Ghost Walk by Alanna Knight

felt that my immediate danger had now evaporated and as I prepared to leave the scene with as much speed as dignity would allow, curiosity overcame me.
    ‘Everyone seems very busy at the moment. Are they preparing for the Jubilee celebrations?’
    An angry look. A growl his dog might have envied. ‘None of your business, miss. Just you keep away – keep out of trouble, if you know what’s good for you,’ he snarled and the dog leapt to its feet at this change of mood to add a warning bark of its own.
    I needed no more persuasion. I left without another word, my thoughts regarding his lordship of a very uncharitable nature.What supreme arrogance not to allow anyone to draw a distant view of his home.
    But curiosity remained undefeated, one of my particular failings , and I resolved to find out all about that pompous gentleman and his grim gamekeeper from Jack’s father.
    Making my way back down the hill, with every hedgerow full of the anxious twittering of nestlings, I opened the sketchbook in a determined effort to capture an ancient tree by a picturesque gate.
    Above my head a chorus of corbies lent raucous accompaniment to the occasional bellowing of a cow or the baa-ing of a distant sheep in distress, while below in the world of humans, a horserider clattered along the road. A distant rumble of wheels and a hay cart moved lazily aside to allow access to a rather grand carriage, which I suspected came from the direction of the stately home.
    Perhaps this was the carriage I had glimpsed at the railway station , returning the young nun to her life in the cloisters. But as always while drawing, I was completely absorbed, the rest of the world abandoned as I lost myself in the task before me.
    At last a church clock’s chime echoed up from the village.
    I had been absent two hours. Father McQuinn should be back by now. Gathering my pencils and book, ten minutes later I was outside his house. There was no response, no one in the church either.
    I would try again later but I was frustrated as my sense of urgency suggested that I should get this matter settled before Jack arrived. I did not imagine him taking kindly just before our wedding to anything that remotely involved my former life, my long and happy marriage to Danny McQuinn.
    The farmhouse too was empty. Everyone was busy out of doors at this time of day and a note on the table told me to make myself at home. Bread, cheese and milk in the larder.
    I wasn’t hungry and in my bedroom I moved a comfortable chair to the window with its splendid view of the undulatingBorders landscape and took out the book I had been reading on the train.
    I was quite addicted to the new fashion of daring mystery stories by lady authors. Especially as none of them had the remotest idea of what murder was like, of what was involved. Such a messy untidy business in real life, these literary ladies with their genteel female detectives would have wilted away in horror at meeting bloody death head-on at first hand.
    I think I dozed for a while and hearing footsteps on the path below the window, I hurried downstairs to see Jack’s father carrying an injured sheep across his shoulders.
    At my commiseration he said: ‘Found her way up the hill there, far from the rest of the herd. Fallen on her back, poor beast, and couldn’t get up. Poor craiter’s lain there for days.’
    ‘Will she recover?’ I asked although she looked near death to me.
    ‘Nay, lass. Bad lambing, too old ye ken, and then a broken leg.’ He sighed. ‘Just brought her back to get my gun,’ he said, walking over to a rack above the fireplace.
    ‘Your gun?’ I echoed, realising what he had in mind.
    ‘Aye, lass. We’ve known this craiter a long time. Jess fed her as an orphan lamb. I couldna leave her out there, a mile away, in pain –’
    A clatter of churns approaching announced Jack’s mother who had been milking the cow.
    ‘What’s this, Andrew? Another for your hospital.’
    ‘Too far gone,’ was the