Everyone in Bishop’s Lacey and far beyond had heard about the Skinnett boys: separated because they were brothers and posted to two different squadrons as a safety measure, and yet, against all the odds, shot down at the same time on the same day during the same raid on an enemy airfield in France.

  I put my hand on the back of hers. “They will never be forgotten, Mrs. Skinnett,” I said. “They are legends.”

  “I know they are, dear. You don’t have to tell me.”

  I looked into her faded blue eyes and recoiled almost physically. I had to brace myself. Their depths were indescribable: beyond compare.

  In her eyes were other worlds and other times. The past was still alive in her! I could see it!

  In those pale blue irises were births, deaths, and loves; successes and failures; tragedies and comedies; and, yes, hates. I had never seen anything like it, and in a way, I hoped I never would again.

  It was a kind of nakedness I could not yet understand.

  The nakedness of age.

  “Murder is all they want to talk about,” she said suddenly. “Look at them.”

  She raised a veined, unsteady hand to indicate the ladies in the hall.

  “I can hear them,” she said. “At least some of them. Rodney wired in some kind of superheterodyne circuit that amplifies certain frequencies of the human voice. It cuts in and out. In wet weather I get the BBC Overseas Service and the occasional police call. The static is often merciless, but you’d be surprised at what I sometimes hear.”

  “I’ll bet I wouldn’t.” I grinned. “I have acute hearing myself.”

  She patted my hand and looked me straight in the eye. The years dropped away and she was instantly the same age as me.

  “This Greyleigh business,” she said. “Nasty. I picked up a call on my hearing apparatus, you know, at about the time the major died.”

  I had to wait until my heart settled.

  “It must have been close by for you to hear it,” I said. Mrs. Skinnett lived at The Laurels, just to the west of St. Tancred’s. Probably less than two hundred yards.

  “That’s what I thought,” she said. “It was quite clear. No static. A man’s voice. ‘Lima Charlie Bravo returning.’ ”

  I remembered my brief wireless training at Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy.

  And I knew that Lima stood for L, Charlie for C, and Bravo for B. Could LC stand for Leathcote? It was certainly possible. And B for Base?

  So someone from Leathcote may well have been at the scene of the crime. Perhaps even Asterion, the resident Mister Big Britches at Leathcote, was involved in the major’s death.

  My head was spinning.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Skinnett,” I said. “One of my ears plugged. Wax.”

  I gave it a vigorous reaming out with my little finger to reinforce the fib. “Now, what were you saying?”

  “The voice seemed oddly familiar. Someone I’ve met before. Couldn’t quite place it. Oh, well…” Mrs. Skinnett gave my knuckles a sudden squeeze. “Over there, look: Ursula Grimsdyke and Nancy Poe. They’re talking about your Mrs. Mullet.”

  She saw my eyes widen.

  “She says she saw the Mullet woman talking outside Moonflower Cottage with someone else—a man in uniform—not long before Major Greyleigh’s body was discovered.”

  “Who was it? Did she say?”

  Mrs. Skinnett fiddled with a knob on the side of her listening device. “Superheterodyne regenerative feedback control. Raises the ‘Q’ of the resonant circuit, Rodney says, but also narrows the bandwidth and increases the risk of feedback, in proportion.”

  She gave the knob another hopeful twist, then wrinkled her face. “Sorry, dear. I’m no good with the electrical impulses.”

  “It’s been lovely speaking with you, Mrs. Skinnett. We must talk again sometime.”

  She wasn’t letting go of my hand. Her grip was firm.

  Again, I looked into her remarkable eyes, but only for an instant.

  “If you don’t mind my saying so,” I said softly into her apparatus, “you’re very beautiful.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  Feeling for a moment as if I were a ballet dancer, I walked almost on tiptoe an invisible tightrope toward the tea urn and Mrs. Mullet.

  “Got the goods?” I asked out of the corner of my mouth.

  She smiled. “Yes, dear,” she said.

  My ears were already itching in anticipation. We could natter happily all the way back across the fields to Buckshaw.

