‘Oh,’ I said, still a little bit overcome. ‘That’s absolutely perfect. Thank you.’

  She beamed. ‘I managed to track down one of your father’s former colleagues,’ she said. ‘From the circus. He drew me a sketch and I sent it to a cutler in Sheffield. He made the knife itself and then a jeweller in London enamelled the handle, set the stones and gave it that beautiful shine.’

  I picked it up. ‘It feels an almost-perfect weight for its size,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, the cutler fellow was quite taken with the design. He said it should throw very well.’

  I flipped it in my hand, caught it by the handle, and then flicked it towards the bedroom door where it stuck with a satisfying thud.

  ‘He’s right,’ I said.

  She laughed. ‘I had thought we might keep it on display,’ she said. ‘It’s a reminder of your father, of course, but I thought it fitted with the racing car theme, as well, after your fruit-knife-flinging exploits at Codrington Hall.’

  I fetched the knife from the door and set it back in its box.

  ‘But by all means use it,’ she said. ‘Perhaps we should get you a sheath for it so you can carry it about your person.’

  ‘It’s funny you should say that,’ I said. ‘Wait there.’

  I returned a few moments later with three boxes of my own.

  ‘You must open the largest first,’ I said as I plopped it onto the bed beside her. ‘Then the smallest, and then the heaviest.’

  ‘I can guess what this is,’ she said as she attacked the ribbon on the large box. ‘Hat boxes seldom contain anything other than . . .’ She lifted a large, dark blue hat from the box. The broad brim curled upwards on one side and the crown was decorated with a wide silk ribbon tied in an extravagant bow.

  ‘Well, isn’t that just the most perfect thing,’ she said, delightedly. ‘And just my colour.’

  ‘I thought so,’ I said. ‘Explore further.’

  She frowned in puzzlement but obediently examined the hat in more detail.

  ‘Oh, I say,’ she said when she discovered its secret. ‘How wonderful. My daydream made flesh. Or made leather, felt and ribbon, at any rate. You’re quite the best friend a lady could have.’

  The ribbon, which was glued to the crown of the hat to hold its decorative folds in place, was not a single piece. The ‘join’ fell near the back and marked the edge of a concealed flap, behind which was a small compartment.

  ‘How utterly wonderful,’ she said. ‘I bet I can guess what the other boxes contain now.’

  As instructed, she first opened the smaller one, which contained a tiny, twin-barrelled Model 95 derringer pistol made by the Remington Arms Company of America. The heavy box held fifty .41-calibre Rimfire cartridges.

  She fitted the tiny pistol into the tailor-made compartment at the rear of the hat, and put the hat on.

  ‘There,’ she said. ‘How do I look?’

  ‘Deadly,’ I said.

  She reached up casually with her right hand, as though to adjust the fit of the hat, and the hand returned bearing the derringer.

  ‘I can’t count the number of times when something like this would have saved us an awful lot of messing about,’ she said. ‘Thank you so very much.’ She grinned. ‘Although it probably doesn’t speak well of us that we buy each other weapons for Christmas.’

  ‘It’s not always weapons,’ I said. ‘You bought me a brooch with picklocks in it for my birthday.’

  ‘That’s true.’ She took off the hat. ‘This is absolutely wonderful,’ she said. ‘And I promise not to accidentally shoot you.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ I said. ‘And I promise not to accidentally whip out my bejewelled knife and throw it into your heart in retaliation.’

  ‘Then we’re safe.’

  ‘We are. Shall I draw you a bath?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ she said. ‘We’d better shake a leg if we’re going to get up to The Grange in time for elevenses.’

  * * *

  The weather was crisply cold as we made our way up the hill with the frost crunching beneath our boots. The skies were clear and the low sun made the frosted trees sparkle. The downside of the cloudlessness was that it dashed all hopes of a white Christmas.

  ‘To tell you the truth,’ said Lady Hardcastle, ‘I’ve never quite understood the attraction of snow. It’s beautiful for the first hour or so, but it soon degenerates into a filthy grey slush. Then it grimes up the hem of one’s dress or freezes overnight and turns even the shortest walk into a treacherous expedition across an arctic hell.’

  ‘Hell has ice now?’ I said.

