Sabrina’s study of Lance and Aimée was becoming noticeable. She was very watchful. I was sure they would notice and I told her so.

She said cryptically, ‘I have to watch them. How would I know what they will be doing next if I didn’t?’

She was firmly convinced that Lance and Aimée were lovers. There had been a case in the village when one of the farm labourers had come home suddenly and caught his wife in bed with another man—one of his fellow workers. He had strangled him and later been hanged for murder. Everyone talked of it for weeks, and Sabrina, of course, listened with the utmost interest.

One day when she was sitting by my bed, because I had stayed there, having felt ill in the morning, she narrowed her eyes and said: ‘Perhaps you are being poisoned.’

‘My dear Sabrina, what notions you get! Who would want to poison me?’

‘Some,’ she said darkly. ‘They put things in people’s food.’

‘Who?’

‘People who want to get rid of someone. The Borgias were always doing it.’

‘But we have no Borgias in this house, darling.’

‘It’s not only them. Other people do it too. Kings and Queens used to have tasters, just to make sure their food wasn’t going to poison them.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘It comes in history. You ought to have a taster. I’ll be your taster.’

‘Then if there was poison, you’d take it.’

‘I’d save you, and that is what tasters are for.’

‘Dear Sabrina, it is sweet of you, but really I don’t think I need a taster.’

‘You’re going to have one,’ she said firmly.

That evening when my meal was served she insisted on being with me and tasted everything before I ate it. She enjoyed it, being rather fond of food.

My tisane came up and when one of the servants brought it to my bed, Sabrina looked at it suspiciously.

‘Do you remember how we used to put the ring in it?’ she asked.

‘You did,’ I reminded her.

Her eyes grew round with horror. ‘You haven’t got the ring any more. Perhaps they took it away from you because… because…’

‘Sabrina, my ring was lost in a gamble.’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said. ‘It was stolen because it was taking the poison out of your food.’

She picked up the tisane and took a gulp. She grimaced. I went to take it from her and in doing so it was spilt over the counterpane.

I laughed at her. ‘Oh, Sabrina,’ I said, ‘I do love you.’

She flung her arms about me.

‘I’m going to keep you,’ she told me. ‘We’re going to catch the murderers and they’ll be hanged like poor old George Carey who was hanged because he killed his wife’s lover. I wouldn’t have hanged him, but I would anyone who hurt you.’

‘Dearest Sabrina, always remember that there is a special bond between you and me. Promise me you’ll never forget that, and won’t be jealous if there is someone else I love besides you.’

‘I’ll remember, but I might be jealous.’

This ten-year-old girl was half child, half woman; at times she seemed merely her age and at others much wiser than she could possibly be. She was passionately interested in everything that went on around her. She listened unashamedly at doors; she watched people, and followed them; the role of spy-protector was one after her own heart. Once she said she saw Lance and Aimée kissing and when I pressed her admitted that they had just stood close together talking. If anything did not happen as she wanted it to, she tried to make it do so, and sometimes imagined it had. She did not exactly set out to tell lies, but her imagination ran away with her. When I said that she must not say they had been kissing if they had not been, she replied: ‘Well, they might have been when I wasn’t looking.’ That was her reasoning. She was obsessed by the idea of saving my life.

So when next day she was ill, I was not sure whether the illness was… well, not exactly faked, but whether her strong imagination had willed her into sickness because she so wanted to prove her point about the tisane.

I went up to see her at once. She was lying very still, her eyes raised to the ceiling. I was concerned as I knelt by the bed; then I saw the smile of satisfaction steal across her face.

‘Sabrina,’ I whispered, ‘you’re pretending.’

‘I did feel sick,’ she said. ‘I had cramping stomach pains.’

She had heard that was a symptom of poisoning, I realized at once. ‘Where?’ I asked.

She hesitated for a moment and then placed her hands on her stomach.

‘Sabrina,’ I said, ‘are you sure you didn’t imagine it?’

She shook her head vigorously. ‘It’s what happens to tasters,’ she whispered. Her eyes grew round with excitement. ‘Last night I tasted the tisane,’ she said. ‘Just one sip was enough.’ She threw up her hands dramatically.

I pretended to laugh, but a terrible uneasiness persisted. ‘You’re romancing,’ I said.

‘I’d die for you, Clarissa,’ she said fiercely.

‘No you won’t,’ I retorted sharply. ‘You’re going to live for me.’

‘Oh, all right,’ she said almost grudgingly.

‘Now what about getting dressed and coming for a stroll in the wood? Be ready in half an hour.’

‘Can I have my breakfast first? I’m starving.’

I laughed and, bending, kissed her.

We walked through the woods to the dene hole.

‘Do be careful, Sabrina,’ I said. ‘If ever you come to the woods alone, don’t go too near.’

‘All right. I won’t. I don’t care about the old dene hole now, anyway.’

I could see that she thought our domestic drama was far more interesting than the dene hole.

A few days later I was seated in the garden on the wooden seat close to the shrubbery when Sabrina came out and sat beside me. She looked both secretive and triumphant so that I knew something she considered important had happened.

‘Well?’ I asked.

‘I’ve found something. I think it could be an important clue.’

‘Well, tell me:’

‘You’ll think I was wrong to do this. Promise you won’t.’

‘How can I, until I know what it is?’

