This was going to take time, I realized. Mrs. Mullet was not to be rushed nor taken for granted.

  “We ought to go back downstairs,” I said. “Mustn’t keep the inspector waiting. You stay here and rest, Mrs. Mullet.”

  “Oh, I’m all right,” she said fiercely, struggling to her feet. “I’ve things to do.”

  “Best wait a while,” Dogger said. “We wouldn’t want the inspector to get the wrong idea. Would we?”

  “S’pose not,” Mrs. Mullet said, letting her shoes fall to the floor and stretching out full length with a sigh of luxury.

  “O, woe is me, to have seen what I have seen, see what I see!” she said again, and the back of my neck curdled.

  She crossed her arms and closed her eyes to signal the end of the conversation.

  What was going on in the woman’s mind? I wondered. Was she hiding something? Was she simply being dramatic? Had the pressure driven the poor creature to the edge of madness?

  Or was it me?

  I was beginning to learn that when you’re bereaved, as I have been, you live in a shattered looking-glass world. Nothing is as it seems. I needed to focus: to pull myself back together into that single, intense, burning intelligence I once had been. And I needed to do it quickly.

  I’d start with the inspector.

  I put on my Miss Prim armor and started down the stairs.

  He was sitting across the kitchen table from Undine, who was happily dealing a hand of Drive Jack Out of Town. Although Undine referred to the game as Beggar My Neighbor, at Buckshaw it was, and always had been, Drive Jack Out of Town.

  “Now you’ll have to answer my questions,” she said to the inspector.

  “What’s Inspector Hewitt been asking you?” I asked pleasantly, barreling into the room somewhat faster than I meant to.

  “Nothing,” Undine said. “He hasn’t beaten me yet.”

  “Nor will I, in all likelihood,” Inspector Hewitt said, squaring the deck and handing it to Undine. “Why don’t you go rouse Constable Bunce outside? He’s rather a mournful soul. Beg him to show you his handcuffs. That always cheers him up.”

  “The dreaded manacles, eh?” Undine said. “I’ll bet I can give ’em the slip. I have very slender wrists for my age, you know.”

  And she skipped off to haunt Constable Bunce.

  “Now then,” Inspector Hewitt said, as soon as she was gone, “I want to make one thing perfectly clear.”

  I knew what it was before he spoke. And I was right.

  “I want no interference from you,” he said. “None whatsoever. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, leaning forward and sticking out my right hand for him to shake, my left hand behind my back so that he wouldn’t see the fingers crossed. “Perfectly.”

  “Very well,” he said. “Now, what do you know about all this?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “You were already here when I heard about it.”

  “Well, then, keep it like that,” he said, tucking away his everlasting notebook and getting to his official feet.

  Ha! The dreaded parting shot. How well I knew it, as does anyone with older sisters. My immediate instinct was to throw him a half dozen salaams, sprinkle invisible rose petals at his feet, then fall to my knees and smother his black door-kicking boots in kisses. But I restrained myself.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, giving him the old pleasant but serious smile: the one I catalogued S22—for saucy.

  He gave me a long look, a microscopic nod of the head, and walked out.

  After he’d gone, I got down off my high horse and made myself a jam sandwich.

  I was licking between my fingers when my sister Daffy strolled into the room.

  “Missed all the excitement, did you?” she asked.

  I shrugged.

  “Death of a minor civil servant. Sounds like a Ngaio Marsh novel, doesn’t it? Or an Agatha Christie. Something green and slim from Smith’s to read on the train.”

  “How did you know that? The minor civil servant?”

  Those had been the very words with which the major had described himself to the vicar.

  “Stovepipe,” Daffy said, pointing upward.

  When we were younger, my sisters and I often used to lie on our bellies on the floors upstairs, listening in for hours on a sort of hot-air telegraph that brought news bulletins and tittle-tattle from a remarkable number of rooms in the house. By knowing which dampers to open and which to close, we could even bring in remarkably distant conversations from the guest bedrooms and so forth.

