“We weren’t expecting you until noon,” Dogger was saying. “I regret that the walkways have not yet been fully shoveled and ashes put down.”

“Think nothing of it, Mr.—”

“Dogger,” Dogger said.

“Mr. Dogger, I’m just a girl from Golders Green. I’ve managed in snow before and, I expect I shall manage again.

“Oops!” She giggled, pretending to slip and smiling up at him as she clung to his arm.

I couldn’t believe how tiny she was, her head barely level with his chest.

She wore a tight-fitting black suit with a white blouse with a black and yellow Liberty scarf, and, despite the grayness of the day, her complexion was like cream in a summer kitchen.

“Hullo!” she said, stopping in front of me. “I’ve seen this face before. You’re Flavia de Luce, if I’m not mistaken. I was hoping you’d be here.”

I stopped breathing and I didn’t care.

“Your photo was in the Daily Mirror, you know. That dreadful business about Stonepenny, or Bonepenny, or whatever he was called.”

“Bonepenny,” I said. “Horace Bonepenny.”

I had given my assistance to the police in that case when they were completely stymied.

“That’s it,” she said, sticking out a hand and seizing mine as if we were sisters. “Bonepenny. I keep up paid subscriptions to the Police Gazette and True Crime, and I never miss so much as a single issue of the News of the World. I simply adore reading about all the great murderers: the Brides in the Bath … the Islington Mumbler … Major Armstrong … Dr. Crippen … the stuff of great drama. Makes you think, doesn’t it? What, after all, would life be without puzzling death?”

Exactly! I thought.

“And now I think we should go inside and not keep poor Mr. Dogger standing out here in the cold.”

I glanced quickly at Dogger, but his face was as reflective as a millpond.

As she brushed past me, I couldn’t help thinking: I’m breathing the same air as Phyllis Wyvern!