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and expenses: it was a shooting diary. Every organized hunting trip that had taken place on the estate for twenty years had been documented: not only how many deer were shot but also each hare, fox, and squirrel, each pheasant, quail, grouse, and dove… as well as the location, the weather conditions — strong breeze out of the northeast, dry; or, no wind, mist, and light rain — and the names of the people making up the shooting party. Each entry, and there were hundreds, was recorded in the same neat hand — a woman’s, he thought — which seemed odd: ordinarily, it would have been the gillie’s job to keep such a journal for the laird.
    Engrossing as it was, James saw nothing in the book of remote help to him now, so he chucked it onto the growing heap with the hopeless feeling that this was indeed going to take all night and that he might as well get some sleep and call the office in the morning. As he reached to scoop up the pile and put it back in the box, he happened to glimpse the edge of a photograph protruding from the pages of the accounts book he had just discarded.
    Opening the book, he slid out the photo. It was a picture of one of the Duke’s shooting parties. In it, six men posed behind four deer and several dozen hare arrayed before them on the ground; three of the men knelt to hold up the heads of the deer, and the remaining three stood behind them with their hunting rifles slung over their arms. One of the men holding a rifle was James’ father, the other was the old Duke himself, and between them was the man James knew as Embries.
    In his surprise, he almost dropped the book. Gripping the photo as if it might escape, he brought it nearer to his face. There was no doubt whatever — the same tall, almost gaunt physique, the same stark white hair, the same long-fingered hands and pale eyes staring out from the glossy scrap of paper — it was the man he had met on the hilltop little more than an hour ago.
    The uncanny coincidence gave James a queer feeling in the pit of his stomach; he reached for his coffee and took another drink, wishing it were whisky instead. The photo was old. Judging from the youthful appearance of the Duke and his father it was twenty-five years old at least, maybe even thirty, yet Embries appeared not to have aged a whit in the intervening years.
    James opened the accounts book to the page where he’d found the photo, and saw an entry from 17 October. It informed him that on a warm, partly sunny day with the wind gusting ten to twenty miles per hour out of the northwest, four deer and twenty-seven hare had been killed by six men: Sir Cameron Campbell; Sir Herbert Fitzroy; Dr. Stephen Harms; his father, John Stuart; Duke Robert himself; and one listed only as M. Embries.
    Remembering the business card he had retrieved from the windscreen, he reached over and dug it out of the pocket of his jacket. He stared at the name…
Embries
. An unusual name — at least, unusual enough for there to be no mistaking that, appearances aside, the man he had met on the hilltop and the man in the photograph were one and the same.
    Intrigued now, his senses quickened by an immediate adrenaline rush, he carefully put the accounts book to one side and placed the photo and card atop it. He dug into the box again and brought out another sheaf of bound documents, untied them, and spread them out. It was a jumble of bits and pieces the like of which petty officials everywhere revel in: an old tax notice; a quitclaim for a highway widening scheme; an application for a firearm permit; his father’s discharge papers from his old regiment, the King’s Own Royal Highlanders. Stapled to this last was a brittle, faded copy of a medical form filled out in John Stuart’s name, listing such things as eyesight, vaccinations, and blood type. James glanced quickly at the other documents, which contained equally mundane and uninteresting information, and impatiently swept them aside.
    Two hours later, after