After Parker’s news about the packet, Mr. Crofts says ‘I told you so’, and Lord Peter Wimsey endures a week of forced idleness and the doting happiness of Parker and Lady Mary. Freddy Arbuthnot confirms Norman Urquhart was deeply involved in the Megatherium Trust disasters. Meanwhile, Miss Climpson writes from Hillside View boarding house in Windle on January 1, 1930. She has seen the 18th century house at Appleford with its cedar and Italian porch, and learned from the gossip Mrs. Pegler that Mrs. Wrayburn’s nurse companion is a Miss Booth, about 60.

Miss Climpson stakes out the town’s tea shops, consuming cup after cup, and finally trails a stout nurse to a boot shop and the dim Oriental Cafe. Using a parcel of stationery she pretends to have found, she sits down beside Caroline Booth, who is reading a book called Can the Dead Speak? Seeing her chance, Miss Climpson claims to be a medium and wins an invitation to the house. She rigs a soapbox on a garter to crack on command and wire up her sleeve to tip a table, then sets out to steal Mrs. Wrayburn’s will.

• Miss Climpson’s grateful reflections on first class travel and on how much freer women are than in Queen Victoria’s day
• Her cover story of a small inheritance and sketching trips, backed by girlhood watercolour lessons
• The chase through Windle with a flapping black veil and a pretend errand for an India rubber
• What a Psychical Research man taught her in Bournemouth about sealed slates and wax spirit hands
• Caroline Booth’s reliance on a medium named Mrs. Craig, who is conveniently abroad