Mystified, she returned his hearty squeeze. “Well, I’m not sure I will excuse you! I was just beginning to enjoy your company.” And surprisingly: “Dieu! Que le son du cor est triste au fond des bois! Though not so triste for some, perhaps, I see from the gleam in your eye. More—enlivening? I shall want to hear the end of this partie de chasse, Redfyre.”

They met, as arranged, towards the end of the day, gathering with notebooks around the table in MacFarlane’s office.

The superintendent, perspiring and red in face, was slurping his way through a pint of India pale ale when they entered.

“Just back from lending a hand—more like a well-directed boot—up in Norfolk,” he informed them. “Anybody complaining about his lot as a city copper gets sent straight up there to measure and note the span—that’s the distance between the tines, for those of you of a nonbucolic persuasion—of fifty pitchforks, widely dispersed over a hundred-square-mile area, and match one of the buggers to the puncture marks in the back of a sixty-year-old farmer who’s gotten up the noses of a whole village for donkeys’ years.”

“What fun you have, sir, when you take a day off,” Redfyre said, smiling. “Sergeant Thoday and I have had that rare thing, an excellent day here. He’s interviewed two pretty ladies, and I have investigated two of the more disgusting creatures in God’s bestiary. What was Noah thinking when he let them aboard? Bats and eels! We have come up with the answers to many questions in the case of the graveyard tramp. We’ve had a minute or two to compare and consolidate notes but have much more to say.”

Redfyre and Thoday produced their notebooks, pencils at the ready, eager to share their information.

“May I just say, before the sergeant gives his account,” Redfyre said, “that I have asked for a phone call to be directed up here to your desk outlet, sir? It will be from the records office of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. We communicated with them about an hour ago. They were most helpful and told me they would have information for me before the end of the day. Hoping for six p.m. We have two links, sir. Thoday has tracked down the greatcoat owner, and then there’s this, retrieved from the graveyard . . .” He placed the lapel badge on the desk in front of MacFarlane. “Swept off the greatcoat in question in the course of the dubious nocturnal activities. Rescued from a magpie’s horde, courtesy of Lady Laetitia and the Bat Brigade. I told you they’d solve it!