But he didn’t. The doctor arrived, puffing and panting, his black bag in his hand. He dropped to his knees beside Johnnie and started to examine him. After a while he looked up at the considerable crowd that had now gathered around them. “Heart,” he said. “Clearly a heart attack. The fellow was on heart medication, you know. I warned him that he should be taking it easier but he still acted as if he were twenty-one. Someone better call for the ambulance.”

He rose to his feet again. I went over to him. “Doctor, in light of all these strange deaths around here, don’t you think the police should be called in?”

He gave me a cold stare. “I’ve been practicing medicine for thirty years. Do you think I don’t recognize a heart attack when I see one?”

“But just in case?”

“An autopsy will be done, of course,” he said. “But I’d like to wager with one of these bookies here that I am right. The chap had a dicky heart. He overextended himself. Simple as that, young lady.”

The St. John ambulance boys were in attendance in case of accidents and they now arrived with a stretcher. As I watched the body being carried away, the increasingly familiar feeling of dread overwhelmed me. I now knew what the deaths meant and why they were happening to fit in with the Twelve Days of Christmas, but I was not one bit the wiser about why these people were chosen or who had planned this awful farce. Darcy had removed the saddle and helmet and was now dressed in his jersey and corduroys.

“Poor old Johnnie,” he said. “A bit of a cad, but I rather liked him.”

“In spite of everything, so did I,” I said. “And I’ve been trying to make the doctor see that his death was not a heart attack. At least they’re going to conduct an autopsy.”

“You think this was today’s planned murder, then?” he asked. “You are not going to budge from your belief that these are planned killings, are you?”

“Because I now have proof that they are,” I said. “Come over here.” I took his arm and led him away from the crowd. Then I told him exactly what I had figured out. He stared at me in growing wonder. “A partridge in a pear tree. Of course. Why didn’t we see that?”

“Because everyone referred to him as ‘old Freddie.’ I believe I did hear his last name once, but that was before I saw his death as any more than a freak accident, so it didn’t sink in.”

“Well, you cracked it now, haven’t you? Brilliant,” he said.