“For forty years, Inspector. It was almost his second home.”

Jack got up. “Thank you, Dr. Quatt; you’ve been most helpful. Tell me—and this is just personal curiosity—were you serious when you said you’d grafted a kitten’s head onto a haddock?”

Dr. Quatt’s eyes lit up, and she looked at them in turn, her youthful enthusiasm boiling to the surface. “Do you want to see?”

“That was pretty gross, wasn’t it?” announced Mary as they drove away from St. Cerebellum’s a few minutes later.

“Yes, but fascinating in a prurient, icky, dissecting-frogs, brains-in-jars kind of way. I thought keeping the collar and bell was an inspired touch, and it was kind of cute watching it try to play with that soggy ball of wool inside the tank.”

“Sir!”

“Just kidding. Yes, it was gross, and Dr. Quatt is definitely as mad as a barrel of skunks. And listen, I never insisted on being a pencil monitor at school. Where can I drop you?”

He left her outside the front of Reading Central Police Station. They bade each other good night, and she walked into the car park to retrieve her BMW, thinking that perhaps, given the direction of her new career, she should simply drive straight to Basingstoke and give Flowwe another whack with the onyx ashtray—just to be even-steven.

But when she got to her car, there was something unexpected waiting for her: an envelope carefully tucked under her windshield wiper. She thought it might be from Arnold, but it wasn’t. She read the note again, then a third time. She thought for a moment and then trotted into the station’s changing rooms to check herself in the mirror. If you are invited to the Reading branch of the Guild of Detectives by DCI Chymes himself, you should always look your best.