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By Root 855 0

trampled ground. “She had bare feet, al-though they had taken her shoes; they had not bothered to put them on her. Her hands were not tied. Here,” he said stabbing a finger at a clod of turf, “you see the short parallel lines? Her toes. And here, the longer lines that draw together? Her fingers made those as she gath-ered herself off the ground and sprinted towards those bushes.” Once he had pointed out the signs I could see them, clear despite the inter-vening rains. He rose and followed the marks left by hoofs and heels. “She made it this far before they caught her, by her night dress, which popped a button,” he held out the object he had picked up earlier, “and by her hair, which was of course loose from having the ribbon re-moved.” He held up several mud-crusted strands of auburn hair.

“Dear God,” I groaned, “I hope they didn’t hurt her when they caught her.”

“There’s nothing on the ground that tells one way or the other,” he said absently. “What was the moon doing on the twelfth of August?”

I was quite certain he did not need me to tell him, but I thought for a moment, and answered. “Three-quarters full, and it had stopped raining. She may have been able to see well enough to tell when the path split, or perhaps she was trying to make it to the trees. In either case, we know where she’s come. Quite a child, our Miss Simpson. But I doubt there will be any further signs.”

“It is unlikely, but let us be thorough.”

We followed the horse trail for another hour, but there were no more signs or marks of shod hoofs. At the next trail fork we stopped.

“Back to the caravan, Mary, my girl. A bite of lunch, and the gip-sies will resume their itinerant musicale.”

We got back to the wagon to find company, in the form of a large constable with a very dark expression on his face.

“And what might the two of you have been doing on this hillside?” he demanded.

“Doin’? We been stayin’ the night, I’d a thought that obvious,” re-torted Holmes, and walked past him to store the spade in its niche.

“And where have you been gone to all mornin’?”

“Out diggin’ for truffles.” He jerked his thumb at the implement.

“What?”

“Truffles. Little roots, very expensive in the shops. The Lords and Ladies like ’em in their food. Find ’em sometimes in the hills.”

“Truffles, yes, but they use pigs to find them, not spades.”

“Don’t need pigs if you’ve got the gift. My daughter here, she’s got the gift of sight.”

“You don’t say.” He looked at me with skepticism, and I smiled at him shyly. “And did this daughter of yours with the gift of truffles find any?”

“Naow, not today.”

“Good. Then you’ll not mind moving on. Within the hour.”

“Want m’dinner first,” said Holmes sulkily, though it was closer to teatime than the noon hour.

“Dinner, then. But gone in two hours, you’ll be, or it’s in a cell you’ll find yourselves. Two hours.”

He stalked off over the hill, and I sat down and giggled in relief. “Truffles? For God’s sake, are there truffles in Wales?”

“I suppose so. See if you can find some food while I dig out the maps.”

Holmes’ maps were of the extremely large-scale topographical sort, showing the kinds of vegetation, the rights-of-way, and small black squares indicating houses. He folded the table up out of the way and chose a series of maps from a shallow drawer beneath my bunk. I handed him a sandwich and a tin mug of beer, and we walked across the paper floor-covering in our stockinged feet.

“This is our route,” he pointed out. “The campsite, here, and the trail going away, roughly along this contour line.” The tip of his brown finger followed the contour of the hill, dropped down into the hollow on the next map, and stopped at the Y junction on the edge of the third. “From here, where? She had to be inside, Russell, before light. In a building, or a vehicle.”

“But not...under the ground?”

“I think not. Had they intended to kill her, surely they would have done so when she tried to escape, to save themselves further trouble. I saw no indication of blood there.”

“Holmes!” I protested