“If you please,” he said.

“I hope we won’t be intruding,” he added as we made our way up the stairs. “I hate to be a beggar but sometimes there’s really no choice.”

He meant Cynthia.

“Our last little venture was something of a bust, wasn’t it? So there’s all that much more to make up this time.”

Now he was referring, of course, to Rupert Porson, the late puppeteer, whose performance in the parish hall just a few months ago had been brought to an abrupt end by tragedy and a woman scorned.

Bun Keats was sitting in a chair at the top of the stairs, her head in her hands.

“Oh dear,” she said as I introduced her to the vicar. “I’m terribly sorry, I’m afraid I have the most awful migraine.”

Her face was as white as the crusted snow.

“How dreadful for you,” the vicar said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “I can sympathize wholeheartedly. My wife suffers horribly from the same malady.”

Cynthia? I thought. Migraines? That would certainly explain a lot.

“She sometimes finds,” he went on, “that a warm compress helps. I’m sure the good Mrs. Mullet would be happy to prepare one.”

“I’ll be all right …” Bun Keats began, but the vicar was already halfway down the stairs.

“Oh!” she said, with a little cry. “I should have stopped him. I don’t mean to be any trouble, but when I’m like this I can hardly think straight.”

“The vicar won’t mind,” I told her. “He’s a jolly good sort. Always thinking of others. Actually, he came round to see if Miss Wyvern could be persuaded to put on a show to raise funds for the church.”

Her face, if it were possible, went even whiter.

“Oh, no!” she said. “He mustn’t ask her that. She has a bee in her bonnet about charities—dead set against them. Something from her childhood, I think. You’d best tell him that before he brings it up. Otherwise, there’s sure to be a most god-awful scene!”