“You don’t mind, do you?”

“The thing is, there’s a lot we need to talk about.”

“Yes, yes.” Rory closed the cover of the typewriter. “I know. But I haven’t much time. I have to go out in three quarters of an hour.”

“Why do you suddenly want to practice your shorthand?”

“Julian Dawlish-Fenella’s friend-he knows the editor of Berkeley’s.”

“The weekly?”

“I’m doing a piece on spec for them about tomorrow’s meeting.”

“That’s marvelous.”

“If they use it.” He rubbed his eyes. “I can’t stop thinking about it. Damn it, it could make all the difference. It’s the first sniff of real work I’ve had, work that could lead somewhere, since I came back to England. That’s why I was keen to see the undercroft, to get an idea of the layout.”

“Of course. Poor Mr. Fimberry.”

A trick of the light.

“Beggars belief, doesn’t it? I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw that goat’s skull under the table in the Ossuary. Why didn’t he just leave it in the dustbin? Why put it in the Ossuary? And why did he want to show it to Father Bertram?”

“Because he thinks it might be the devil,” Lydia said. “That’s my theory. So it’s safer on consecrated ground until Father Bertram can see it. There’s a sort of logic to it.”

“Mad as a hatter, in my opinion.”

“He’s ill,” Lydia said, thinking of Colonel Alforde. No more war. “You can’t blame him for that.”

Rory glanced at his wristwatch. “Would you mind if we start? I promised to meet Dawlish for a drink, and I haven’t used my shorthand for months, not properly. And it’s like speaking a language, you see. If you don’t use it for a while you have to get your ear in again.”

“Does it matter what I talk about?”

He shook his head. “I’ve got it all worked out. I think it will be best to start with something completely unseen, completely unexpected. And then try something political from the paper-something with the same sort of vocabulary as they’re likely to be using tomorrow. Afterward I’ll try and read it back to you.” He smiled at her. “Are you sure you don’t mind? I know it’s an awful lot to ask.”

“It’s all right. We’ve had supper-there’s nothing else I need to do.” That was untrue. If you didn’t have servants, Lydia had discovered, there was always something you needed to do. “I’ll just talk away, then. Are you ready?”

He picked up his newly sharpened pencil and turned over a page in his shorthand pad. “Fire away, Lydia-oh damn. Sorry. Mrs. Langstone, I mean.”

“It doesn’t matter. You can call me Lydia if you want.”

“As long as you call me Rory. Right, Lydia. I’m as ready as I ever will be.”

“I talked to Mrs. Renton,” Lydia began, her cheeks a little pinker than before. “I showed her the skirt and the note. She used to do sewing for Miss Penhow. Mr. Serridge introduced them. She even made some clothes for her.” Lydia watched Rory’s pencil traveling across the paper. “Then Miss Penhow moved to the country, and she lost touch.” She paused again. “As a matter of fact I went to Rawling yesterday.”

The point of the pencil snapped. “What were you doing in Rawling, for God’s sake?”

“My godfather used to live there. His wife had to go down for a funeral. I went with her.”

Rory pushed the pad away from him, abandoning the shorthand. “I don’t understand. I don’t even begin to understand.”

She smiled at him. “It’s much less complicated than it seems.”

“Just a whacking great big coincidence. Yet another.”

“Not really. Serridge only bought Morthams Farm because my father sold it to him. My father only owned it because he was left it by old Mrs. Alforde. My godfather is another Alforde-so he’s a sort of cousin by marriage to my father. That’s why he’s my godfather-he and Father used to know each other long before I was on the scene. The Alfordes know my mother too-they came to my wedding, actually. My mother asked Mrs. Alforde to talk to me. To try to persuade me to go back to Marcus.”

Rory looked consideringly at her. “And did she?”

“Yes and no.” The color rose in her cheeks. “She tried but she didn’t succeed.” She rushed on, stumbling a little over her words. “My mother and father met at Rawling. In a way the Alfordes connect everything, you see. Mrs. Narton worked at the Hall when they were there. And so did Rebecca at the Vicarage.”

“You met her?”

“When we had lunch with Mr. Gladwyn. It didn’t end there, either. I went to have a look at that little barn you mentioned, the one with the skulls. Robbie shut me in. He thought I was trying to steal his skulls.”

He whistled. “As the goat’s skull was stolen?”

“According to Rebecca, he’s convinced Narton took it.”

“When?”

“Probably a few days before he died.”

“I saw him on Saturday,” Rory said. “He could have posted it then. So Robbie thought you were another skull thief? How did you get out?”

“I banged on the door. Mr. Serridge rescued me in the end.”

“Serridge? What was he up to? Was he following you?”

Lydia shivered. “I’m not sure. He was very strange-in one way he was as nice as pie to me. But he was also rather terrifying. I’m sure he’s up to something. And there was another thing-I found something else on the shelf with the skulls, a cigar box. Rebecca told me that when she worked at Morthams Farm, Miss Penhow kept her diary in it. She thinks Miss Penhow was hiding it from Serridge.”

“When did you manage to talk to Rebecca?”

“Afterward, at the Vicarage. I felt rather sorry for her. I imagine Robbie’s hers, don’t you?”

“What? Why do you think that?” Rory felt, as he often did when talking to his sisters, that where relationships were concerned they were equipped with a form of perception that he lacked. “I thought he was her nephew.”

“He may be, I suppose. But she dotes on him. It’s far more likely he was Rebecca’s little accident, and her sister unofficially adopted him.”

“Anything else?” he asked with a trace of sarcasm in his voice. “Or have you pulled the last rabbit out of the hat for the time being?”

“There’s the heart this morning,” she said, smiling back at him.

“I know about that. Serridge and Byrne were having a row about it when I went out this morning. Howlett came and calmed them down.”

“It was nasty,” she said soberly.

“Sorry,” he said perfunctorily. “I’ve got a couple of scraps of information of my own,” he went on. “Nothing to compare with yours but better than nothing. I saw a photograph of Miss Penhow at Fenella’s. She looked quite pretty, but Fenella said she was older than she looked.”

“According to Rebecca, she spent a lot of time and effort trying to make herself look youthful. It was rather pathetic, actually-she was trying to make herself attractive to Serridge, and he only had an eye for the girls.”

Rory looked at his watch again. “I’d better go. Are you coming tomorrow?”

“No,” she said. “My husband will be there. Not to mention my future brother-in-law.”

Rory saw her out of the flat. At the head of the stairs he said, “By the way, talking of photographs, you remember the one Rebecca showed me?” He lowered his voice. “Amy Narton in the altogether on Serridge’s bike? There was a little dog in it. There was also a dog in that photograph of Miss Penhow. It could have been the same one. Yesterday I was standing outside by the pub and someone went by on a bicycle. Nipper was there. And that was when it clicked: the dog in both photos looks just like Nipper.”

Fenella was a bitch. In fact, she was a bloody bitch. And if one were to be absolutely precise about it, as Virginia Woolf would no doubt wish one to be, Fenella was a bloody, calculating bitch.

Lydia huddled over the fire in the big cold sitting room of her father’s flat with A Room of One’s Own open but unread on the arm of her chair. It was a short book but was proving very hard to finish.