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thatch or slate roofs and pargeted or brick frontages, every detail deeply familiar, stood serenely unchanged. The very idea that they could be at risk, that something could smash such a long-established and ordinary sight as this seemed unreal.
    And yet here was someone lying stone still on the cold ground. Harriet knew in her bones who this someone must be. This would be Wicked Wendy, surely; not, after all, safe among the Methodists, but slipping on the icy ground as she ran for shelter, falling, banging her head . . .
    Dr Jellyfield got to his feet.
    ‘A bit of shrapnel, was it?’ asked Mr Gudgeon, looking at the sky as if he thought a German aircraft might appear and own up.
    ‘Where’s Constable Baker?’ said Dr Jellyfield. ‘No, Mr Gudgeon. This is not enemy action. This is plain old-fashioned murder.’
    Two
     
     
     
     
     
    No one gossips about other people’s
    secret virtues.
    Bertrand Russell, On Education , 1926
    At eleven o’clock in the morning, three days later, Harriet was not surprised to see Superintendent Kirk coming up the path to her front door, though she was immediately somewhat wary. She broke off her task – she had been making a selection of books from the Talboys shelves that could be donated to the ad hoc-library in the air-raid shelter – and welcomed her visitor in the drawing-room with the offer of sherry and biscuits.
    ‘I know it’s a little early for sherry, Mr Kirk,’ she said, ‘but alas, we have no coffee to offer you, although I’m sure we could rustle up a cup of tea.’
    ‘A sherry would be very welcome, Lady Peter,’ Mr Kirk said. ‘Thank you.’
    ‘You look rather downcast,’ said Harriet as she handed him his glass.
    ‘Downcast?’ he said. ‘I don’t know which way to turn, Lady Peter, and that’s the truth. There’s no news of Lord Peter, I suppose?’
    He sounded so wistful that there was no difficulty reading him at all.
    ‘Will he turn up out of the blue and solve the murder for you, you mean? I wish I thought so. Of course there’s never any telling with Peter. But I’m afraid I don’t expect him, even if mony a heart would break in twa . . .’
    A gloomy silence hung between them while Harriet poured herself a glass of sherry to keep him company.
    ‘Should he no’ come back again,’ he observed at last.
    ‘Spot on. I’m glad you’re not too oppressed to play the game.’
    ‘Not me! Don’t know as I’ve ever known who wrote it, mind.’
    ‘It was someone called Carolina Oliphant,’ said Harriet. ‘And not many people, I’m sure, know that.’ To mollify him, she added, ‘Seems harder to note the author if one just knows something out of a song-book.’
    ‘I suppose a song-book might be full of improving sentiments,’ he said. ‘Specially if it happened to be full of hymns. But a song-book isn’t a solitary pleasure, my lady, like the Golden Treasury . I can’t see myself a-singing in the fireside chair of an evening – Mrs Kirk likes to listen to the wireless.’
    ‘No one will reproach you for not being able to name Carolina Oliphant,’ said Harriet, smiling. She really did rather like the Superintendent. ‘You may leave the court without a stain on your character.’
    ‘What? Oh, I see what you mean. Very good. But, Lady Peter, I really am at my wits’ end. I’m so short-staffed, you see, what with running around looking for blackout failures, and watching the stations and bus-stops for suspicious characters, and checking up on these here new slaughtering licences, and all the black-market control jobs, as well as all the usual things we used to do in peace-time. A murder is the very last thing I need, leave alone the victim being a woman.’
    ‘I’m sorry you’re short-staffed,’ said Harriet. ‘I thought policemen were in a reserved occupation. But why is it worse for you if the victim is a woman?’
    ‘You’re quite right that policemen aren’t getting called up directly,’ said the Superintendent.