“About what?” she asked.

  “About Moonflower Cottage. About the death of Major Greyleigh.”

  Had I fancied it, or did she breathe an enormous sigh of relief?

  “Ah,” she said.

  We walked on in silence for another full minute. I kept quiet to allow her to gather her thoughts.

  And then she spoke: “I might as well tell you. I’ve known Tommy Greyleigh since I was in pinafores,” she said. “ ’E took me to the promenades when I was just a girl.”

  It was as if she had seized her own face and ripped it away, revealing an unsuspected stranger beneath the skin. Who was she, really? I had always taken Mrs. M for little more than a kitchen appliance. How wrong—how very wrong I had been, and how stupid.

  My mouth must have made an enormous O.

  “It’s true. ’E bought me a gardenia and a nice stick o’ Blackpool rock. ‘Land of ’Ope and Glory,’ the band played. Them days is gone.”

  I nodded like a bobbing bird. I didn’t want to break the spell.

  “Later, I used to see ’im in the papers. Whenever ’e did, you know, a big job. I knew well enough ’e was an ’angman. Once, I wondered if ’e ever thought o’ me when ’e was turnin’ off one of them poisonin’ wives ’e used to do away with. Oh! I oughtn’t to ’ave said that.”

  “It’s all right, Mrs. M,” I said, touching her arm. “I’d have thought the same thing. This is fascinating. Do go on.”

  “Well, when ’e retired an’ moved to Bishop’s Lacey, I ran smack into ’im one day in the butcher’s shop. Knew me right away, ’e did. Called me by my name straightaway. ‘ ’Ullo, Meg,’ ’e said. ’E’s the only one as ever called me Meg. Even Alf ’as always called me Margaret. ‘Fancy meetin’ you ’ere,’ ’e said. ’E called me by my old name, of course, not my married name, cause ’e didn’t know that, did ’e?

  “We got to talkin’, mostly about old times, and then ’e said as ’ow ’e’d just bought Moonflower Cottage and was lookin’ for someone to do a bit of light cookin’.

  “Well, I told ’im as ’ow—what with your father—sorry, Miss Flavia—and now Miss Ophelia bein’ gone and married, I wasn’t as busy as I used to be—”

  “It’s all right, Mrs. M,” I told her. “You’re perfectly free to make whatever arrangements you like. It’s your life, after all.”

  She swung her head slowly round and looked me in the eye. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I s’pose it is.”

  “And so, you agreed to cook for him.”

  “Just breakfasts,” Mrs. Mullet said. “No more than breakfasts.”

  “And what did Alf think about that?”

  Mrs. Mullet flushed and wiped at a couple of loose strands of hair that had somehow escaped her brushed neatness. “Alf never knew nothing ’bout it,” she whispered. “ ’E’d of been outside hisself.”

  “So that’s the secret you’ve been keeping,” I said.

  She nodded eagerly, and I accepted eagerly.

  “But I understand why you didn’t want to tell me,” I said. “It must have been a shock to run into him like that.”

  Mrs. Mullet seemed suddenly somehow lighter. After being reined in for so many years, something had been loosed.

  “We ’ad some lovely mornin’s,” she went on. “ ’E told me of ’is younger years, after I flew out of ’is life. That’s ’ow ’e put it: ‘You flew out of my life,’ ’e said, ‘like a bird of paradise.’

  “We both laughed at that. ’E met a lovely girl called Marguerite. Almost the same name as me, but in French. It means ‘a pearl.’ ”

  I registered surprise, as if I didn’t already know that fact. I had once dissolved my mother’s pearls during a scandalous—but informative—chemical experiment. Pearls and I were old acquaintances.

  Mrs. Mullet went on: “Marguerite was the daughter of a painter in Primrose ’Ill. Sounds too pretty to be true, doesn’t it? But it was. She was so beautiful she sucked all the light out of the room and made it come back out of ’er face and ’er ’air. ’Er father painted ’er as Guinevere—King Arthur’s wife, you know? ’Er face was so famous she used to get stopped in ’Arrods and asked to sign people’s shoppin’ bags.

