“Now, Mrs. Puffley, I’m certain your creation wasn’t so bad that it must be relegated as canine food. I don’t suppose you saved a bit of a taste for me?” she asked with purposeful wistfulness as a way to find out whether the lamb Wellington had actually been served to the guests or not. “I do love your puff pastry.”

“Right, then, of course there’s a plate for you staying warm, Mrs. Bright,” replied the cook, wiping her face with a tea towel. She was a tall, solid woman of forty-five with capable shoulders and muscular arms who looked as if she could withstand a gale force wind. Due to the heat in the kitchen or her own genetic makeup—or both—her cheeks were perpetually ruddy and glistened with perspiration. Her curly dark hair was mostly tucked up inside a cap, although a stray coil had escaped at the nape of her neck.

“Mr. Dobble ate the lamb fine enough,” she went on, glowering. “As if it weren’t his fault it were ruined! Tried to force me to serve it anyhow, but I told him in no uncertain terms there weren’t going to be no soggy lamb pastry from Harriet Puffley’s kitchen coming up for the likes of Miss Sayers and Mr. Chesterton. It would be mortifying, it would!”

“Quite,” replied Phyllida. “But I’m certain you found something just as delicious for our guests.”

As the housekeeper, Phyllida would normally approve all meals and make any decisions about changes to the menu—with Mrs. Agatha’s input as necessary. But obviously tonight, someone else would have made such decisions in her absence. Phyllida needed to know what they were, for the adjustment could affect supplies and other meals for the rest of the weekend.

“Mr. Dobble, he told me since it was so late all they wanted was a cold supper,” said Mrs. Puffley. “A cold supper? After a murder? Why, I told him in no uncertain terms that a cold supper would not be served from Harriet Puffley after my guests were witnesses to a murder! Someone surely dropped that man on his head when he was a bairn, for he’s still got the dent in his skull to prove it.”

“Quite so,” Phyllida replied, chuckling internally at the exchange that must have gone on between the butler, who’d obviously been tiptoeing around the subject and the cook: he first suggesting that she serve the lamb, and then when that idea was summarily rejected, proposing a cold supper. Either way, Mr. Dobble had had no chance of emerging from that conversation unscathed.

“Quite,” she said again and let Mrs. Puffley go on, as one did.