“Expert,” he said. “My Widow Twankey brought the house down.”

“What pantomime is she in?”

He looked shocked. “Aladdin. You know—Wishy Washy and the magic lamp and all that.”

I shrugged. “Sorry, I’ve never seen it.”

“Never seen Aladdin? My dear girl, you haven’t lived.”

“There aren’t too many pantomimes around Castle Rannoch, you know. And I’ve hardly ever been in London for Christmas. I think I may have seen Puss in Boots once, but I can’t remember anything about it.”

“And then there is Dick Whittington, isn’t there? And Cinderella, of course. And Babes in the Wood.”

“We’ll need one with seven or eight roles,” I said. “Everyone should have a part.”

“Well, that rules out Dick Whittington,” Darcy said. “I can only think of Dick and his cat.”

“I expect he had a sweetheart,” I said. “It seems to be one of the requirements.”

“It had better be Cinderella,” Darcy said. “At least we know the story to that one.”

I counted on my fingers. “Let’s see—Cinderella, wicked stepmother—”

“I claim that role for myself,” he said.

“Two ugly sisters.”

“Monty and Badger.”

“The prince, the fairy godmother.”

“The king and the person who carries around the glass slipper. That makes eight.”

“Perfect,” I said.

I rounded up the younger members and presented the idea to them. Naturally Cherie thought it would be boring, Junior thought it would be stupid and Ethel didn’t look too enthusiastic. But Cherie brightened up a lot when I made her Cinderella. Ethel agreed to be the fairy godmother and I assigned Bunty to be the prince. As you know, the principal boy in a pantomime is always played by a female in tights, and there is always a comic older woman played by a man. It’s tradition. And a lot of pies in the face and that kind of thing.

By the end of the morning we had a rough sketch of our lines and everyone had entered into the spirit of the thing, Ethel proving to be rather sharp and witty and even Junior happy to be made the king. But the more they laughed and joked and tried on impossible costumes the more I tried to fight off a lingering uneasiness. Why had I sensed danger so close to my mother’s cottage the night before? A ridiculous notion entered my head. What if one of those convicts knew that my grandfather had been a policeman? Might they want to get him out of the way as their fifth victim?

I could stand it no longer. “I’ll leave you to run through it once more,” I said. “I have to pop down to the village for a minute.”