  “ ’E courted ’er for seven years, till she was twenty-four. ’Er father was against it. Said ’e was no more than a common tobacconist, which was true enough at the time. But ’e ’ad given ’er ’is ’eart, and ’e couldn’t take it back. ’E wanted to elope, but she was dead set against it. Said ’er father would ’ave ’er ’unted down and killed. Artists are like that. So ’e did the honorable thing and asked ’er father to go for a drink with ’im. Told ’im ’e was putting in ’is name for ’angman, and if ’e succeeded, why ’e’d be sittin’ pretty, and would the father allow ’im to ’ave ’is daughter’s ’and?”

  “It’s like The Arabian Nights, isn’t it?” I said, wishing that life could always be like this. “And did he?”

  “ ’Er father was dead set against murder. Believed murderers should be put to death. Said that ’angman was a noble calling, and all that. Said that if Tommy got the job, ’e’d foot the weddin’ bill hisself.”

  I breathed out heavily. My frail body was not designed for drama like this. I could feel my heart accelerating.

  “Go on!” I said. “Please!”

  “Well, ’e got the job right enough. Took a apprenticeship from a cabinetmaker in the trade. ’Elped out with a couple of ’angin’s in ’is spare time, studied all the lengths and weights—ropes and bodies, that is—and finally got the all clear from the ’Ome Office to go out and do it on ’is own.

  “And the father kept ’is word. ’E built them a nice ’ouse in Battersea. Weddin’ in ’Anover Square and an ’oneymoon abroad. Night train to Dover and on to Paris. Suite at Claridge’s.”

  She stopped abruptly, and I noticed a tear forming in her left eye, immediately followed by another in the right.

  “She was so beautiful,” she said. “Beautiful,” she whispered. “ ’E showed me a picture of ’er once.”

  “What is it, Mrs. M?” I asked. Was it merely sentimentality that made her weep?

  She shook her head and took a shuddering breath. “When ’e woke up in the mornin’ on the first day of their ’oneymoon, she was stone-cold dead in bed right there beside ’im. The most beautiful creature in the world.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. What else could one say?

  Even secondhand, this was the most awful thing I had ever heard. I wanted to cry myself.

  “ ’E never married again. ’E lived in that ’ouse in Battersea till the day ’e retired. The Battersea ’Angman, they called him.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ve seen it in the old newspapers.”

  “ ’E was famous,” Mrs. Mullet said, “an ’e was a lovely man, in spite of what ’e done. ‘You’re gentle and you’re tender-’earted,’ I told him. ‘Yes,’ ’e says, ‘I believe I am.’ As if ’e’d never thought of it before. So, when I found ’im dead—”

  “You found him dead?” I asked. “You found him dead?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I said, too loudly, with exasperation in my voice.

  “Alf,” she said simply.

  Ah, yes. Alf. The jealous husband.

  “I should ’ave run ’ome and got ’im. Alf always knows what to do. But I didn’t. And then it was too late.”

  “So, what did you do? When you found his body, I mean.”

  “Well, I checked that ’e was dead. I’d seen this ’appen before, remember, at Lady Rex-Wells’s. Didn’t want to make the same mistake again.”

  “And then?” I asked, hardly daring to breathe.

  “I took out my notebook—where I keeps my grocery lists—an’ my pencil, and I made a few sketches.”

  “Sketches?” I almost ruptured my vocal cords.

  “They aren’t much to look at,” she said. “I’ve been takin’ them Tuesday classes at the Buttercross. Drawin’ from Life. Alf says it beefs up your brain to study coordination of the ’and and eye. Would you like to see them?”

  Would I?! My imagination was positively slavering.

  “Yes…please. If you don’t mind.” I had suddenly gone all polite and formal.

  “I’ll show you them sometime,” she said.

  I had to bite my tongue.

  What was she holding back? Surely, she must have left Major Greyleigh at his breakfast of mushrooms and then returned to find him dead. But why? She said she ought to have rushed home and told Alf, but she hadn’t. Where had she gone? Where had she been in the meantime?

  “Mrs. M,” I said, “I think we ought to—”

  But by now we were at the church, and even from the road I could hear the hum of daggers from inside the parish hall. Character assassination is not a particularly silent art, and the ladies of St. Tancred’s were masters whose murmurs and hissing tones drifted out to escape in the churchyard.

