“Oh, my poor bones,” she moaned unconvincingly.

The footman opened his mouth to protest this treatment of Her Majesty’s antiquities, but Cecilia caught his gaze and he wisely silenced himself. They hurried to keep up.

“What happened with the doctor?” Cecilia whispered to Pleasance.

“He told her not to be a silly old woman and to take the morphine,” Pleasance whispered in reply.

“So he had a death wish, then?”

“Apparently. The blood on her nightgown belongs to him.”

“If he is dead it’s his own fault,” Miss Darlington said, proving herself to have the hearing ability of bats and elderly aunts everywhere. “I merely used his own injector on him.”

“In his—er—” Pleasance lowered her gaze, waggling her eyebrows eloquently.

“Oh dear,” Cecilia murmured again.

“Yes, well,” Miss Darlington said, “if you are going to threaten to stab me with a metaphorically phallic instrument, prepare to be stabbed yourself in your actual—”

The castle doors slammed open. Everyone staggered to a halt as a bulky, gray-haired figure loomed in the exposed sunlight.

“You again?” Miss Darlington huffed with exasperation.

“Jehovahsen!” Cecilia gasped.

He strode toward them. His face was smoke-stained, his arm bandaged from shoulder to elbow. Cecilia pushed the footman protectively behind her. Pleasance gnashed her teeth. And Miss Darlington swung her cane around so its jagged end was pointed at Jacobsen.

“I have had a tiring morning,” she said, “and would be obliged if you stopped right there, my good fellow. Any misbehavior shall compel me to disembowel you, and I really just want to go home for a cup of tea.”

“Please don’t fight in the entrance hall,” the footman begged with the tone hand-wringing would have were it a voice. “We’ll never get the blood out of the carpet.”

Everyone looked down at the carpet on which they stood.

“It’s red,” Cecilia said. “Exactly blood colored, in fact.”

“There’s a stain here,” Pleasance added, shuffling her shoe against it.

“I can kill him without drawing blood,” Miss Darlington offered.

“Kill me and you will hang,” Jacobsen said. “I am a captain with Her Majesty’s secret service, but—”

“What, another one?” Cecilia shook her head. “It seems that lately a lady cannot go a day about her peaceful felonious business without being harassed by secret service agents.”

Jacobsen stared openmouthed at her for a moment, then shook his wits back into order. “I am Sergeant Jacobsen, employed by Colonel Williams to spy on Major Candent, who has been spying on Captain Morvath,” he said, then paused while they worked this through. “When I learned you were caught up in this matter, Miss Darlington, I tried to contact your niece so she could furnish me with your whereabouts, for you owe me—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Miss Darlington swung her makeshift cane, smashing the sergeant on his bandaged arm and making him scream. Then she flipped the cane, thrust its blunt end into his stomach, and whacked him over the head. He collapsed, landing with a sickening crunch on his much-abused arm. With one groan, he was lost to consciousness.