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and shook her so violently that her teeth rattled.
    It silenced her, of course. Her final shriek was cut off in the middle, and she looked up at me angrily.
    ‘Stop it!’ I said. ‘Do you want to rouse the village?’
    She put up her hands to push me away.
    ‘I’m frightened,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing. What’s happened to him? You told me he was here. I was going to look at him, and now he’s gone.’
    She began to cry noisily. Pussey glanced at her and then at me.
    ‘Perhaps that’d be best if the young lady went home,’ he suggested reasonably.
    Miss Rowlandson clung to me. ‘Don’t leave me,’ she said. ‘I’m not going down to “The Feathers” in the dark. I won’t, I tell you, I won’t! Not while he’s about,
alive
.’
    ‘It’s all right,’ I began soothingly. ‘Lugg’ll drive you down. There’s nothing to be alarmed about. There’s been a mistake. The body’s been moved. Perhaps the undertaker –’
    Pussey raised his head as he heard the last word.
    ‘No,’ he said. ‘That was in here an hour ago, because I looked.’
    Effie began to cry again. ‘I won’t go with him,’ she said. ‘I won’t go with anyone but you. I’m frightened. You got me into this. You must get me out of it. Take me home! Take me home!’
    She made an astounding amount of noise, and Pussey looked at me beseechingly.
    ‘Perhaps if you would drive the young lady down, sir,’ he suggested diffidently, ‘that would ease matters up here, in a manner of speaking. I better get on the telephone to Sir Leo right away.’
    I glanced at Lugg appealingly, but he avoided my eyes, and Miss Rowlandson laid her head on my shoulder in an ecstasy of tears.
    The situation had all the unreality and acute discomfort of a nightmare. Outside the shed the yard was ghostly in the false light. It was hot, and there was not a breath of wind anywhere. Effie was trembling so violently that I thought she might collapse.
    ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ I said to Pussey, and hurried her down the gravel path to the waiting car.
    ‘The Feathers Inn’ is at the far end of the village. It stands by itself at the top of a hill, and is reputed to have the best beer, if not the best accommodation, in the neighbourhood.
    Effie Rowlandson scrambled into the front seat, and when I climbed in beside her she drew close to me, still weeping.
    ‘I’ve had a shock,’ she snivelled. ‘I’d prepared myself and then it wasn’t necessary. That was one thing. Then I realized Roly got out by himself. You didn’t know Roly Peters as well as I did, Mr Campion. When I heard he’d been killed I didn’t really believe it. He was clever, and he was cruel. He’s about somewhere, hiding.’
    ‘He was dead this afternoon,’ I said brutally. ‘Very dead. And since miracles don’t happen nowadays he’s probably dead still. There’s nothing to get so excited about. I’m sorry you should have had a rotten experience, but there’s probably some very ordinary explanation for the disappearance of the body.’
    I was rather shocked to hear myself talking so querulously. There had been something very disturbing in the incident. The elusiveness of Pig dead was becoming illogical and alarming.
    As we came out of the village on to the strip of heath which lay silent and deserted in the cold secretive light, she shuddered.
    ‘I’m not an imaginative girl, Mr Campion,’ she said, ‘but you read of funny things happening, don’t you? Suppose he was to rise up behind one of these banks of stones by the side of the road and come out towards us.…’
    ‘Shut up,’ I said, even more violently than I had intended. ‘You’ll frighten yourself into a fit, my child. I assure you there’s some perfectly reasonable explanation for all this. When you get into “The Feathers” make them give you a hot drink and go to bed. You’ll find the mystery’s been cleared up by the morning.’
    She drew away from me. ‘Oh, you’re hard,’ she