“Of course,” I said, and as I stepped back from the door, a certain foreboding came over me. “It’s not bad news about Father, is it?”

Even as one of Father’s oldest and dearest friends, he seldom paid a visit to Buckshaw, and I knew that an unexpected vicar at the door could sometimes be an ominous sign. Perhaps there had been an accident in London. Perhaps the train had run off the tracks and overturned in a snowy field. If so, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be the first to hear it.

“Good lord, no!” the vicar said. “Your father’s gone up to London today, hasn’t he? Stamp meeting, or some such thing?”

Another thing about vicars was that they knew everyone’s business.

“Will you come in?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.

As he stepped inside, the vicar must have seen me looking past him in astonishment at his tired old Morris Oxford, which sat in the forecourt looking remarkably spruce for its age, a layer of snow on the roof and bonnet giving it the appearance of an overly iced wedding cake.

“Winter tires plus snow chains,” he said in a confidential tone. “The secret of any truly successful ministry. The bishop tipped me off, but don’t tell anyone. He picked it up from the American soldiers.”

I grinned and slammed the door.

“Good lord!” he said, staring at the maze of cables and the forest of lighting fixtures. “I didn’t expect it to be anything like this.”

“You knew about it? The filming, I mean?”

“Oh, of course. Your father mentioned it quite some time ago … asked me to keep mum, though, and so, of course, I have. But now that the vast convoy has rolled through Bishop’s Lacey, and the caravanserai set up within the very grounds of Buckshaw, it can be a secret no longer, can it?

“I must admit to you, Flavia, that ever since I heard Phyllis Wyvern was to be here, in the flesh, so to speak, at Buckshaw, I’ve been making plans of my own. It’s not often that we’re gifted with so august … so luminous … a visitor and, well, after all, one must grind with whatever grist one is given—not that Phyllis Wyvern may be said to be grist in any sense of the word, dear me, no, but—”