“Lardy cake!” Phyllis Wyvern exclaimed, putting her hands in front of her eyes and peeking out through her fingers. “Good lord! I haven’t had lardy cake since I was in pigtails!”

Mrs. Mullet beamed.

“I makes ’em for Christmas, as did my mother before me, and ’er mother before ’er. Lardy cake runs in the family, so to speak.”

And so it did, but I wasn’t going to let the cat out of the bag.

“ ’Ere now,” she said, pulling the cake from the oven with a pair of pot holders and placing it on a wire rack. “Look at that. Almost good enough to eat!”

It was an old joke, and although I’d heard it a hundred times before, I laughed dutifully. There was more truth in it than Phyllis Wyvern knew, but I wasn’t going to spoil her treat. Who knew? She might even find the stuff edible.

If cooking were a game of darts, most of Mrs. Mullet’s concoctions would be barely on the board.

Mrs. Mullet sliced the cake into twelve pieces.

“Two for each soul in the ’ouse’old,” she proclaimed, with a glance at Dogger as he came into the kitchen. “That’s what they taught us up at Lady Rex-Wells’s place: ‘Two slices a soul, keeps you out of the ’ole.’ Meanin’ the grave, of course. The old lady said it meant everyone from ’erself right on down to the gardener’s boy. A reg’lar tartar she was, but she lived to be ninety-nine and a half, so there must be somethin’ in it.”

“What do you think, Dogger?” Phyllis Wyvern asked Dogger, who was taking his tea unobtrusively, standing in the corner.

“Good lard makes good bile. Good bile makes good digestion, which results in great longevity,” Dogger said rather tentatively, looking into his cup. “Or so I have heard.”

“And all because of a double helping of lardy cake!” Phyllis Wyvern said, clapping her hands together in delight. “Well, here’s to the second hundred years.”

She picked up her fork and lifted a morsel to her mouth, pausing halfway to give Mrs. Mullet a smile that must have cost someone a thousand guineas.