Heil Harris!

forward.
    Emma Peel, aged seven, skipped across the dry ditch and put out her tongue at a solemn cow by the gate. It stared back but it was used to children. She picked a buttercup and held it under her chin. What was it meant to indicate? That she didn’t wet the bed? that she liked butter? She couldn’t remember. She clambered over the fence and took the short cut to the hall. The big house it would have seemed in those days compared with her father’s home in St. John’s Wood. She hopped from furrow to furrow singing Cruising Down the River on a Sunday Afternoon.
    Yes, she could see him now. He had paused by the gate where the cows were and then he started running crouched-backed along the side of the open-stone wall. Emma swerved, increased her pace and tried to reach the corner of the field before her pursuer. If he was armed it would make no difference because she was defenceless anyway in the middle of an open field. Oh dear, back to the adult life!
    Darkness, Emma realised, takes only about ten minutes to fall. She reached the corner and sprang over the wall, but there was nobody around. He must have hidden among that knot of trees. Lurking there, watching her in the dusk.
    Emma crept back over the wall and sprinted to the place where the stones rose to a height of nearly four feet. She cleared them in a gratifying leap and fell to the ground on the other side. Then she waited. Whoever was following her was less fit that she was. It took him nearly half a minute to reach the spot, and he was gasping as he tried to clamber over the wall. She reached up, grabbed his hand and pulled.
    “Help!” the man screamed. He thrashed out at her in panic and then spun round to land on his shoulder by her feet. In a reflex movement she helped him up and stretched him across the stones. But just as her knee was rising into his groin she stopped.
    “Bertie! What are you doing here?”
    “I was following you.” He was still tall and effete, but more languidly uninteresting than sinister. Perhaps the blond hair made him nondescript. Emma stood him up and straightened his tie. “I didn’t recognise you without the Frankenstein gear.”
    “Do you think it’s an improvement?”
    “No. Why were you following me?”
     
    “I think he enjoys being thrown about by an elegant woman,” Emma explained to Cynthia when she returned. “As far as I know he wasn’t trying to kill me.” Cynthia wasn’t interested. She was still absorbed in her own tragedy. “Why couldn’t they have murdered Bertie instead?” she demanded. “Bertie might even have enjoyed it.”
    “Bertie is too much of a pune to be murdered.”
    “So was Freddie 1 I can’t see the difference between them.”
    “So why don’t you take up with Bertie and forget the mourning?” Emma was unaccustomed to the dramatic heroine pose from Cynthia. “I’m sure all Bertie needs is the love of a good woman. And that would stop him from jumping out on me when I least expect it.”
    “Emma! How can you be so inhuman? Bertie is absolutely gauche. I mean, where could I go with him? A man is supposed to be a status symbol, you know.” Emma shrugged. “I didn’t think Freddie was much of a symbol. More like a shocked toad.”
    “So what? He was rich, wasn’t he?” She flounced petulantly to the door. “I shall remain in mourning for the rest of the week! And black doesn’t even suit me.
    Cynthia paused before opening the door, sighed, and went back to the sideboard. After a soulful moment she selected a banana. “I think you should go into mourning for Freddie instead. After all, I’m engaged to Albert. It wouldn’t look right for me to be in black, would it?” She ate the banana in four sharp bites. “Are you going out this evening?”
    “I’m not sure.” Emma had no intention of taking lonely girls with her to meet Ludwig Harris. “I might be seeing Colonel Hayburn.”
    Cynthia groaned. “I shall be alone in this place. Father went off to Germany this morning and Albert won’t be here until the weekend. What shall I do?”
    “Tatting?” suggested Emma.
    This was the kind of evening life they don’t show you in the Tatler. Cynthia wandered about being alternately grief stricken and bored, she made three phone calls to frightfully amusing people who were too busy to come. out right at this moment. And Emma had to stay down in the room with her because otherwise when Hayburn came to collect her he’d probably be compromised into taking