He nodded, and she noticed it had been over a month and he still hadn’t fixed the loose hem on his coat. Her fingers itched to attend to it, and to tighten the third coat button that sagged mournfully from its place. Certainly a bachelor could afford a seamstress to see to such things. “I understand you were a witness to the event,” he went on, “and that afterward you collected the glass from which Father Tooley was drinking.”

“Indeed,” she replied. “I was wearing gloves, but wrapped it in a handkerchief so as to protect it from any other fingerprints. There is the distinct smell of tobacco in the remains of Father Tooley’s glass, the implications of which I am certain are not lost on you.” She looked at him closely in order to ascertain whether the implications were, in fact, not lost on him.

“Tobacco, hmm?” he said.

“Father Tooley did not smoke tobacco,” Phyllida said, giving him a gentle prompt. “And I can think of no alcoholic spirit that has such an essence.”

“You cannot?” he replied, and she noted the tiniest flicker of a grin from beneath his untrimmed mustache. Was the man teasing her? Younger people were astonishingly impertinent nowadays. (Although he was not that much younger than she.)

Phyllida gave Cork a severe look but refrained from calling him out. “Is there any other information I can give you, Inspector?”

The hint of levity evaporated from his expression. “Mrs. Mallowan knows her poisons, does she?”

“Exceedingly well. She’s passed the Apothecaries’ Hall test and worked in a hospital dispensary during the war.”

“Mmm.” He nodded, and only then did he free the notepad from the depths of his coat pocket. A pencil followed, and he flipped through the pages, presumably in search of a blank one. “We’ll have the glass tested, of course, but—”

“Inspector! I say, Inspector, I must speak with you.”

Phyllida recognized Alastair Whittlesby’s self-important voice, and she managed to school her features into a blank expression as she turned, along with Cork, toward the man.

“And you are . . . ?” said Cork, taking his measure of the man, whose wife was still clinging to him like a bloody limpet. Mrs. Whittlesby appeared even more faded and wispy than she had previously, and her lipstick was completely gone. She had, however, acquired a new glass of champagne.

“Why, I’m Alastair Whittlesby,” the newcomer replied, clearly taken aback that his identity hadn’t preceded him. “Of Whittlesby & Konkle, Solicitors & Lawyers, and President of the Listleigh Murder Club—”

“The what?” Cork’s watery blue eyes bulged even more than usual.

“The local writers’ club, of course,” replied Mr. Whittlesby. “We write detective stories. Some of us more skillfully than others.”

“I see,” replied the inspector.

“There’s something I must tell you,” said Mr. Whittlesby in a carrying voice. “Quite alarming. Quite, quite alarming.”

“Oi, then, go on with it,” said Cork, who seemed anything but alarmed.