  “Dear Mrs. Mullet!”

  It was Elaine Chicory, of course.

  “I said as soon as I heard, it wasn’t her, didn’t I, Delvina?”

  “Poor you! How could you bear it?”

  Delvina Patt had joined in.

  Mrs. Mullet put on a face of hardship lightly borne.

  She distributed a wan smile to the entire room before plowing her way through the crowd to the tea bowser.

  “She’s a rock,” Delvina said. “Isn’t she a rock? A fortress in a sea of evil.”

  Why, I wondered, do people always drag out the oldest clichés first?

  “And she’s one of us, isn’t she?” I added, knowing full well that my words would be repeated again and again, which would do me no harm among the ladies of the Cluck and Grumble. My name among them would be Golden, which just happens to be one translation of the name Flavia.

  Life’s a game, isn’t it?

  I stared studiously up at the ceiling; because nobody talks to you when you’re staring at the ceiling, it’s a useful pose for listening intently.

  “That old basket of bones,” Mrs. Parmelee was saying. “And a mouth on her like Pinocchio’s whale.”

  “But in her case,” Miss Goody replied with a smirk, “there’s no fire inside.”

  They both giggled shamelessly. No point in further eavesdropping: This was garden-variety gossip; a waste of time on both our parts.

  From my left came a whisper. I heard the word “police.” This was more like it.

  “Police,” someone was saying. I shifted my head as if for a better view of the ceiling, but the better to aim my ear. I raised one hand to form a listening cup, pretending to scratch my scalp in puzzlement.

  “They called round her house and gave her a good grilling. She was one of the last to see him alive—apart from—”

  I could see from the corner of my eye that she jerked her head toward Mrs. Mullet, who was still getting her tea to her taste. Four scant teaspoons of sugar and just the barest ooze of milk.

  It was Laura Candy speaking. I could recognize her voice even when she whispered, due to her adenoids. Laura and I had a history that extended back to vengeance within the Altar Guild, a history of which I was not particularly proud.

  “She picked him mushrooms just after daybreak. Probably didn’t want to be spotted.”

  “Did she have designs on him?” another voice whispered. “A fungal flirtation?”

  They both giggled nastily.

  “Oh, no…he’s not—wasn’t—inclined that way at all.”

  They both giggled again and changed the topic to hairdressers and their quirks.

  “Mine’s in South Kensington. Very posh. She came from California and did Joan Crawford. Did James Mason once, and he tipped her fifty pounds. In banknotes! Fifty pounds! In California! Fancy!”

  I remembered a theory once stated by Philip Odell, the fictional detective on the BBC wireless series, that in times of crisis, people are compelled to speak about the incident, but deflect their words instead into other, and sometimes more curious, channels. Even though Philip was fictional, he was often right, and I had on more than one occasion taken his advice.

  “Flavia!”

  It was Cynthia Richardson, the vicar’s wife.

  “How good to see you, but whatever are you doing here?”

  “I came with Mrs. Mullet,” I said, lowering my voice. “You know…moral support.”

  “Oh dear, yes,” Cynthia said. “She does soldier on, doesn’t she, just when she ought to be soldiering off.”

  “Well, actually,” I said, “I brought her. I thought she needed a break.”

  “So considerate.” Cynthia smiled, not because she thought so, but because she was married to a vicar.

  “Actually, I was hoping for a scoop,” I said. I had discovered that disarming frankness succeeds where fine words fail.

  “Oh dear—yes,” Cynthia said, looking round. She had taken my meaning instantly.

  “What have you heard?” I asked, before she could mount any defense. The art of being a vicar’s wife is learning to pick other people’s brains, rather than your own. Because of that, vicars’ wives know things that would make your hair curl, but you had to be quick-witted and strike while the iron was hot.

  “Well, I…”

  “Out with it, Cynthia,” I said, with a light chuckle and a cheeky grin.

  “Well…”

  “Cynthia!” a voice boomed at our elbows.

  It was Elaine Chicory. Who else?

