wrt to your ROT'd paras - it never occurred to me that Keith would recognise the assailant. I'm dreadfully bad at faces myself. And good as Broster is at describing landscapes, ducks, etc, she does have characters recognising each other by voice rather than appearance a couple of times that I can remember. eg Keith suddenly realising who Ewen is in Edinburgh, and someone has a similar experience in GitN. I wonder if she was slightly face-blind?