“Caramba!” I said. “You’ll be famous, Feely!”

“Don’t say ‘Caramba,’ ” she snapped. “You know Father doesn’t like it.”

“He’ll be home this morning,” I reminded her. “With Aunt Felicity.”

At that, a general glumness fell over the table and we finished our breakfasts in stony silence.

The down train from London was due at Doddingsley at five past ten. If Clarence Mundy had been picking them up in his taxicab, Father and Aunt Felicity would be at Buckshaw within half an hour. But today, allowing for the snow and the practiced funereal pace at which the vicar usually drove, it seemed likely to be well past eleven before they arrived.

It was, in fact, not until a quarter past one that the vicar’s Morris pulled up exhausted at the front door, piled like a refugee’s cart with various peculiarly shaped objects projecting from the windows and lashed to the roof. As soon as they climbed out of the car, I could tell that Father and Aunt Felicity had been quarreling.

“For heaven’s sake, Haviland,” she was saying, “anyone who can’t tell a chaffinch from a brambling ought not to be allowed to look out the window of a railway carriage.”

“I’m quite sure it was a brambling, Lissy. It had the distinctive—”

“Nonsense. Bring my bag, Denwyn. The one with the large brass padlock.”

The vicar seemed a bit surprised to be ordered about in such an offhanded manner, but he pulled the carpetbag from the backseat of the car and handed it to Dogger.

“Clever of you to think of winter tires and chains,” Aunt Felicity said. “Most ecclesiastics are dead washouts when it comes to motorcars.”

I wanted to tell her about the bishop, but I kept quiet.

Aunt Felicity bore down on the front door in her usual bulldog manner. Beneath