  “Which tells us that the inspector must already have informed the vicar,” I said, fully aware that this was the first step in a new investigation. Without seeing the body, or viewing the scene of the crime, I would have to work backward, as in a looking glass. The Labors of Hercules on a trick bicycle.

  Still, if nothing else, I was going to clear Mrs. Mullet’s name. Anything beyond that would be pure gravy.

  I needed to consult Dogger, of course. The two of us had formed a special partnership: Arthur W. Dogger & Associates, Discreet Investigations. It has a nice ring, doesn’t it? We might have chosen the name Snoops in Kid Gloves, but that would have defeated our purpose. Those people who required our services could read between the lines.

  But first I would finish up with Daffy. Mrs. Mullet was still upstairs in another world of one kind or another. Dogger would keep an eye on her.

  “So, what do you know about him? Major Greyleigh, I mean.”

  Daffy shrugged. “No more than you do, I suppose. I’ve seen him at church. Bulging underwater eyes. Old-fashioned suit, too tight. Sits at the back crunching cough drops during the sermon. Except for the NHS spectacles, he puts me in mind of Mr. Pickwick. Generally beloved by the children of the parish and their doting parents.”

  “Why?”

  Daffy shrugged once more. “Well, he fixed their toys and so forth. He mended Nettie Tuck’s skipping rope when she left it in the field and got it mangled under a plow. Braided it up a treat, the vicar said. As good as new. Must have been a sailor. And he carried little Georgie Monday on his back for the sack race at the fête.”

  Sounds too good to be true, I thought. But maybe I was just becoming cynical.

  “Who would want to kill a man like that?” I asked.

  “It’s really quite extraordinary, isn’t it?” Daffy said.

  Daffy was always saying things like “It’s really quite extraordinary,” when I would have said, “Well, I’ll be bumfuddled!”

  It’s a matter of taste, I suppose.

  “But to answer your question,” Daffy said, “no one would want to kill him—no one in Bishop’s Lacey, at least. You know the rigamarole, Holmes. Look to the portents of the past!”

  And with that, she rubbed her hands together in a ghastly gesture, picked up the last morsel of my jam sandwich, stuck it into her mouth, and strolled out of the room.

  As if on cue, the door to the garden opened and Alf Mullet stepped in, wiping his feet on the doorstep.

  “Where’s my missus?” he asked. “I’ve got some fish for her.” He stood with his shoulders back and his spine as straight and stiff as a ramrod. Alf, the eternal soldier.

  “She’s upstairs napping,” I said. “I’m afraid there’s been a bit of a to-do. Inspector Hewitt thinks she’s murdered someone. Haven’t you seen him?”

  “I came through the garden,” Alf said. “As I always do. Who’s she gone and murdered now, then?”

  “No, I mean it. Major Greyleigh has been poisoned with mushrooms. Mrs. Mullet picked them and served them to him. The inspector’s at the front door with his car. You can go out that way if you like.”

  Alf spat out a word I mustn’t repeat on fear of eternal damnation, then wheeled and marched out the kitchen door. He wouldn’t dream of taking a shortcut through the house. He would make his way properly round to the front, as a man who knew his place.

  But when he arrived, I wouldn’t want to be in the inspector’s shoes. Not for all the tea in China.

  I had learned to flit at a very young age, and I flitted now: from the kitchen into the short, dark passageway that led to the foyer, and across the foyer to the front door, to which I applied my ear. The ancient wood acted as a massive sounding board, and I could hear as clearly as if I were seated cozily inside the inspector’s mouth.

  “You are Mr. Mullet, I take it?” the inspector was saying.

  Drat! I had missed the opening shot.

  “Take what you like. It’s a free country,” Alf said.

  “I believe we’ve met before?” Inspector Hewitt said.

  “Most likely here at Buckshaw,” Alf said. “A couple of years ago, when they were making that film. Everybody and his dog was here.”

  Oof! Careful, Alf, I thought. Don’t want to end up in handcuffs yourself!

  “Now then, what’s all this rubbish about my wife murdering someone?”

  “No one has said any such thing,” the inspector said. “I simply need to ask her a few questions. She’s very upset, and I would appreciate your assistance.”

