Now, I was pretty sure that the girl currently living with Victoria and Derek Lacey was a changeling, swapped out by a unicorn-employing supernatural person or persons unknown some eleven days previously. But I didn’t have any proof. Yes, she was alarmingly weird. But then so were a lot of children – including, it has to be said, some of my relatives. And, yes, she displayed an ability – the glamour – that I’d assumed resided only with practitioners, Genius Loci like Beverley Brook and the fae. On the other hand, her appearance was unchanged and her own parents fully accepted her as their child. Worse, the media in the form of Sharon Pike, weekend cottage owner and newspaper columnist, had decided that the child was truly Nicole Lacey.

After a careful risk assessment, I determined that rushing in mob-handed and seizing the child would be hazardous, if not actually illegal. In the meantime, I suspected that the girl currently known as Nicole wasn’t facing a substantial risk of anything other than hyperglycaemia.

We were going to have to wait for the DNA tests which, according to Dr Walid, would be ready by the next afternoon at the earliest. I spoke to Nightingale, who said he would ask DCI Windrow to maintain a close watch on ‘Nicole’ and make sure she didn’t wander off anywhere.

‘Any chance of you getting up here?’ I’d asked.

‘That rather depends on how Lesley responds to your last text,’ he’d said. ‘Whatever Inspector Pollock thinks, we are ultimately responsible for Constable May. And it would be risky in the extreme if he tried for an arrest without me present.’

I told Nightingale I couldn’t see Lesley falling for such an obvious trap, but he disagreed.

‘Not consciously,’ he’d said. ‘But nobody changes their allegiance so absolutely overnight – she may be looking for a way back.’

I thought of the Lesley May I knew, who was more decisive than a bag full of judges. I still thought it was unlikely, but what did I know?

Nightingale did agree that if Lesley hadn’t responded within another twenty-four hours, he’d move on site and review my risk assessment in situ – he didn’t say it exactly like that of course.

‘Give it a day,’ he’d actually said. ‘If we still haven’t heard anything, I’ll pop up in the Jag and see what’s what. Abdul assures me that all the blood tests will be completed by then.’

So, once I’d ensured the samples were couriered off, I met up with Beverley, Dominic and Victor two villages over in the back garden of the Boot Inn where I had lightly battered Scottish cod fillet, hand cut chips and garden peas.

It was late enough for the sunlight to be slanting into the garden from the west and be cut into shadows by the shades over the tables and splash on the potted trees arranged along the fence.