  “I’ve got to go ’ome, dear,” Mrs. Mullet said suddenly when we were outside. “Today’s our anniversary, and Alf gets in an awful ’uff if I don’t make ’im a suet pudding. ‘I do fancy a suet pudding,’ ’e always says, an’ I know ’e means ’e ’asn’t forgot our anniversary. But I forgot with all this…” She waved a forefinger in a circle, trying to bring a word to mind. “Hurley-scurry,” she said at last, looking proud of herself. “I shall see you later.”

  And with that she walked off.

  “But Mrs. M,” I called after her, “what about—”

  “Later,” she called back over her shoulder. Such determination in a single word! It was almost a barked command, and it froze me on the spot.

  I was standing there dripping with cold disappointment when I heard the whine of a motor, and an excited toot-toot-toot of a horn. I spun round just in time to see a jeep coming directly at me, its occupants waving their hands madly and shouting words I could not hear above the roar of the engine.

  I leaped not-very-gazelle-like to one side, and as the jeep shot past, I had a quick impression of bare toes wrapped round the steering wheel. Someone was driving the thing with his feet!

  Before I could make sense of the scene, the jeep shot into the opening of the lych-gate, where it came to a grinding stop. With its heavy old timbers, the gate was too sturdy and too narrow for the jeep to pass through. Steam began jetting from beneath the bonnet, and a cloud of ancient dust rose up before settling on the lych-gate.

  Ashes of ancestors, I thought.

  The driver was Carl Pendracka, who still sat gripping the wheel with his bare feet and a look of amazement on his face. His knees were folded up under his chin like a defective penknife. How he had managed to get into that position boggled my mind. I did not recognize his passengers.

  “Flavia!” Carl called out, followed by a loud wolf whistle. “Where’s your Sunday bonnet?”

  I ignored him.

  Also, I had become suddenly shy. There were two strangers in the jeep with Carl: two American servicemen in fatigues, both of them good-looking in various ways.

  “This here’s Eugene Cobb,” Carl said. “But we call him Jeep after Eugene, the Jeep in Popeye. Jeep’s teaching me to drive Texas-style And this here creature in the back is Rinso White. Rinso’s from Rochester, New York, U.S. of A. Rochester’s where Kodak calls home. You know…Kodak? Cameras? Rinso used to work there in the summers when he was a schoolboy, didn’t you, Rinso? Used to take the girlies into the darkroom to see what would develop.”

  Rinso grinned modestly from ear to ear, as if it were true.

  “You know why they called it Kodak?” Carl went on. “ ’Cause that’s the noise the shutter makes when you take a snap.”

  He made a clicking sound with his tongue: “Kloclack…Kloclack…Kloclack.”

  To accent his sound effects, he reached over and tooted the jeep’s comical little horn.

  Poop-poop-poop!

  It’s a pity, I thought, that Undine isn’t here to enjoy it.

  He kept on doing this, still seated in the jeep as casually as if they had not just collided headlong with the property of the Church of England.

  “Why would you want to drive Texas-style?” I asked. “You’re in England.”

  “Commando tactics.” Carl grinned. “Never know when you’re going to have to escape from some moated old castle in a straitjacket. Isn’t that right, Jeep?”

  Jeep turned slowly in his seat and regarded Carl as if he’d never seen him before.

  “If you say so,” he said.

  “Jeep’s what we call laconic. That means he’s a man of few words. Aren’t you, Jeep?”

  “If you say so,” Jeep said.

  Carl laughed. “See what I mean? But it’s okay. Loquaciousness is frowned upon in the military. Isn’t it, Jeep?”

  “If you say so,” Jeep said.

  Carl cackled. “I get such a kick out of him,” he said. “Eugene’s from the Ozarks: the mountains. Shot squirrels with slingshots, bows and arrows, and Springfield rifles. Natural-born killer, aren’t you, Jeep?”

  I waited for Jeep’s inevitable reply, but it didn’t come. His attention had drifted away to somewhere on the other side of the churchyard.

  “Where’s your old friend Mordecai?” I asked. Mordecai had been Carl’s shadow: a whispering know-it-all who always insinuated himself to be an overflowing fountain of inside information.