  ‘Mine does,’ she replied. ‘And bagpipes.’

  ‘You’re not a fan of the skirl of the pipes, then, hen?’ I said in a bad Scottish accent.

  ‘No one is, dear. They say they were banned by George II, you know. They claim it was to suppress Scottish nationalism, but if it’s true – and, as a matter of fact, I don’t believe it is – I’m sure it had less to do with saving the Union from Highland insurrection and more to do with saving everyone’s hearing from the screech of that infernal instrument.’

  I hummed ‘The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond’ as we passed through the gates to the drive. I’d moved on to ‘I Love a Lassie’ by the time we reached the great front door of the house.

  ‘That’s a new one, isn’t it?’ she said as we waited for someone to answer.

  ‘Harry Lauder,’ I said. ‘It’s a few years old now. It’s been doing the rounds in the music halls.’

  ‘It’s jaunty,’ she said. ‘I bet it sounds bally awful on the pipes, mind you.’

  Jenkins, the Farley-Strouds’ butler, opened the door.

  ‘Lady Hardcastle,’ he said, warmly. ‘Miss Armstrong. Do, please, come in. Let me take your coats.’

  ‘Good morning, Jenkins,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Merry Christmas.’

  ‘And a merry Christmas to you, too, my lady,’ he said. ‘Lady Farley-Stroud has asked me to take you straight through to Sir Hector’s study. She’s waiting for you there.’

  Lady Hardcastle and I exchanged puzzled looks but followed him down the passageway to a heavy oak door. He knocked and entered.

  ‘Lady Hardcastle and Miss Armstrong, my lady,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, Jenkins,’ came the familiar voice from inside. ‘Show them in.’

  ‘Very good, my lady,’ said Jenkins. He ushered us into the room and closed the door behind us.

  ‘Sit yourselves down,’ said Lady Farley-Stroud, indicating the two armchairs beside the window. She perched herself on the edge of Sir Hector’s ornately carved desk as we made ourselves comfortable. The desk was of a dark wood, decorated with elephants and peacocks. A souvenir of India, I presumed.

  ‘Merry Christmas to you both,’ she continued. ‘Thank you for coming last evening. I had the jolliest time.’

  ‘We did, too,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Thank you for inviting us.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Thank you for inviting me, especially.’

  ‘Think nothing of it, m’dears,’ said Lady Farley-Stroud. ‘Cook tells me there have been some unexpected deliveries to the kitchen, too. And Jenkins is clearing room in the wine cellar to store an uncommon amount of grog. You’re a very naughty girl, Emily, and I can’t thank you enough.’

  ‘Entirely my pleasure, dear,’ said Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘But that’s not why I’ve closeted you here, away from the others,’ said Lady Farley-Stroud. ‘I rather fear we’re in a bit of a bind again.’

  ‘Again?’ said Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘Much as the last time I drew you away from company and brought you in here. Do you remember?’

  ‘I do indeed. Someone had stolen your emerald . . . I say, it’s not gone missing again, has it?’

  Not long after we had first arrived in Littleton Cotterell, we were helping the police solve a murder while simultaneously trying to recover a stolen gemstone for the Farley-Strouds.

  ‘No,’ said Lady Farley-Stroud. ‘But something is missing. Last night someone broke in through the window of one of the bedrooms and helped themselves to a pearl pendant on a gold chain.’

  ‘Goodness me,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Whose room? Where? Are they all right? Were they hurt? Have you called the police?’

  ‘Hattie Beaufort – my niece. Or niece-in-law, if that’s a proper term. You met her last night. She’s in a room on the first floor, at the back of the house. She’s unharmed. Didn’t even know anyone had been in the room. And no, we don’t want the police involved for now. We – that’s to say Hector and I – would quite like to settle this amongst ourselves without involving the official police. It’s tiresome enough being at the centre of yet another robbery ourselves, but it will do poor Cornelius’s reputation at the bank no end of harm if it gets out that his wife was robbed.’

  I didn’t follow this particular line of reasoning, but I’d never been particularly sensitive to scandal, so I was almost certainly missing some subtle nuance of the situation.

  Lady Hardcastle pressed on. ‘Was anything else taken?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ said Lady Farley-Stroud.

