That’s exactly what they got as B-Flight sailed in, all eighteen airmen from Pimms and Madeira. Elisabeth Lind smiled at Yorkie, who reached her ahead of the pack, and then at Chip, who was about one second behind him. They whipped their sixpences from the beam above her head, slapped them down on the brass counter at exactly the same time, and chorused, “Can I buy you a drink?”

They couldn’t have been more in unison if they were on stage performing Gilbert and Sullivan. Everybody laughed.

“I need to pull Yorke in line,” I murmured to Silver.

“Give him something to do, maybe.”

The lads gathered around Sergeant Lind like bees around a blooming rose. They lit pipes and cigarettes and grabbed for their wishing coins to buy drinks.

“I don’t like these thick walls,” Elisabeth Lind said, ducking out of the way as Harry Morrow reached over her head to pull his sixpence from the ceiling.

“Why?” asked Chip. “Because the house is so old?”

“No, because ghosts live in thick walls. They live in the walls like damp. If you want to get rid of them, you have to light the place up. Then they come out to get warm. They dry up when they get warm enough, also like damp, and then you don’t have to worry about them anymore.” She took a sip of a discreet wee sherry that was all she’d settled on. “What this place needs is a good blaze.”

“We can fix that!” said Gavin Hamilton, the Australian navigator, and stirred the fire.

“That’s a jolly daft theory.” Adam Stedman laughed. He hailed the landlady. “Mrs. Campbell!”

There wasn’t room for all of us at the bar. I stood by the ladies’ table with my hands in my pockets. “All right, Jamie Stuart?” Ellen asked, grinning.

“Aye, no bother, lass,” I answered.

Elisabeth Lind was going after Ignacy now, either because he was safe or because he was more of a challenge, being joined at the hip with Derfel. “Where were you when Hitler chopped Poland in half and threw the bones to Stalin?” she asked him. “How did you get out?”

“On foot and by ship, through Istanbul and Casablanca,” Ignacy answered. I knew for a fact that it had taken him most of a year to get here, and he was proud of it. He threw the question right back at her. “You are Swiss,” he said. “Your country is neutral. Why do you put on a British uniform every morning?”

She shrugged.

“My school chums are all French and English. I came with them, when the war started. Also”—she laughed—“I love to dance.”

The moment everyone was waiting for! Silver extracted himself from the pileup around the bar and made for the gramophone. “May I, Mrs. Warner?”

“Go right ahead!” said the old woman with a benevolent wave to the local population, like Queen Victoria on her tour of Scotland.