The man stuck out his hand at Turnip. “Speaking of guineas... Care to cross my palm and we’ll call it no ’ard feelings about the jaw-box?”

“How about a shilling?” asked Turnip, digging into his pocket.

Miss Dempsey edged around him. “This woman. Where did she come from? What did she look like?”

The man’s fist closed around the shilling Turnip dropped into his palm. “Dunno. She promised me a guinea for the pudding is all.”

And with that, he touched his forelock and sauntered away.

Miss Dempsey looked at Turnip thoughtfully. “Where did you get the pudding?” she asked.

Turnip scratched his temple, displacing his hat in the process. “My sister, Sally,” he said. “Can’t think why she’d be hiding messages in — oh.”

“Oh?” Miss Dempsey tilted her head quizzically.

“No,” he said decidedly, dismissing the idea as quickly as it had arisen. It would be deuced unfair to Sally to go about accusing her of setting up illicit assignations. He had every faith in his sister’s moral rectitude. And her ingenuity. If Sally were to arrange an assignation, she wouldn’t do it in such an addlepated way. He was the addlepated one in the family, and he was sticking to it. “It ain’t like Sal to set up assignations through puddings. She’s not the assignating kind.”

“My assailant did say a woman,” Miss Dempsey murmured. “Perhaps one of the instructresses? Your sister might have got hold of the pudding by accident.”

Turnip clapped his hat firmly back onto his head. “Only one way to find out, isn’t there? We can ask her.”

“We?”

“You will come with me, won’t you, Miss Dempsey?” Turnip flashed her his most winning smile. “You can’t expect a chap to venture back into that den of females unprotected, can you? No offense meant. Your being a female and all that, I mean.”

“How kind of you to notice,” muttered Miss Dempsey.