  ‘Were any other rooms searched?’

  ‘No.’

  Lady Hardcastle paused a moment in thought. ‘Let me get this straight,’ she said at length. ‘You’re telling us that someone stole in through the window of an upstairs bedroom in the dead of night. They picked up a valuable necklace, leaving no indication that they had searched for anything else. And then they left again without troubling to snoop around the rest of the house. Oh, and they moved so silently that the occupant of the room was undisturbed.’

  ‘It sounds rather queer when you put it like that,’ said Lady Farley-Stroud.

  ‘Doesn’t it just?’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Well, I do love a puzzle. What say you, Flo?’

  ‘It beats playing Sardines as a way of passing Christmas morning,’ I said.

  ‘It does, rather, doesn’t it?’ She stood. ‘Come on, then,’ she said. ‘Lay on, Mac-Gertie. Show us the scene of the dirty deed.’

  We trooped out of the study and set off upstairs.

  * * *

  The Grange was a beguiling hotchpotch of architectural styles. It had started its life as a Tudor manor house. A Georgian owner had added a Palladian section which became the main body of the house and gave it its elegant, symmetrical, front aspect. Shortly before the Farley-Strouds bought it, the last owner had added yet another new wing, this time in the Gothic Revival style, complete with turrets and towers.

  The suite of rooms occupied by Hattie Beaufort and her children was in this Victorian part of the house and was provided with all modern conveniences. Sir Hector had installed an electricity generator in one of the old outhouses – the Elizabethan piggery, so one of the servants had told me. It was the Victorian wing of the house that most benefited from this wonderful modern invention, and here electric lights lit the passages and the rooms at the merest flick of a switch.

  Lady Farley-Stroud was leading the way. She arrived at a door near the end of a passage and opened it without knocking. We followed her inside and found a decently appointed bedroom. The bed looked comfy and cosy, though the covers, in common with the furniture and decoration throughout the house, had clearly seen better days. A fire burned cheerfully in the tiled grate. There was a washstand with a porcelain bowl and jug, a scuffed wardrobe, and a small writing desk with a chair that didn’t match. A jewellery case sat on the bedside table, open and empty.

  ‘That’s where the necklace was kept?’ asked Lady Hardcastle, pointing to the case.

  ‘Yes, dear,’ said Lady Farley-Stroud.

  ‘And this is the window that the thief used?’

  ‘We believe so, yes.’

  Lady Hardcastle examined the window frame. ‘It’s locked,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, dear,’ said Lady Farley-Stroud. ‘But it wasn’t last night. We snibbed it this morning in case the burglar returned.’

  Lady Hardcastle unfastened the lock and lifted the lower sash. She stuck her head out and looked down towards the ground.

  ‘It’s quite a drop,’ she said as she pulled her head back inside. ‘But the drainpipe looks sturdy enough, and all that decorative brickwork would provide plenty of footholds. What do you think, Flo?’

  I crossed the room and leaned out through the open window. The cast-iron drainpipe that ran down from the gutter on the pitched roof above us was very solidly attached to the wall. The wall itself wasn’t uniformly flat. At regular intervals, individual bricks – or sometimes whole courses – were set proud of the surface to give the wall a visual texture that made it look rather striking from the outside.

  ‘I’m not much of a climber, my lady,’ I said. ‘But I reckon even I could shin up here without any great difficulty.’

  ‘I agree,’ she said. ‘We need to take a look at that flowerbed down below. The quickest route up here would be across that rose border, onto the water butt and straight up the drainpipe. You never know – they might have left a footprint in the soil. They always do in the detective stories.’

  I’d pulled my head back inside by this point and was reaching up to close the sash window when something caught my eye.

  ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘What’s this?’

  I reached down into the window frame and plucked a short length of thread from the protruding head of a nail. I examined it quickly before passing it to Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘It’s wool,’ I said. ‘A rather fine worsted. Dark blue.’

  ‘You know your fabrics,’ said Lady Farley-Stroud with a smile.

  ‘When you spend your working days up to your elbows in carelessly torn clothes in need of repair,’ I said with a pointed glance at Lady Hardcastle, ‘you quickly become familiar with all manner of tailoring styles. And cloths.’