‘I’ve been watching them…’

‘Who?’

‘Oh, you know. Lance and Aimée. I’ll catch them, then we’ll know for sure. But this is even better. Her door was open when I went past, so I looked in. She was sitting at her dressing-table and I saw her take something out of a drawer. She kept looking at it and I wondered what it was.’

‘You were a long time passing,’ I said. ‘How did you manage to see so much!’

‘Well, I stopped a little while.’

‘And spied on her.’

‘I am a sort of spy. That’s my job. I discover things. But you wait and see what I’ve found. I waited until she had gone out and then I went to her room. I saw where she had put this thing she was looking at. You know the secret drawer? You have to take out one drawer and there’s another drawer behind it. That is where she had put it… in the secret drawer, so it must have been a secret. So I went in and found… guess.’

‘You tell me.’

She put her hand in her pocket and when she withdrew it she was holding something in the palm of her hand. It was the bezoar ring.

I was so startled to see it that I gasped. She watched me with satisfaction.

‘He gave it to her. He gave her your ring.’

‘No… he lost it at the tables.’

‘That was what he told you.’ Sabrina spoke scornfully. ‘She wanted it. She said, “Get me the bezoar ring and I’ll be yours.” So he just gave it to her.’

I shook my head, but of course I half believed what she was telling.

I sat staring at the ring. I was wretchedly unhappy, for I felt in that moment that there was more than a pinch of reality in Sabrina’s wild imaginings.

She was watching me intently. ‘They took it away,’ she said darkly, ‘because it was taking the poison out of the tisane

I laughed a little unconvincingly. I didn’t want her to know that I was worried. I think that at times Sabrina herself did not believe in these accusations. It was a game to her, like charades and I Spy. She had always loved treasure hunts and games of detection.

‘You won’t need a taster now,’ she said. ‘You have the ring.’

I said thoughtfully: ‘I think the best thing you can do is take it back and put it where you found it.’

She was astounded and I went on slowly, playing her game: ‘It is best for them not to know that we know where it is.’

She nodded darkly.

I sat still, watching her speed across the grass to the house.

Was it possible? I asked myself. Was he in love with my sister? It was feasible enough. She was attractive and she shared that all-consuming passion. They were together a great deal. She was often invited to accompany him to gambling parties. I was left out because people knew I did not care to play. How often had I heard them laughing together or growing excited as they discussed the manner of some past play.

Was it so absurd? Was I wilfully blind to what was happening about me? Did I need the awareness and the possessive love of a child to make the picture clear to me?

After that I seemed to become conscious of a certain menace all about me. At times I thought it must be due to my condition. Women had strange fancies at such times. Sabrina had planted suspicion in my mind and it grew.

There was Lance. What did I know of Lance? He was in a way a secret person and this was all the more alarming because he showed no signs of secrecy. He appeared to be light-hearted in all ways, reckless, even careless, but always kind… avoiding trouble or any form of unpleasantness. How could he be capable of intrigue, of plots to be rid of me—for that was what it amounted to. I looked for motive. He had been both passionate and tender, a lover and a friend; but I had always known that his real passion was for gambling, and it had made a barrier between us. I had made it clear that I thought his gambling foolish; and there was Aimée, pretty enough and very elegant, with a love of gambling which almost equalled his own. They were together a great deal. There was one other dark thought. I guessed that there were debts and they might be enormous ones. He was constantly staving off his creditors. If I died, my fortune would be his… except the Hessenfield inheritance which had so rapidly increased at the time of the South Sea Bubble. But Aimée would have that because my money was to go to her and hers to me in the event of either one of us dying.

So there was a motive.

I wondered about the extent of Lance’s debts, but he would never tell me. He would always shrug the matter aside if I raised it, as though debt were a natural sequence in the life of a gentleman. Then it occurred to me that he might be in dire financial straits in which case my death would be a necessity to him for it would give him escape from his creditors and, at the same time, Aimée, if it were true he was in love with her. How could I be sure? He was charming to her, but he was charming to everyone and it was his nature to pretend that people were of the greatest importance to him. My death might even have meant to him escape from a debtors’ prison… and marriage with Aimée.

No, I could not believe it. There were times when my doubts seemed to have grown out of wildest imaginings and to be quite absurd.

Oh Sabrina, I thought, I am as bad as you are!

I found a certain pleasure in escaping to the woods which I loved. I found them enchanting, and different every day. I liked to watch the leaves change and to listen to the birds’ song. There was peace there and when I was among the trees everything seemed natural and normal, and my doubts faded away.

Of course, I would say to myself, it must have been Eddy who gave the bezoar ring to Aimée. She had been intrigued by it from the time she had first seen it and knowing how I felt about it she did not want me to know that it was in her possession. She probably felt she ought to hand it back to me and I could understand that she wanted it for herself. As for the suggestion that she and Lance were lovers, it was too ridiculous to stand up to credulity. He was my devoted husband; and I did not believe that he had ever been unfaithful to me either in thought or deed.

So I went to the woods in the late afternoon of each day; that was when Sabrina was having her riding lesson, and it was something she would not willingly give up. She was learning to jump now and was very excited about it.

I had returned from the woods that afternoon and was resting, as was my custom, when I heard Madame Legrand in the corridor outside my room talking excitedly to Aimée.