Lord Peter Wimsey presses his proposal again, and Harriet Vane refuses to marry him. It would not be fair to him, she says, and she is frightened of a bond she could not escape, though she would live with him instead. Wimsey argues that his family motto, ‘I hold by my Whimsy’, puts the tradition on his side, but Harriet cannot see beyond the next few weeks and begs him to stop asking. He agrees and leaves for an appointment with a manicurist.

The manicurist, found with help from Chief Inspector Parker, is a sharp eyed girl called Mabel who accepts a dinner invitation. When Wimsey explains what he wants she balks, fearing witchcraft or trouble, until he confides the whole story. Won over, she agrees to collect nail parings and hair from a stingy regular customer, with help from Fred, his regular, and Wimsey hands her an envelope holding two chemically clean pill boxes for the samples.

• Wimsey’s joke about the original Gerald de Wimsey at the siege of Acre
• Harriet’s point that people forget lovers but not a murder charge
• Mabel’s worry about spells after a column in Susie’s Snippets
• A jealous friend across the restaurant picturing a flat in Paris and a thousand pound necklace
• Wimsey promising Mabel an unbirthday present, perhaps mink