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hand.”
    A sick, silly grin spread across McNulty’s face.
    Dogger unfastened the top half of McNulty’s heavy jacket, then worked his hand slowly into the sleeve. His long arm slid along McNulty’s arm, feeling its way, inch by inch along the space between the upended case and the lorry.
    “You told me you were master of many trades, Mr. McNulty,” Dogger said. “Which ones, in particular?”
    It seemed rather an odd question to ask, but McNulty’s eyes shifted slowly from mine to Dogger’s.
    “Carpentry,” he said through gritted teeth. It was easy to see that the man was in terrible pain. “Electrical … plumbing … drafting …”
    Cold sweat stood out in globules on his brow.
    “Yes?” Dogger asked, his arm steadily at work between the heavy box and the lorry. “Any more?”
    “Bit of tool making,” McNulty went on, then added, almost apologetically, “I have a metal lathe at home …”
    “Indeed!” Dogger said, looking surprised.
    “… to make model steam engines.”
    “Ah!” Dogger said. “Steam engines. Railway, agricultural, or stationary?”
    “Stationary,” McNulty said through gritted teeth. “I fit them up with … little brass whistles … and regulators.”
    Dogger removed the handkerchief from McNulty’s neck, twisting it quickly and tightly about the upper part of the trapped arm.
    “Now!” he said briskly, and a hundred willing hands, it seemed, were suddenly gripping the packing case.
    “Easy, now! Easy! Steady on!” the men told one another—not because the words were needed, but as if they were simply part of the ritual of shifting a heavy object.
    And then quite suddenly they had lifted the crate away with no more effort than if it had been a child’s building block.
    “Stretcher,” Dogger called, and one was brought forward instantly.
They must carry these things with them wherever they go
, I thought.
    “Bring him into the kitchen,” Dogger said, and in less time than it takes to tell, McNulty, wrapped in a heavy blanket, was raising himself on his good elbow from the kitchen floor, sipping at the cup of hot tea that was in Mrs. Mullet’s hand.
    “Chip-chip,” he said, giving me a wink.
    “And now, Miss Flavia,” Dogger said, “if you wouldn’t mind giving Dr. Darby a call …”
    “Um,” Dr. Darby said, fishing with two fingers for a crystal mint in the paper bag he always carried in his waistcoat pocket.
    “Let’s get you to the hospital where I can have a decent look at you. X-rays, and all that. I’ll take you myself, since I’m going that way anyway.”
    McNulty was now getting up painfully from a chair at the kitchen table, his arm and hand in a sling, bandaged from shoulder to knuckles.
    “I can manage,” he growled, as many hands reached out to help him.
    “Put your arm round my shoulder,” Dr. Darby told him. “The good people here will understand there’s nothing in it.”
    Crammed together in a corner of the kitchen, the men from the film studio laughed loudly at this, as if the doctor had made a capital joke.
    I watched as McNulty and Dr. Darby moved cautiously through to the foyer.
    “Now we’re for it,” one of the men grumbled when they had gone. “How’re we to get on without Pat?”
    “It’ll be Latshaw, then, won’t it?” said another.
    “I suppose.”
    “God help us, then,” said the first, and he actually spat on the kitchen floor.
    Until that moment, I hadn’t noticed how cold I was. I gave a belated shiver, which didn’t escape the notice of Mrs. Mullet as she came bustling in from the pantry.
    “Upstairs with you, dear, and into an ’ot bath. The Colonel’ll be fair cobbled to come ’ome and find you been out gallivantin’ in the snow nearly naked, so to speak. ’E’ll ’ave Dogger’s and my ’eads on a meat platter. Now off you go.”

    FOUR
     
    AT THE BOTTOM OF the stairs, I was taken with a sudden but brilliant idea.
    Even in summer, taking a bath in the east wing was like a major