  “You can ask me the questions,” Alf said, “and save her the trouble.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible,” the inspector said.

  “Why not?” Alf demanded.

  “We believe she may have information about a certain matter. That’s all I can tell you at the moment.”

  Alf’s voice rumbled a reply that I couldn’t quite make out, and then I heard footsteps coming closer on the gravel.

  I mustn’t get caught eavesdropping. I turned and crossed the foyer in just a few long strides.

  The doorbell rang. The inspector was on his best behavior.

  There is a point at which a stranger, having been once admitted to a house, may go outside and come back in without ringing, but it is very brief.

  I made a quick about-face, counted to fifteen, and opened the door. The inspector was on the doorstep and Alf was on his way round to the kitchen door.

  “Ah!” I said. “Ah” is often enough.

  “If you’d be so good as to bring Mrs. Mullet down,” the inspector said. “I’m sure we can make short work of this.”

  I opened the door wide and stepped back.

  “Ah! Mrs. Mullet,” the inspector said, looking over my shoulder.

  I turned and saw Mrs. Mullet, supported by Dogger, at the top of the stairs. Her face was ashen as they began their slow descent. Had she powdered it?

  I shook my head to snap my eyes into proper focus.

  Down the grand staircase they came. They might as well have been the king and queen of the fairies for all the reality of it. One moment Mrs. Mullet was basking in the warm footlights of memory, the next she looked like Death’s breakfast warmed over.

  She was hiding something. Of course! Why hadn’t I realized it before?

  Oh, Mrs. M, I thought. What have you got yourself into?

  As they approached the bottom, Inspector Hewitt reached out and took Mrs. Mullet’s hand.

  Isn’t that kind? I thought. And then it dawned on me: No. Wait. He’s checking her pulse.

  I know how suspicious minds work because that’s how my mind works. It is not always easy being blessed with a superior brain.

  “Come and I’ll put the kettle on,” I said, making a magnificent but humble sweep of my hand toward the kitchen.

  As one of my late father’s dearest friends, the vicar, when speaking privately, could be refreshingly direct. “Tea and faith,” he had once said, “conquer all things.”

  I hadn’t missed the fact that he put the tea in first place.

  So right now, I needed to open my eyes and ears and shut my mouth. Be Polly-put-the-kettle-on de Luce. I needed to keep my feelings to myself.

  “Inspector Hewitt, you and Mrs. Mullet sit at the table. I’ll put the tea on, and Dogger will turn out the cups and saucers.”

  Dogger raised his hand as if to touch his forelock, but diverted it to brush away an imaginary hair on his sleeve. I gave him one of the invisible grins we shared, and he gave it back. A mere glance that spoke volumes.

  I busied myself with the tea leaves: a perfect excuse to loiter and listen.

  “Now then, Mrs. Mullet,” Inspector Hewitt said, opening his notebook. “Shall we resume where we left off?”

  “I’ve told you all there is to tell,” Mrs. Mullet said.

  “Well, tell it to me again,” the inspector said.

  Mrs. M pulled a handkerchief from somewhere in the bosom of her dress and touched it to one eye, although she didn’t dab, I noticed.

  She nodded.

  “Going back to yesterday, you stated that you picked mushrooms on the way to Moonflower Cottage in the morning, that you cooked some for Major Greyleigh’s breakfast, that you served them to him and then left, and that you have not since returned to his house.”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Mullet said.

  “Will you please explain, then, why you were observed, by two independent witnesses, leaving Moonflower Cottage several hours after serving him his breakfast?”

  “They must’ve mistooken someone else for me,” Mrs. Mullet said. “It ’appens all the time.”

  Alf, I noticed, was watching his wife as attentively as the inspector was—perhaps even more so. And she was watching him.

  What on earth is happening here? I wondered as I poured their tea. If I were able to get Mrs. Mullet alone, I’d have the truth out of her in a greased minute, but Inspector Hewitt had somehow rubbed her the wrong way. What was it she had said? That man gets my goat.

  When had he gotten her goat?—and where—and how—and why?

