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made me a care package! I dearly hope it’s not a false rumor that you likethis.”
    Clare was taking one of her mother’s chicken potpies out of theoven.
    â€œDid she make it for me?” I wassurprised.
    â€œWell, yes,” Clare said slowly. “I mean, Mum said if you were up, I was to give it to you. You do like it, don’tyou?”
    I said I was a very willing recipient of anything Donna might cookup.
    â€œBesides, it’s the least I can do,” Clare continued briskly. “You spent all day helping me. I wouldn’t have running water if it weren’t for you. Dad and Douglas always dealt with that pump. I should have paid moreattention.”
    I took the plates from her while she fetched two glasses. “Let’s eat out on the deck,” she suggested. “It’s such a gloriousevening.”
    Clare barely touched her food, but watched me swallow several mouthfuls. “So you weren’t pulling my leg yesterday,” she began, “when you said Miss Brice is one hundred and thirty-four yearsold.”
    â€œShe claims she’s one hundred and thirty-four,” I corrected. “But she’s probably in hernineties.”
    â€œWhy would she lie?” Clare looked at me doubtfully. “I thought women always fibbed the other way around—about being younger than they reallyare.”
    â€œI’m sure it’s just a mix-up. It’s probably someone else’s birthcertificate.”
    â€œWhy are you socertain?”
    â€œWell, for one thing, it’s extremely unlikely anyone could live thatlong.”
    â€œIs there a maximum age that we can live to, then?”
    I explained that our genes tended to give up on us after we reached eighty, largely because we were pretty much irrelevant to survival of the species by that point. Then I told her the oldest person on record was a French woman who’d lived to be 122 yearsold.
    â€œOne hundred and twenty-two!”
    I smiled at her puzzled expression. She had placed her elbows on the table and was resting her chin in her hands as she looked out across the Bay. “Do you think there’s a secret to longevity?” she asked. “Maybe it’s your diet—or stress levels, or something likethat.”
    â€œThe best advice for longevity I ever heard was from Li Ching-Yuen.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œHe was a Chinese herbalist. Rumor has it that he was born in 1736, but others placed his birth at 1677. He died in 1933, so he was either one hundred and ninety-seven or two hundred and fifty-six yearsold.”
    â€œYou’rejoking!”
    I shook my head. “No. Of course his age was neververified.”
    â€œDid he ever share his secret formula for longevity? No doubt it involvedginseng.”
    â€œNo ginseng, but Li Ching said that a person must do three things.” I waited for a few seconds, swallowing a mouthful ofpie.
    â€œWell?”
    I cleared my throat and assumed a solemn expression. “He said we should sit like a tortoise, walk sprightly like a pigeon, and sleep like adog.”
    Clare burst out laughing. “Garth Hellyer! I am totally inured to Douglas’s teasing, butyou—”
    â€œI kid you not. That’s exactly what hesaid.”
    She pushed her plate aside, still grinning. “It’s probably very good advice, then. Don’t some animals grow to be very old, too? I seem to remember something about a whale that was two hundred yearsold.”
    I nodded. “That’s right, a bowhead whale. They found harpoons from the 1860s in the carcass, and then tissue tests showed it was evenolder.”
    â€œI wonder if your Miss Brice swallowed a button or something like that when she was little?” she mused. “You know, a distinctly late nineteenth-century button. Or a coin with the date stamped on it. Then maybe you could x-rayher.”
    I smiled, saying that she’d make an excellent