Meredith could see an empty display case, along with a dusty selling counter and an old-fashioned baker’s étagère showing off neither utensils nor baked goods. And this was…what? Ten months after she’d opened? Six months after? Eight? Meredith couldn’t remember exactly, but she certainly didn’t like what she saw, and she had difficulty believing that Jemima’s business could have gone under so quickly. She’d had more than a score of regular customers she had served from her cottage alone, and they would have followed her to Ringwood. So what had happened?

Meredith decided she would seek out the one person who could probably explain. She had her own, immediate theory about matters, but she wanted to be forearmed when she finally saw Jemima herself.

ULTIMATELY, MEREDITH FOUND Lexie Streener at Jean Michel’s Hair Styling, in the High Street. She went first to the teenager’s home where the girl’s mother stopped what she was doing-typing a lengthy tract on the third beatitude-to expound in some tedious detail what it truly meant to be among the meek. When pressed for information, she revealed that Lexie was washing hair at Jean Michel’s. (“There’s no Jean Michel,” she pointed out sharply. “That’s a lie, that is, which is against God’s law.”)

At Jean Michel’s Hair Styling, Meredith had to wait for Lexie Streener to finish scrubbing energetically at the scalp of a heavyset lady who’d already had more than enough summer sun and was currently showing far too much flesh as an illustration of this troubling fact. Meredith wondered if Lexie was planning on a career of styling hair. She hoped not, for if the girl’s own head was any indication of her talents in this area, no one with any sense would allow her near them as long as she had either scissors or dye in hand. Her locks were pink, blond, and blue. They’d either been cropped to a punitive length-one thought at once of head lice-or they’d broken off, incapable of anything else after repeated exposures to bleach and to colour.