“Do help yourself.” Lynley motioned absently towards the sideboard with his fork and gathered up a few sheets of the police report that lay in haphazard fashion among the china. “There isn’t a person I know who can’t think better while eating. But avoid the kippers. They seem a bit off.”

“No, thank you,” she replied politely. “I’ve eaten, sir.”

“Not even a sausage? They, at least, are remarkably good. Do you find that the butchers are finally having a whack at putting more pork than meal into sausages these days? It’s refreshing, to say the least. Nearly fi ve decades after World War II and we’re fi nally coming off rationing.” He picked up a teapot. Like everything else on the table, it was antique bone china, no doubt part of the man’s family history. “What about something to drink? I have to warn you, I’m addicted to Lapsang Souchong tea. Helen claims that it tastes like dirty socks.”

“I…I could do with a cuppa. Thank you, sir.”

“Good,” he declared. “Have some and tell me what you think.”

She was adding a lump of sugar to the brew when the front bell rang again. Footsteps came running up a stairway in the back. “I’ll get it my lord,” a woman’s voice called. It was a Cornish accent. “Sorry about the last time. The baby and all.”

“It’s the croup, Nancy,” Lynley murmured to himself. “Take the poor child to the doctor.”

The sound of a woman’s voice fl oated down the hall. “Breakfast?” A lighthearted laugh. “What a propitious arrival I’ve effected, Nancy. He’ll never believe it’s purely coincidental.” Upon her last sentence Lady Helen breezed into the room and paralysed Barbara into a moment of breath-catching, ice-sheathed despair.

They were wearing identical suits. But while Lady Helen’s had obviously been cut by the designer himself to fi t her fi gure, Barbara’s own was off-the-rack, a through-the-lookingglass chain store copy with rucked seams and altered hemline to prove it. Only the differing colours might possibly save her from complete humiliation, she thought. She grasped her teacup but lacked the will to lift it to her lips.

Lady Helen paused only fractionally at the sight of the policewoman. “I’m in a mess,” she said frankly. “Thank God you’re here as well, Sergeant, for I’ve a terrible feeling it’ll take three heads to see me clear of the muddle I’ve made for myself.” That said, she deposited a large shopping bag on the nearest chair and went directly to the sideboard, where she began browsing through the covered dishes as if food alone were sufficient to see her through her dilemma.

“Muddle?” Lynley asked. He glanced at Barbara. “How do you like the Lapsang?”

Her lips felt stiff. “It’s very nice, sir.”

“Not that awful tea again!” Lady Helen groaned. “Really, Tommy. You’re a man without mercy.”

“Had I known you were coming, I’d hardly have been so remiss as to serve it twice in one week,” Lynley replied pointedly.

Unoffended, she laughed. “Isn’t he piqued, Sergeant? From the way he talks, you’d think I was here every morning, eating him out of house and home.”

“There is yesterday, Helen.”

“You vicious man.” She turned her attention back to the sideboard. “These kippers smell appalling. Did Nancy bring them up in her suitcase?” She joined them at the table with a plate piled high with a gastronomic argument of eggs and mushrooms, grilled tomatoes and bacon. “What’s she doing here, by the way? Why isn’t she at Howenstow? Where’s Denton this morning?”

Lynley sipped his tea, his eyes on the report on the table before him. “As I’ll be out of town, I’ve given Denton the next few days off,” he replied absently. “No need for him to come with me.”

A crisp piece of bacon halted in midair. Lady Helen stared. “You’re joking, of course. Tell me you’re joking, darling.”

“I’m perfectly capable of getting along without my valet. I’m not totally incompetent, Helen.”

“But that’s not what I mean!” Lady Helen drank a mouthful of the Lapsang Souchong, grimaced at the taste, and set down the cup. “It’s Caroline. She’s gone off on holiday for this entire week. You don’t think…Tommy, if she’s run off with Denton, I’ll be absolutely lost. No”-this as he was about to speak-“I know what you’re going to say. They have every right to their personal lives. I agree completely. But we simply must come to some sort of compromise over this-you and I-because if they get married and live with you-”

“Then you and I shall get married as well,” Lynley replied placidly. “And we’ll be as happy as hedgehogs, the four of us.”

“You think it’s amusing, don’t you? But just look at me. One morning without Caroline in the flat and I’m a complete disaster. Surely you don’t think this is an ensemble that she would approve of?”

Lynley regarded the ensemble in question. Barbara didn’t need to do so. The vision of Lady Helen was branded into her mind: a smartly tailored burgundy suit, silk blouse, and a mauve scarf that cascaded down to a trim waist.

“What’s wrong with it?” Lynley asked. “It looks fine to me. In fact, considering the hour”-he glanced at his pocket watch-“I’d say you’re almost too sartorially splendid.”

Lady Helen turned to Barbara in exasperation. “Isn’t that every bit just like a man, Sergeant? I end up this morning looking like an overripe strawberry and he murmurs ‘looks fine to me’ and buries his nose in a murder fi le.”

“Far better that than assist you with your clothing for the next few days.” Lynley nodded at the ignored shopping bag that had toppled over and now spilled a few assorted pieces of material onto the floor. “Is that why you’ve come?”

Lady Helen pulled the bag towards her. “I only wish it were that simple,” she sighed. “But it’s worse by far than the Denton-Caroline affair-we’ve not finished with that, by the way-and I’m at a total loss. I’ve mixed up Simon’s bullet holes.”

Barbara was beginning to feel as if she’d walked into something designed by Wilde. Surely at any moment Lane would enter stage left with the cucumber sandwiches.

“Simon’s bullet holes?” Lynley, more accustomed to Lady Helen’s pirouettes of thought, was patient.

“You know. We were working on the patterns of blood splattering based on trajectory, angle, and calibre. You remember that, don’t you?”

“The piece to be presented next month?”

“The very one. Simon had left it all organised for me in the lab. I was supposed to run off the preliminary set of data, attach them to the cloth, and set up the lab for the fi nal study. But I-”

“Mixed up the cloths,” Lynley fi nished. “St. James will go on about that, Helen. What do you propose to do?”

She looked forlornly down at the samples that she had dumped unceremoniously onto the floor. “Of course, I’m not hopelessly ignorant in the matter. After four years in the laboratory, at least I recognise the twenty-two calibre and can easily find the forty-fi ve and the shotgun. But as to the others…and even worse, as to which blood pattern goes with each trajectory…”

“It’s a muddle,” Lynley fi nished.

“In a word,” she agreed. “So I thought I’d pop by this morning to see if perhaps we could sort it all out.”

Lynley leaned down and fingered his way through the pile of material. “Can’t be done, old duck. Sorry, but you’ve hours of work here and we’ve a train to catch.”

“Then whatever shall I say to Simon? He’s been working on this for ages.”

Lynley pondered the question. “There’s one thing…”

“What?”

“Professor Abrams at Chelsea Institute. Do you know him?” When she shook her head, he went on. “He and Simon both have testifi ed as expert witnesses. They did in the Melton case only last year. They know each other. Perhaps he’d help. I could phone him for you before I leave.”

“Would you, Tommy? I’d be so grateful. I’d do anything for you.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Surely not the thing to say to a man over breakfast.”