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postcards.
    “You’re American, aren’t you?” the woman persisted.
    Elizabeth, suspecting insult, longed to reply in the negative, but such an accusation is difficult to deny with a Virginiaaccent. She took a long look at her interrogator. The woman was the personification of Cheerleader: shoulder-length blonde hair, trim figure, and a perky beauty-pageant smile. Just the sort of person that Elizabeth wished the Japanese would hunt, instead of whales. She summoned up a chilling smile. “I’m from Virginia. How did you guess?”
    The woman shrugged. “You just look American, I guess. Anyway, you’re wearing a fairystone necklace, and you can only get them in Virginia. They’re a natural crystal formation, right? Only found in the mountains. I know because I traveled the Blue Ridge Parkway with my parents when I was twelve.”
    “Good detective work,” said Elizabeth grudgingly, fingering her staurolite necklace. She made a mental note to give fairystones to every British woman she knew next Christmas. (Take that, Sherlock!)
    “I guess some of it rubbed off,” came the complacent reply. “I read a lot of murder mysteries.”
    Elizabeth stared at her and at last the penny dropped. (Or, at the current exchange rate, two cents did.) “Are you, by any chance, with the murder mystery tour that’s meeting here this afternoon?”
    “That’s right!” said the woman, beaming. “My name is Susan Cohen. Are you on it, too?”
    Elizabeth nodded slowly. “Elizabeth MacPherson,” she said, withholding her title in a rare gesture of modesty. “Where are you from?”
    “Minneapolis,” said Susan eagerly. “Have you ever been there? It’s in the Midwest, but it isn’t at all provincial like the coastal people think it is. It’s the most gorgeous city in the world.”
    Elizabeth managed to refrain from asking why Susan had bothered to leave this Shangri-la for a mere excursion to England. “I’m from Virginia originally,” she said, “but I justgot married in July, so now I live in Edinburgh. For a while, at least. We’re still negotiating careers.”
    Susan looked around. “But your husband didn’t come on the tour?”
    “No,” said Elizabeth. “He had better fish to fry.” She explained about the oceangoing expedition, and the six-week separation that she decided to fill with a package tour. She looked appraisingly at the youthful Susan. “So I’m not man-hunting or anything on this trip. In fact I was sure that everyone else on this tour was going to be much older than I.”
    “I expect they will be,” said Susan Cohen complacently. “After all, we can’t all be heiresses.”
    We all are so far
, thought Elizabeth, mindful of the receipt of her great-aunt Augusta’s money which came to her upon her marriage. She didn’t think it was a topic you ought to broach with strangers in an airport, though. “I was just going to get some tea,” she said.
    “Great!” said Susan, cheerfully abandoning the postcards. “The airline breakfast was lousy. The French toast tasted like they made it with Play-Doh. I’m going to write a letter of complaint to the airline.”
    They started off together down the hall, dodging baggage-laden passengers. “It sounds like a very interesting tour, doesn’t it?” said Elizabeth.
    “The perfect combination,” Susan agreed. “I just love England, and I love mysteries. My uncle Aaron says that my house will probably collapse under the weight of all the books I have. See, I used to read all the time. I mean
all
the time. I was an only child, you know, and I didn’t have a lot of friends.” She laughed. “I guess I was kind of an ugly duckling.”
    Whereas now you are a nonstop parrot
, thought Elizabeth. But, she had to admit, a pretty one. Aloud she said, “You seem to have made a satisfactory transition to swandom.”
    “I know. Isn’t it amazing? After Grandpa Benjie died andleft me a fortune, one of the girls down at the library where I worked—her name