Miss Joan Murchison, 38, spent twelve years with a financier whose schemes collapsed, leaving her out of work until the Cattery took her in. Now she visits Lord Peter Wimsey’s flat for crumpets and hears him play Bach’s Italian Concerto. She reports that the office typewriter was bought new three years ago and that Urquhart stayed late typing the night of Wimsey’s visit. Wimsey concludes the will draft was typed fresh to fool him, and asks her to break into the Wrayburn deed box to find the real will.

For that she needs training, so Wimsey takes her to Whitechapel Road to see Bill Rumm, once the great safe breaker Blindfold Bill, now a converted locksmith whom Wimsey once caught breaking into his safe. They arrive mid prayer meeting, join in ‘Sweeping Through the Gates’, and then Bill teaches her to lift a spring and slip a catch with wire picklocks. Wimsey cracks a combination lock from a sinner named Sam, sings ‘Nazareth’ for little Esmeralda, and everyone sups on eight beautiful trotters.

• Miss Murchison’s detective work pacing Red Lion Square until Urquhart turned off the light at 7:30
• Wimsey warning her the job could mean a charge of possessing safe breaking tools
• Bill’s boast that he could open any deed box blindfold in boxing gloves with a stick of boiled macaroni
• His lament that nobody does an artistic job now that any fool blows safes apart with explosives
• Wimsey’s instructions to memorise the residuary legatee and any mention of Philip Boyes