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pony and gives them rides around the orchard!’
    ‘Uncle Dusty!’ bleated Malvolio from Juliet’s lap.
    ‘I like Uncle Dusty’s hair,’ stated Portia. She passed me the biggest corn cob in the bowl, probably as a bribe for another ride in my floater.
    ‘Why?’ I asked.
    ‘It’s nice and long. Can I have some more fritters?’
    Gloucester held the fritter platter out to her. ‘It’s all beside the point!’ he cried passionately. ‘We should be concentrating on finding the murderer! Don’t you realise? While she’s up there, he could kill again!’
    Yorik mouthed, ‘Not in front of the kids.’
    Gloucester smashed the platter down on the table. ‘Why not? They’ll be safer if they know the danger! It’s no use pretending to them that this is a nice world! We need to get organised! Start patrolling the valley properly! There are monsters out there, psychopaths…oh, what’s the use?’ He pushed his chair back and flung himself out of the room.
    ‘What’s a psychopath?’ asked Portia.
    ‘Someone who’s sick in the head,’ said Ophelia absently, her eyes still on the door as though she expected Gloucester to come back in. ‘It makes them do bad things.’
    ‘Sweet!’ said Portia appreciatively. ‘Can we play pirate ships again after lunch?’
    I hesitated.
    ‘I’ll take them,’ offered Hippolyta, pushing her chair back too. ‘Come on, last one in the floater has to feed the parrot.’
    ‘What parrot?’ demanded Portia.
    ‘Pirates always have parrots.’ Hippolyta patted Ophelia’s shoulder as she passed. ‘I’ll pick up Gloucester on the way,’ she promised. ‘He won’t have gone far.’
    Ophelia nodded.
    No one spoke for a while after they left. Then Yorik said, ‘He’s right you know. We’re tackling this the wrong way. We need to find who did it, not prove the wolves innocent.’
    ‘We’ve been through this a million times before,’ said Ophelia wearily. ‘The person who did this is probably long gone. If there was some crazed killer living round here they’d have struck before. It must have been some Wanderer…’
    ‘Didn’t you say you had a Wanderer here?’ I asked.
    ‘Lucy?’ Yorik grinned. ‘She wouldn’t even eat the deer after she saw Gloucester gut it!’
    ‘Yes, she did!’ said Ophelia
    ‘Only after the poor boy spent an hour persuading her.’
    ‘Where’s Lucy now?’
    ‘She left after the second murder. She told Mummy and Daddy all about it, and Mummy and Daddy sent a dikdik to bring her home.’
    ‘She was all right,’ said Ophelia tolerantly. ‘Just young.’
    ‘It was a good bit a venison though,’ said Yorik, looking wistfully at the last of the pumpkin fritters. ‘Take a bag of corn up with you, will you? We could do with a bit of meat.’
    ‘I don’t think I’ve ever eaten deer meat,’ I said.
    ‘You will tonight,’ said Romeo. ‘Emerald’s a great cook. Great big roasts every night. You’ll have a lovely time,’ he promised me. ‘Won’t she Julie, sweetheart?’
    ‘Of course she will,’ said Juliet, picking bits of Malvolio’s spat-out corn off the table.
    Werewolves. A house that was a Tree. Uncle Dusty who had long hair and gave the children rides. Eleanor the management consultant who had created the doctrine of neo-authoritarianism. Two murder victims, one with his throat ripped out and the other with his heart left resting by his body. And me.
    ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘It’s going to be fantastic’.

Chapter 9
    W hen you think of a tree house you think of Pooh and Piglet and their house in the wood, small and cute and ‘let’s have honey for tea’.
    The Tree wasn’t like that at all.
    The werewolves’ house grew on on a rocky hill surrounded by cliffs, streaked with wedgetail eagle droppings and littered with the occasional stubborn bush that hadn’t heard it was more comfortable to have soil around your roots.
    In the midst of this barreness a single Tree towered over the landscape. It was as wide as my house at