Read Online A Place of Secrets by Rachel Hore - Free Book Online Page B

nearly went with Mum once, but we didn’t quite make it. It’s a ruin, people say. Did you find it?”
    “Yes, eventually, and it doesn’t look like a ruin. I found a footpath and thought it would be straightforward, but then some idiot started shooting right near me and I panicked and ran.”
    “You have to be careful about that,”Claire said, frowning. “They must be killing foxes or rabbits or something; the pheasant season hasn’t started yet. I hate it when it does—those poor birds, it’s barbaric. But at least most people involved act responsibly.”
    “Not whoever it was today. Anyway, I found the folly, but I didn’t have a chance to get a proper look. There was a dead deer caught in barbed wire. Someone had shot it. Andthis man appeared and since he was holding a shovel I put two and two together. I got quite cross, actually, but then he was quite unpleasant.” Jude stopped, and tried to remember. “Oh dear, it was a bit embarrassing. I assumed it was he who’d wounded the deer and perhaps I was wrong. He said he’d put it out of its misery. Told me it was private property and practically frogmarched me off his land.”
    Claire laughed. “It’s like I said. You can’t go nosing anywhere you like round here. You city types, you think everything’s laid out for you.”
    “I’m not a city type.”
    “Yes, you are! Look at you. Going for a country ramble in a posh suit and stockings. Bossing some poor landowner who’s merely going about his business. You’re like that couple who’ve moved into the barn conversion down the roadand complain about the smell of the farmer’s fertilizer.”
    “You’ve just said yourself the pheasant shooting is barbaric.”
    “I know, and I wouldn’t do it myself, but the land wouldn’t be managed or the pheasants bred in the first place if people didn’t want to go shooting. People from the cities don’t see all that. And the government doesn’t care about the countryside because there aren’t votesfor them there.” Claire banged a lid onto the simmering broccoli.
    Why do we always argue about something? Jude thought, bemused. How did we get onto politics? She sighed and changed tack.
    “Going back to the folly. Has Gran ever talked about it to you?”
    “No, why? What did she say to you?”
    “Something about someone she met in the forest there as a child.”
    Claire tasted the risotto, frowned,and added a dollop of butter. “I don’t know anything about that.”
    “Where’s the gamekeeper’s cottage? Any idea?”
    “That? You must have passed it on the road from the Hall. On the left just before you go up the hill. I know who lives there. It’s Euan, actually, the man who made those pictures.”
    “The house at the bottom of the hill.” That was what the man by the folly said. Well, there could beother houses, but she hadn’t noticed any. “That might have been him I met,” she said. “Euan. I think he was the man at the folly. Big? Curly dark hair. Quite suntanned.”
    “It sounds like Euan,” went on Claire, regarding her sister with a watchful expression.
    “But he’s not the landowner, is he? The man who made the doll’s house? Really?”
    “I don’t know what land he owns, but it’s definitely Euanwho lives in Gamekeeper’s Cottage, and he definitely looks how you’ve described. He’s become great friends with Summer. He came to the shop with the pictures at half-term, when Summer happened to be there. He had Darcey with him. She’s in Summer’s class. Summer’s been over to play there. And once he took them out for the day. I invited him around here for supper to say thank you, and then lastweek he turned up out of the blue with the doll’s house. He had made one for Darcey apparently, and Summer was cheeky enough to ask for one, too. You know how persuasive she can be. He’s a really nice guy.”
    “Is he?” Jude said doubtfully, thinking of her argument with him.
    “Yes. He probably didn’t like you accusing