  ‘She’s a worker of miracles when it comes to dressmaking and tailoring,’ said Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘I’m not all throwing-knives and kidney punches, it’s true,’ I said, ‘but miracle worker might be a bit of an exaggeration.’

  ‘Nonetheless,’ she said, ‘I’d have been hard-pressed to identify a thread like this.’

  ‘It’s not the sort of thing your average fly-by-night cracksman would wear,’ I said. ‘That was pulled from a gentleman’s suit.’

  ‘Gracious!’ said Lady Farley-Stroud. ‘You can’t mean it. A gentleman wouldn’t steal into a lady’s bedroom in dead of night and take her jewellery. There must be another explanation.’

  Lady Hardcastle was beside me now, examining the window frame.

  ‘Whoever it was,’ she said, ‘and however he came by his expensive suit, the thread was most likely tugged from the knee of his trousers as he knelt here on his way in. And if I’m right, there should be . . .’ She pointed triumphantly to a mark on the inner sill. ‘A footprint where he brought his other leg in and stepped on the sill.

  Sure enough, there was a faint impression in the dust on the white-painted window sill.

  ‘I say, Gertie,’ she said. ‘If we’re going to do this properly – like they do in the stories – I don’t suppose you have a glass I could use?’

  ‘A looking glass, dear? Whatever for?’

  Lady Hardcastle laughed. ‘No,’ she said. ‘A magnifying lens.’

  ‘Of course, m’dear, of course. Don’t know what I was thinking. Hector has one in his study. Refuses to admit he needs spectacles for reading but he has a lens the size of a tea plate to help him with the newspaper. I’ll get it for you.’

  She crossed to the bed and tugged the bell cord.

  While we waited for Dora, the housemaid, to answer the bell and then make the round trip to the study in search of the magnifying lens, we carefully examined the rest of the room. It didn’t seem as though anything had been disturbed, although I’m not sure how we would have known that something in an unfamiliar room was out of place. I did, however, spot a little ash on the floorboards near the window. Careful examination revealed a little more at the edge of the carpet.

  ‘Does Mrs Beaufort smoke cigars?’ I asked.

  ‘Does she what?’ asked Lady Farley-Stroud.

  I pointed to the ash. ‘Cigars, my lady,’ I said. ‘Would Mrs Beaufort have left that ash?’

  Both of them peered at the indicated spot.

  ‘You’re quite the bloodhound this morning, Flo,’ said Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘Remarkable,’ said Lady Farley-Stroud. ‘No, dear, not to my knowledge. Although one never knows what young ladies are getting up to these days. They’re going out to work, demanding the vote . . . D’you know I saw a woman wearing trousers in Gloucester a little while ago? Trousers! I wouldn’t be shocked to find out that Hattie smokes cigars, but she keeps it a secret if she does.’

  By this time Dora had returned with the magnifying lens. Lady Farley-Stroud had exaggerated its size, but it was still a substantial instrument. Lady Hardcastle gripped it by its silver-bound horn handle and studied the foot mark.

  ‘One doesn’t like to draw attention to the state of another lady’s housekeeping, dear,’ she said, ‘but it’s actually rather a good job your maids don’t dust too thoroughly.’

  ‘It’s that Dora,’ said Lady Farley-Stroud, wearily. ‘She’s lazy and rude, but we never seem to quite get round to giving her the sack. But she’s done us a service this time, you say?’

  ‘She has indeed,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Look here. You see where the chap’s damp boot sole has stepped onto the windowsill? He’s left a remarkably complete print in the dust.’

  Sure enough, when viewed through the magnifying lens, we could make out almost all the details of the man’s left shoe.

  ‘It’s a dress shoe rather than a boot,’ I said. ‘Probably an Oxford. Or do you call them Balmorals here? Either way, it would confirm the hypothesis that it was a gentleman’s suit.’

  Lady Farley-Stroud looked a little puzzled.

  ‘It’s smooth, for a start, where a boot might have nails to provide grip on loose surfaces. And see how the sole is narrow and comes to a rounded point?’ I said. ‘It’s not an uncommon shape, but it’s too delicate for a boot. And there – you can see where the sole is cut in to accommodate the stitching of the welt. The sole of a workman’s boot might more usually be nailed on.’