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killer. The worst kind. “Let’s hope so. Get on to headquarters in Somerset.”
    â€œPolice in Somerset wouldn’t be handling it, sir. It’s right over the border.” Pause. “In Devon.”
    â€œWell, call Exeter, then.”
    There was another pause and a tiny rattle of paper. This seemed to be a two-cough-drop problem. Said Wiggins, wanly: “You don’t suppose it’s Macalvie’s case, do you, sir?”
    Jury half-smiled. “Every case in Devon is Macalvie’s case.”

6
    T HE snow outside the Jack and Hammer was tracked only by a narrow set of marks made by the Jack Russell belonging to Miss Crisp, which had left its mistress’s rag-and-bone shop across the street to make its afternoon rounds of the village.
    Through the dreamy motley of palette-tinted shops and cottages the sonorous drone of the bell in the church tower washed over the High Street and past the pub where the mechanical smith up on a high beam picked it up and made a simulated bong on his forge. Above him the clock struck five.
    It was a call-to-arms for a few of Long Piddleton’s residents. There was a half-hour yet until opening, but Scroggs often turned a blind eye to the licensing laws when it came to his family of regulars. One of these had biked the half-mile from Ardry End and was sitting at a table in the large bay window. His legs were outstretched and his trousers still pinched by bicycle clips. He had passed the halfway mark in the book he was reading.
    No devotee of the thriller-novel, he would have ordinarilyskipped from the first chapter to the last, filling in whatever extraneous details were necessary for the resolution. But his longstanding affection for the author of this particular book had obligated him to read every page. Well, almost, thought Melrose Plant. Love me, love my books. His friendship with its author had not extended to a friendship with this book bearing the irrelevant title of The Plum-Pudding Group. It was meant, he imagined, to sell to the Christmas trade and had found its way onto the shelves of Long Piddleton’s new book shop, called the Wrenn’s Nest, a silly pun on its proprietor’s name.
    He wondered if he couldn’t just take a peek at the end. The murderer’s motive was the old kill-him-before-he-changes-his-will cliché, and the characters seemed at a loss to know what to do with themselves, like people looking vague on a railway platform after the train pulls away.
    Melrose Plant checked his watch, not to see if the two others who usually joined him in the Jack and Hammer were late, but because he knew another body should be turning up — ah, yes, there it was. Colonel Montague. Too bad, he thought. He had rather liked old Montague despite that gin-beneath-the-palms manner that the author had saddled him with. Yes, there were bodies aplenty. If Raymond Chandler’s prescription for a cure for midbook boredom was to bring in a man with a gun, Polly Praed’s was to drag another corpse into every other chapter. This latest book must have been written in extreme agitation, for there was a jittery, hectic quality to the sudden discovery of body after body. Her mind, he thought, must be an abattoir.
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    All this murder and mayhem was interrupted by the arrival of two other regulars whom he was happy to see since they would relieve him of further delving into the death of Montague.
    â€œHello, Melrose,” said Vivian Rivington, the prettier of thetwo, although Melrose wondered idly if Marshall Trueblood would insist upon a reevaluation of that assessment.
    â€œHullo, old bean,” said Marshall Trueblood, looking this afternoon like a fairly ordinary rather than an eccentric millionaire. He wore a dark woolen jacket so beautifully tailored that it might have been the last best dream of a Hebredean weaver. But the weaver would have wakened wide-eyed at sight of the bold blue cashmere