“Did she live out toward Tiddleton-under-Lovey?” I asked.

“No, right here in town. Born and bred here. She and I went to primary school together.”

I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I came out and walked down the high street, no longer noticing the lively Christmas-card scene. The fourth death. Again it could have been a horrible accident—wiring that had been badly done. Electric wires too close to telephone wires. I didn’t exactly know how telephones worked, but I didn’t think that kind of accident would happen too often. And the telephone operator who had been killed was the type who loved to listen in, to gossip. Had she overheard something she shouldn’t? At least I couldn’t tie her to the Lovey Curse when she had always lived in a town ten miles away.

There was nothing I could do to help and I couldn’t see any way that her death was related to the others, unless a madman in the area was randomly targeting people to kill in different ways. Then I remembered there was one connection: I had heard her name before. Inspector Newcombe had mentioned that Gladys Tripp was the quick-thinking operator who had been sharp enough to alert the police after she had received the emergency call about Miss Effie. A link between two deaths at last, but a tenuous one. I toyed with it as I walked down the high street, being buffeted by round ladies with shopping baskets. By the end of the street I was none the wiser and tried to turn my mind back to the job in hand—finding Christmas presents in a hurry. I looked in dress shops, shoe shops, newsagents, even a haberdashery, and found nothing that looked nice but cost little. I paused to look in the bow window of a small jeweler and saw some lovely pieces of antique jewelry that made me sigh with longing. There was some high-quality stuff here. I wondered how many people in a small Devon town had the sort of money to patronize a place like this. I was about to walk on when a small display at the bottom of the window caught my eye.

Lucky Devon Pixies, said the sign.

I’m a lucky Devon pixie, from the legend old and true,
Kiss me once and turn me twice and I’ll bring luck to you.

The pixies were silver charms in pretty little boxes with the verse on the lid, obviously put there to attract tourists and bring people into the shop. I decided that Granddad could use some luck and that maybe my mother might be charmed by the pixie too. I was about to buy one for each of them when, on impulse, I took an extra one for Darcy, if and when I had a chance to see him again. If anyone needed luck it was he, since he was as impoverished as I and was always popping off to dangerous places.

The man who served me was an elderly Jewish man, presumably Mr. Klein, since the shop was called Klein’s Jewelers. He treated me with great deference even though I was buying such humble items.