She made a grab for me.

“No!”

Feely spun round to see who had spoken. Her raised hand fell to her side, where it hung limply.

For a moment they stood there staring at each other, Feely as if she had been confronted by some ghastly specter, Phyllis Wyvern as she looked when she’d clung defiantly to the rain-lashed spire of the cathedral in the final moments of The Glass Heart.

Then Feely’s lower lip began to quiver, her eyes suddenly brimming with tears.

She turned and fled.

“So,” said Phyllis Wyvern after a long silence, “you have an older sister, too.”

“That was Feely,” I said. “She—”

“No need to explain. Older sisters are much alike the world over: half a cup of love and half one of contempt.”

I couldn’t have put it better myself!

“My sister’s the same,” she said. “Six years older?”

I nodded.

“Mine, too. I see we have a great deal more in common than a taste for horrific murder, Flavia de Luce.”

She came across the room and, putting a finger under my chin, raised my eyes to hers. And then she hugged me.

She actually hugged me, and I breathed in her jasmine—synthetic or not.

“Let’s go down to the kitchen for tea. It will save Mrs. Mullet a trip upstairs.”

I beamed at her. I almost took her hand.

“It will also,” she added, “give us a chance to pick up the latest gossip. Kitchens are hotbeds of scandal, you know.”

“Ohhhhh!” Mrs. Mullet said as we walked into the kitchen. Aside from that, and gaping a bit, she handled it quite well.

“We decided to come down to the Command Center,” Phyllis Wyvern said. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

I could see that she had won Mrs. Mullet over—just like that.

“No, no, no,” she said breathlessly, “sit yourself down, miss. The water’s almost at the boil, and I’ve got a nice lardy cake comin’ out the oven.”