them laughed and the voice sounded like a woman's. He couldn't hear what they were saying because they were too far away, but they didn't look like murderers. Certainly not the old murderer that Fox had talked about. He could see more of the man in the long brown coat than he could of the person with the hat pulled low, and he thought the man's face was kind. He smiled often and, once or twice, put his hand behind the other's back to steer him in a different direction.

A terrible longing grew in Wolfie's heart to run from hiding and ask this man for help, but he knew it was a bad idea. Strangers turned away whenever he begged for money… and money was a little thing. What would a stranger do if he begged for rescue? Hand him over to the police, he guessed, or take him back to Fox. He turned his frozen face toward the house and marveled again at its size. All the travelers in the world could fit inside it, he thought, so why was a murderer allowed to live there alone?

His sharp eyes caught a movement in the downstairs room at the corner of the house, and, after several seconds of concentrated staring, he made out a figure standing behind the glass. He felt a thrill of terror as a white face turned toward him and sunlight glinted on silver hair. The old man! And he was looking straight at Wolfie! With heart knocking, the child scrambled backward until he was out of sight, then ran like the wind for the safety of the bus.

Mark thrust his hands into his pockets to keep his circulation going. "I can only think it was James's change of mind about involving you that persuaded you to come," he told Nancy, "though I don't understand why."

"It has more to do with the suddenness of his decision," she said, marshaling her thoughts. "His first letter implied he was so desperate to make contact that he was prepared to pay a fortune in compensation just to get a reply. His second letter suggested the exact opposite. Keep away… no one will ever know who you are. My immediate idea was that I'd done the wrong thing by replying. Maybe the plan was to provoke me into suing as a way of draining the family finances away from his son-" she broke off on an upward inflection, making the statement a question.

Mark shook his head. "That wouldn't have been his reason. He's not that devious." Or never used to be, he thought.

"No," she agreed. "If he were, he'd have described himself and his son in very different terms." She paused again, recalling her impressions of the correspondence. "That little fable he sent me was very strange. It effectively said that Leo killed his mother in anger because she refused to go on subsidizing him. Is that true?"

"You mean did Leo kill Ailsa?"

"Yes."

Mark shook his head. "He couldn't have done. He was in London that night. It was a very solid alibi. The police investigated it thoroughly."

"But James doesn't accept it?"

"He did at the time," said Mark uncomfortably, "or at least I thought he did." He paused. "Don't you think you might be reading too much into the fable, Captain Smith? If I remember correctly, James apologized in his second letter for using emotive language. Surely it was symbolic rather than literal. Supposing he'd written 'ranted at' instead of 'devoured'? It would have been a lot less colorful… but far closer to the truth. Leo was prone to shout at his mother, but he didn't kill her. Nobody did. Her heart stopped."

Nancy nodded abstractedly as if she were only half listening. "Did Ailsa refuse to give him money?"

"Insofar as she rewrote her will at the beginning of the year to exclude both her children." He shook his head. "As a matter of fact, I've always regarded that as a reason for Leo not to kill her. Both he and his sister were informed of the changes, so they knew they had nothing to gain by her death… or not the half-million they were hoping for, anyway. They had a better a chance of that if they kept her alive."