  “Went AWOL,” Carl said. “Cashiered. Sent off. Rode the painted pony into the sunset. Jeep’s his replacement in certain respects, but not all. With Mordecai gone, I’m the brains of the outfit now—the Human Encyclopedia.”

  “So I’ve heard,” I said.

  “Ask me a question,” Carl said. “Anything. Go ahead. Try me.”

  It was an old parlor trick, and I had used it myself. If the person asks a question you can’t answer, make one up that they can’t possibly check.

  “What’s the temperature, in centigrade, of the seventh circle of Hell?”

  Carl scratched his head. “Beats me,” he said. “What is it?”

  “One hundred and seventy degrees,” I said. I didn’t just pick this number out of thin air: It was the melting point of cyanide, one of my greatest enthusiasms.

  “Well, I’ll be dog-washed,” Carl said. “I never knew that. I’ll have to add it to my repertory. Ask me another.”

  I don’t know to this day where the inspiration came from. I can only guess that it sprang from saxitoxin: the fact that saxitoxin came from butter clams, which are prevalent, as is the United States Army Air Force, in the Pacific Northwest regions of the North American continent, such as Alaska.

  Stripped to its essence, my thought was this: Where had the fatal saxitoxin come from? How had it made its way to Bishop’s Lacey?

  “What do you do at Leathcote?” I asked. “The war has been over for donkey’s. Most of you Americans have gone home, but I still see the bombers come and go.”

  Carl scratched his nose busily, and I knew instantly that he knew something he didn’t want to tell.

  “Well,” he said, “we’ve got a couple of hundred acres of war surplus that we don’t want to bother carting home. You know: warehouses full of chewin’ gum, cigarettes, K rations, potatoes, boots, helmets, grits, greatcoats, beans, beer, banjos…” He grinned.

  “And you sell them to the highest bidder,” I guessed, half laughing.

  Carl’s heart stopped. I could see it in his face. For just an instant his eyes went dead, and the blood rose in his cheeks.

  “Oh, it’s big stuff, too,” he said, forcing a half-hearted laugh. “Airplanes, tractors, trucks, bulldozers. Not much call for the likes of them at the village pub.”

  “I suppose not,” I said. “You’d have to sell them overseas.”

  Again, Carl went into a sudden brain freeze, as if he’d been hit in the middle of his forehead by a firework.

  I’d had enough. Carl knew more than he was telling, and the planes that came and went at Leathcote were not all carrying soothers to orphans.

  Time to change the subject. I put on a smarmy smile that meant nothing. “What brings you boys to Bishop’s Lacey?”

  “We call ourselves Five-in-a-Jeep,” Carl said. “Kind of like Enid Blyton, but older and with tobacco and petrol. And wilder.”

  He gave a low growl that ended in a bark.

  “But there are only three of you,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah, well, nobody’s perfect,” he said, swiveling round in his seat to see if his pals were appreciating his witty repartee. “Besides, the extra two are metaphorical.”

  “Oh, go soak your head,” I told him. I wasn’t expecting the light round of applause from the back seat, which left me nothing to do but spin on my heel and walk away, like a music hall comic leaving ’em wanting more.

  “Hey, little lady,” Carl called. “Don’t get your frock in a knot. I was only teasin’.”

  Which made things forty-five times worse. It was time to bring out my most devastating weapon.

  If there’s one thing a girl needs to know to succeed in the world, it’s the ability to turn on the tears at will. Tears are the only known acid that eats away at the male ego, and it’s important to know how to summon them in seconds. Delayed tears are no good: They go off quicker than even the dampest cheeses.

  It’s a simple trick, and easy to learn. One simply turns away, as if hurt beyond all hope of healing, opens the eyes as wide as they will go, then stares fixedly, without blinking, at the brightest part of the sky. The eyes, drying rapidly, will begin to irrigate themselves in well under a minute, until they are flooding like the Nile in monsoon season.

  There isn’t a man alive who can resist such a scurvy attack, but who am I to say that it is wrong?

  “Grow up,” I said, turning back and wiping at my eyes. “And stop showing off. You might be impressing your cronies, but you’re not impressing me.”

