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in the palm of hand. The opinion is that the rebels made a serious mistake when they did not shoot her!”

Chapter Four
    Lord Rothborough left him to his examination of the site. Giles wanted to see if there was any evidence of where she had entered the water, so he made a careful circuit of the pool, edging along the sloping path of the far side with care. As he approached the little bridge, the flagstones forming the path turned into dark but dry mud. He got down on his hands and knees to look for recent footprints. There were marks in the mud but he could not be sure if he was seeing footprints. He would have to look at her boots.
    To enter the grotto cave it was necessary to cross that rickety, rail-less bridge. In wet weather, due to the steep arch, this would have been a risky undertaking. Today, in the dry, warm air, the sound of his feet on the wooden planks echoed in the sounding chamber of the basin around him.
    The interior of the grotto was surprising – but he was sure that this was the desired effect. It was all part of the theatrical trickery of the place. He had expected darkness, but it was in fact illuminated from above. Irregular fissures forming roof lights had been glazed with stained glass, creating eerie but effective pools of coloured light on a white floor made from fragments of shells pressed into cement. Presiding over all, from a rocky niche, was the milky marble statue of a woman in a long robe. She had her eyes raised towards heaven and a cross pressed to her bosom. Presumably this was St Gertrude.
    Despite her saintly presence, Giles wondered if the cave was not an attractive place for a tryst. It was sheltered from the elements, private and scarcely visited – in short, excellent if one did not wish to be interrupted. No-one would know of such a spot by chance. As a visitor to the house, had the dead woman heard about it from one of the resident staff? Perhaps she had gone there to meet one of them. Lord Rothborough and Lady Charlotte might think that the servants did not go into the Pleasure Gardens, but masters usually knew little about the private lives and desires of their employees. The fact it was a forbidden place would only make it more alluring, especially to those in search of privacy and intimacy. Men and women of that class were forced to take opportunities where they could find them. Was this how the business had begun? If that was the case, then what had gone wrong? How had she ended up in the pool, dead, and not safely back at the great house?
    He searched around for evidence, but found nothing. There were no obvious traces of her presence.
    He emerged again and carefully crossed over the rickety bridge, stopping for a moment at its slightly perilous summit. From there it was a drop of at least ten feet down into the water.
    Had she meant to kill herself? Had she thrown herself into the deep, dark waters in a fit of despair when her lover had failed to come? That sounded all together too much like a novel. The heat was clouding his mind. He made his way back to the dairy.
    Holt was in heavy conversation with the coachman, but jumped to attention at the sight of him.
    “Let’s find you that pint of beer in the servant’s hall,” Giles said, getting into the carriage. Holt got in after him and sat as before, on the tip-up seat. “But not more than that. I need you to keep your eyes and ears open.”
    -0-
    Lady Charlotte was waiting for him in the great marble entrance hall at Holbroke.
    “I hope you don’t mind, Major Vernon,” she said. “But I have been to talk to our housekeeper, Mrs Hope. She has not seen Eliza Jones – for that is her name – since after dinner last night. Well, the upper servants’ dinner, that is. They eat at five in the Steward’s room. But I have not spoken to Lady Warde yet, just as you requested. She must have seen her, because she went upstairs with the other maids when the dressing bell was rung at seven.”
    “We shall have to talk to