  “This shocking murder,” Elaine hissed. “Surely you…”

  Her tone was loud but confidential, and she glared round as if to make us all feel like eavesdroppers.

  “I’m afraid I must fly,” Cynthia said. “The parish leaflets are due today and the mimeograph’s gone bust again. It’s back to that dirty old jellygraph, I suppose. I shall need a jolly good percolation in the bubble bath.”

  She cast down her eyes in modesty. The very idea of a vicar’s wife steeping in a bubble bath was enough to make a horse blush, and Cynthia knew it.

  “Ta-ta, Flavia,” she said. “Lovely to see you. We shall catch up later.”

  And with that she was gone.

  Had she given me an invitation, or was she practicing her skilled evasion techniques?

  “She’s tinting her hair,” Mrs. Parmelee said. “Looks like a wet dog hung on a clotheshorse.”

  Mrs. Mullet, meanwhile, appeared to be meditating Buddha-like beside the tea urn. Everyone seemed too shy to approach her. Although they suspected she was innocent of Major Greyleigh’s murder, they had become suddenly reluctant to be seen too close to a person who had been fingered by the police—even briefly.

  I knew that she had transformed herself into a listening post, and that not a word spoken in the room had escaped her elephantine ears. Not that they were larger than anyone else’s; the difference was in the way she used them. When it came to gossip and the gathering of it, Mrs. Mullet could have sunk that little tittle-tattle William Connor, who calls himself Cassandra in News of the World.

  Not to insist too much, but Mrs. Mullet’s ears ought to have been a military secret.

  One of her greatest assets was the ability to look, even at a distance, as if she were thinking about tea, which was what she was doing now. Even as our eyes met, she gave not the slightest flicker of recognition, as if her entire being—her whole soul—were focusing intently on the inner workings of the tea-making mechanism and its proper place in the Christian church.

  It was a lovely performance and a pleasure to watch.

  I quickly scanned the hall, looking for possible fruitful conversations. Most of the women had clustered in groups of three and four, and all appeared to be smiling. Murder would not be the topic of such cheerful chatter.

  In the far corner sat an old woman on a wooden pew: a relic of the Sunday School furnishings that were being replaced gradually by ghastly plastic chairs. It was Mrs. Skinnett, who had once, in another era, been confidential secretary to the president of one of the major motorcar companies, or so it was said.

  She was the very picture of placid contentment, obviously intent on her own inner world. She looked neither to the right nor the left, but stared, unfocused, straight ahead into her world of memories.

  I picked up a cup of tea from the trestle table and sat down beside her.

  “Tea, Mrs. Skinnett?”

  She did not reply immediately. As I waited, I noticed a bulky Bakelite box hanging round her neck from a lanyard, from which wires or tubes ran upward to her ears.

  Of course! Mrs. Skinnett was profoundly deaf: victim of a bomb blast in a London volunteer canteen during an air raid.

  She suddenly turned and smiled up at me. “Thank you, dear,” she said. “How thoughtful. Mmmm.”

  I perched dutifully beside her on the edge of the pew, looking ready to spring into action at her slightest wish.

  “You’re one of the de Luce girls, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “I’m Flavia, the youngest,” I told her.

  Mrs. Skinnett pointed her free forefinger at the marbled box hanging on her breastbone. “Speak into this thing,” she said. “I’m a little hard of hearing. Rodney rigged this up for me. My nephew. He’s in Signals, you know. Clever with electrical gadgets.”

  “I’m Flavia, the youngest,” I repeated, louder and closer to the metal grille of the device.

  Mrs. Skinnett nodded. “You’re famous, you know,” she said. “I heard all about you and that business with the postage stamps. They say King George himself came down to Buckshaw to thank you, though I don’t believe everything I hear.”

  “Very wise, Mrs. Skinnett,” I said, “and nor do I.”

  Dogger had told me that one does not repeat what a king has said to you, nor is it in good taste to repeat what one has said to a king.

  Mrs. Skinnett went on. “When William and Matthew died, as they say, ‘for King and country’—they were in the RAF, the two of them—I was told at first they’d both gone down in the Channel, but that turned out to be untrue. I prayed they hadn’t, but then I prayed they had.”