  “Tcha!” Carl said. “Did you hear that, buckaroos?”

  There was a notable silence. He had definitely spotted the tears.

  “Do you know what I believe I’ve gone and done?” Carl said in a grave and mournful voice. “I believe I’ve gone and overstepped myself. Sometimes I’m stupid, and sometimes is now. C’mon, Flavia, forgive and forget. I throw my cloak in the gutter. I beg you to step on it. Please!”

  I gave out a merry, ironic ringing laugh and left him to sort it out.

  “Pretty please?”

  It was the ultimate beggary.

  “Move the stupid jeep,” I said, “before someone spots us.”

  I included myself to tighten the noose.

  “I can’t,” Carl said. “There’s no room. We’re wedged in.”

  “Eugene, climb over the bonnet,” I said. “Rinso, you come over from the back.”

  “Jeep,” Jeep said, scowling.

  “Jeep,” I said, and his eyes relaxed. “You and Rinso can push from the front here, and I’ll help you. Carl, you’d better drive.”

  Rinso gave me a sheepish look, but without protest he climbed from the back seat, between Carl and Jeep, over the bonnet and stood beside me, as Jeep followed.

  Carl put the jeep into reverse and let in the clutch as the three of us put our hands on the grille and pushed.

  “Oh! It’s hot!” I said.

  Carl laughed. “It’s called the Go Devil, that engine. Runs on fire and brimstone.”

  Despite what it ran on, the jeep refused to budge. The rear wheels spun, but the nose was well and truly wedged in a vise of ancient ecclesiastical timber.

  Rinso, Jeep, and I pushed until our eyes were bugging from our heads, as Carl raced the engine and hammered at the clutch with his bare heel.

  “Wait,” I said, raising a hand. “Carl, you get out and push. You’re much stronger than I am.”

  “But—” Carl managed before I cut him off.

  “Don’t say it,” I told him, scowling.

  I was not unfamiliar with motorcars. Dogger had taught me to drive my mother’s old Rolls-Royce around the estate, and I had become actually quite an accomplished motorist.

  Carl climbed out without a word, and I scrambled into the driver’s seat. The steering wheel was on the wrong side, but I wasn’t going to be intimidated by that.

  “On three,” I told them. “One…two…three!”

  The three of them pushed and strained. I let in the clutch, and the jeep, wheels spinning, shot back out of the lych-gate like a stone from a catapult. I braked, shifted from reverse into first gear, and brought the jeep round in a circle to face in the opposite direction. No one who hadn’t seen the accident would ever know what had happened.

  I jumped down to inspect the damage. There were two fresh gouges on the posts of the lych-gate. I picked up a handful of soil and slathered the wooden wounds.

  “Good as new,” I said. “Or as good as they were in seventeen-hundred-and-whatever-it-was.”

  Carl made a deep bow as he swept the air with an imaginary cavalier’s hat.

  “In your debt, milady,” he said.

  “Yes, you are,” I said, keeping a solemn face.

  “Name your price,” he said. “Alas, I am not a genie. I regret that I cannot offer three wishes. Uncle Sam permits only one.”

  I pouted, trying to look pensive, eyes rolled up toward the Heavens. I put my finger on my chin.

  “I’ll tell you what,” I said after an agonizing pause. “Can you get me onto the base at Leathcote? Without being spotted?”

  Asterion, I had decided, could be tracked down only by a girl of apparent innocence and naïveté: mainly me.

  Carl was taken aback.

  “I could be shot at the stake,” he said, suddenly solemn, if not frightened to death. “What do you want to do that for?”

  “Oh, it’s just a game,” I said. “Efficiency badge for Girl Guides. It’s called Stalking.”

  This was only a partial truth. There had been a Stalking badge once upon a time, but it was now called Naturalist. Also, I had been sacked from the Girl Guides several years ago after a practical joke went wrong and required special counseling for one of my fellow Guides. The fact that I had refused a direct order from Miss Delaney to sit for punishment on a stool in the corner wearing the “Crown of Thorns” meant that it was unlikely I should ever be begged to come back.