  The getting of one’s goat is often overlooked as a source of murder—not that Mrs. M was a killer, but in general terms. Even the mildest irritation, sheltered, guarded, and fed, can grow into an immense and sometimes sudden rage.

  Dogger once remarked to me, apparently offhandedly, that rage is akin to compound interest, which seemed to me an odd comment from a man who had no use for money. Nevertheless, I remembered it, and it seemed to explain how, even if I didn’t yet know why, Inspector Hewitt got Mrs. Mullet’s goat.

  My head was spinning. Why couldn’t I get the upper hand in this supposed case of murder, as I had been so easily able to do in the past? Was I breathing some kind of invisible fog? Was I losing my touch?

  Inspector Hewitt and Mrs. Mullet sat across the table from each other, motionless, like figures in some village waxworks.

  “Stalemate.” That was the word I was looking for.

  Without warning, the kitchen door was flung open and Undine shot into the room with a clatter. Just what I need, I thought.

  “Flavia! Flavia!” she shouted in that piercing drill-hall voice of hers, too loud for human ears. “Guess what? That Major Greyleigh?—the dead man?—he used to be the public hangman! Constable Bunce told me.”

  There was a crash as Inspector Hewitt’s chair toppled backward onto the slate floor. In an instant he mastered the contorted muscles in his face and strode across the foyer, and the front door slammed like uncomfortably close thunder.

  “That’s done it,” Alf said, almost under his breath. He shot me a glance.

  “You haven’t touched your tea, love,” he said to his wife.

  She raised her head and looked slowly and mournfully up at me as she spoke: “O, woe is me, to have seen what I have seen, see what I see!”

  There are times when you could simply spit sawdust, and this was one of them. I had been beaten to the punch by a brat with a face like a failed pudding. What a fool I must have looked in front of Inspector Hewitt.

  Much as I hate saying “Hisst!” and dragging someone out in the hall by the arm, that’s precisely what I did with Undine.

  “What the devil do you think you’re playing at?” I whispered wetly into her ear. I could feel my own hot breath bouncing back at me off the side of her neck. I had an almost uncontrollable urge to bite her, like Dracula.

  “Lay off, Flavia,” she said, pulling away. “You’re just jealous because I scooped you. Think of the headlines: Young Cousin Gets the Dirt While Girl Sleuth Piddles with Teapot.”

  “I ought to tear your tongue out and give it to the cat,” I said.

  But she was right: I was jealous. I had become used to having the upper hand where murder was involved.

  “How did you do it?” I asked. “Get the information from Constable Bunce, I mean.”

  “I pumped him,” Undine said proudly. “Ibu used to tell me, ‘A man in uniform is a man with a bull’s-eye on his heart. You must learn to aim for it.’ So, I started by admiring his police whistle. From there on, it was a piece of cake.”

  What else had her mother taught this child? I wondered—but only for an instant. I didn’t really want to know.

  “You know, sometimes you’re almost human,” I admitted, and she puffed out her breastbone like a harp in a concert hall.

  “Get out of my sight,” I said, but I said it with a smile, and Undine skipped off to do whatever it is that balls of slime do when they’re dismissed.

  I needed to get a grip on the situation: to come at it on my own terms, rather than having it handed to me like a plate of leftovers.

  As I returned to the kitchen, Dogger caught my eye and moved casually—almost invisibly—toward the pantry, and I followed.

  He turned to me and whispered, “What do you think we ought to do, Miss Flavia?”

  “I was about to ask you the same question,” I said.

  Dogger looked me straight in the eye. “I believe we ought to take on the case.”

  “That’s what I hoped you’d say. And at no cost to Mrs. Mullet. We owe her that, at the very least,” I said.

  Dogger nodded. “I thought you might treat yourself to a casual stroll in the neighborhood of Moonflower Cottage. I believe the air there is especially invigorating.”

  Of course! The obvious place to start was Moonflower Cottage. I needed to get my eyes, ears, nose, fingers, and toes onto the property there, and I needed to do it before Bob Cratchit dotted another i.