“Understood,” McNulty said. “Over and out. I’ll pass it along.”

“The two bedrooms on the left belong to Miss Ophelia and Miss Daphne, who will share a room for the duration. Choose the one you wish to use as a setting and they’ll settle for the other.”

“Sporting of them,” McNulty said. “Val Lampman will be seeing to that. He’s our director.”

“All other bedrooms, sitting rooms, and dressing rooms, including those along the north front, may be assigned as you see fit,” Dogger went on, not batting an eye at the mention of England’s most celebrated cinema director.

Even I knew who Val Lampman was.

“I’d best be getting back to my crew,” McNulty said, with a glance at his wristwatch. “We’ll organize the lorries, then see to the unloading.”

“As you wish,” Dogger told him, and it seemed to me there was a touch of sadness in his voice.

We descended the stairs, McNulty openly running his fingers over the carved banister ends, craning his neck to gawk at the carved paneling.

“S’truth,” he muttered under his breath.

“You’ll never guess who’s directing this film!” I said, bursting into the drawing room.

“Val Lampman,” Daffy said in a bored voice, without looking up from her book. “Phyllis Wyvern doesn’t work with anyone else nowadays. Not since—”

“Since what?”

“You’re too young to understand.”

“No, I’m not. What about Boccaccio?” Daffy had recently been reading aloud to us at tea, selected tales from Boccaccio’s Decameron.

“That’s fiction,” she said. “Val Lampman is real life.”

“Says who?” I countered.

“Says Cinema World. It was all over the front page.”

“What was?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Flavia,” Daffy said, throwing down her book, “you grow more like a parrot every day: ‘Since what? Says who? What was?’ ”

She mimicked my voice cruelly.

“We ought to teach you to say ‘Who’s a pretty bird, then?’ or ‘Polly wants a biscuit.’ We’ve already ordered you a cage: lovely gold bars, a perch, and a water dish to splash about in—not that you’ll ever use it.”