along, I thought.

'Come with me,' Mary said, beckoning. 'Be quick about it—and keep quiet.'

I followed her into a dark stone larder, and then into an enclosed wooden staircase that spiraled precipitously up to the floor above. At the top, we stepped out into what must once have been a linen press: a tall square cupboard now filled with shelves of cleaning chemicals, soaps, and waxes. In the corner, mops and brooms leaned in disarray amid an overwhelming smell of carbolic disinfectant.

'Shhh!' she said, giving my arm a vicious squeeze. Heavy footsteps were approaching, coming up the same staircase we had just ascended. We pressed back into a corner, taking care not to knock over the mops.

'That'll be the bloody day, sir, when a Cotswold horse takes the bloody purse! If I was you I'd take a flutter on Seastar, and be damned to any tips you get from some bloody skite in London what don't know his ark from his halo!'

It was Tully, exchanging confidential turf tips with someone at a volume loud enough to be heard at Epsom Downs. Another voice muttered something that ended in “Haw-haw!” as the sound of their footsteps faded away in the warren of paneled passages.

'No, this way,' Mary hissed, tugging at my arm. We slipped round the corner and into a narrow corridor. She pulled a set of keys from her pocket and quietly unlocked the last door on the left. We stepped inside.

We were in a room which had not likely changed since Queen Elizabeth visited Bishop's Lacey in 1592 on one of her summer progresses. My first impressions were of a timbered ceiling, plastered panels, a tiny window with leaded panes standing ajar for air, and broad floorboards that rose and fell like the ocean swell.

Against one wall was a chipped wooden table with an ABC Railway Guide (October 1946) shoved under one leg to keep it from teetering. On the tabletop were an unmatched Staffordshire pitcher and ewer in pink and cream, a comb, a brush, and a small black leather case. In a corner near the open window stood a single piece of luggage: a cheap-looking steamer trunk of vulcanized fiber, plastered over with colored stickers. Beside it was a straight chair with a missing spindle. Across the room stood a wooden wardrobe of jumble-sale quality. And the bed.

'This is it,' Mary said. As she locked us in, I turned to look at her closely for the first time. In the gray dishwater light from the sooty windowpanes, she looked older, harder, and more brittle than the raw-handed girl I had just seen in the bright sunlight of the inn yard.

'I expect you've never been in a room this small, have you?' she said scornfully. 'You lot at Buckshaw fancy the odd visit to Bedlam, don't you? See the loonies—see how we live in our cages. Throw us a biscuit.'

'I don't know what you're talking about,' I said.

Mary turned her face towards me so that I was receiving the full intensity of her glare. “That sister of yours— that Ophelia—sent you with a message for Ned, and don't tell me she didn't. She fancies I'm some kind of slattern, and I'm not.”

And in that instant I decided that I liked Mary, even if she didn't like me. Anyone who knew the word slattern was worth cultivating as a friend.

'Listen,' I said, 'there's no message. What I said to Ned was strictly for cover. You have to help me, Mary. I know you will. There's been a murder at Buckshaw.'

There! I'd said it!

'. and nobody knows it yet but you and me—except the murderer, of course.'

She looked at me for no more than three seconds and then she asked, “Who is it that's dead, then?”

'I don't know. That's why I'm here. But it makes sense to me that if someone turns up dead in the cucumbers, and even the police don't know who he is, the most likely place he'd be staying in the neighborhood— if he was staying in the neighborhood—is right here at the Thirteen Drakes. Can you bring me the register?”

'Don't need to bring it to you,' Mary said. 'There's only one guest right now, and that's Mr. Sanders.'

The more I talked to Mary the more I liked her.

'And this here's his room,' she added helpfully.

'Where is he from?' I asked.

Her face clouded. “I don't know, rightly.”

'Has he ever stopped here before?'

'Not so far as I know.'

'Then I need to have a look at the register. Please, Mary! Please! It's important! The police will soon be here, and then it will be too late.'

'I'll try.' she said, and, unlocking the door, slipped from the room.

As soon as she was gone, I pulled open the door of the wardrobe. Except for a pair of wooden coat hangers it was empty, and I turned my attention to the steamer trunk, which was covered over with stickers like barnacles clinging to the hull of a ship. These colorful crustaceans, however, had names: Paris, Rome, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stavanger—and more.

I tried the hasp, and to my surprise, it popped open. It was unlocked! The two halves, hinged in the middle, swung easily apart, and I found myself face-to-face with Mr. Sanders's wardrobe: a blue serge suit, two shirts, a pair of brown Oxfords (with blue serge? Even I knew better than that!), and a floppy, theatrical hat that reminded me of photographs I'd seen of G. K. Chesterton in the Radio Times.

I pulled out the drawers of the trunk, taking care not to disturb their contents: a pair of hairbrushes (imitation tortoiseshell), a razor (Valet AutoStrop), a tube of shaving cream (Morning Pride Brushless), a toothbrush, toothpaste (thymol: “specially recommended to arrest the germs of dental decay”), nail clippers, a straight comb (xylonite), and a pair of square cuff links (Whitby jet, with a pair of initials inset in silver: HB).

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