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the racket those dogs was making.”
    I had my hand on knocker when the door was opened by Vienna Miller. Apologizing in a deep voice for keeping us waiting, she ushered us inside. There was nothing of the middle-aged nymph about this woman. Short and heavyset, with closely cropped hair and rather nice hazel eyes, she was completely different from her sister. No trace of the Bohemian in her dress, either. Slacks and a jumper, both of which were faded and fuzzy in places. Definitely a doggy sort of woman, I thought, trying not to look at Jonas.
    “Ellie Haskell and Mr. Phipps! How good of you to come!” She bore us a little way down the narrow hall to a hat rack and clothes tree. “If you like to hang up your things, I’ll take you into the sitting room. I expect you’d like a cup of tea and biscuit, Mr. Phipps, before going outside to look at the apple tree?”
    “Thank ye kindly, missus.” Jonas scuffed at his moustache with a finger, hiding part of his glower. “But I don’t take no pleasure out of sitting along a bunch of church people, all blithering about what hymns to sing of a Sunday. I’d sooner be outside talking stuff as makes sense with old Mother Nature. When I’m done looking at the tree, I’ll take a sit in your kitchen until Mrs. Haskell here is ready to go.”
    “I prefer kitchens to sitting rooms myself,” Vienna Miller told him. She struck me, as she had on the few previous times I’d met her, as a pleasant, straightforward sort of person, but one who wouldn’t stand for much nonsense. The sort there would be no getting two biscuits out of if she had decided it would be one per cup of tea.
    Madrid appeared suddenly in the hall. I didn’t see which door she’d come out of, but she looked harried. Her granny glasses were askew and her mouth was turned down, somehow emphasizing the jowls that didn’t go with the flowing brown hair.
    “Vienna, there’s a problem.” Madrid paid no attention to Jonas or me. “You have to come at once.”
    “Of course, dear, no need to panic. You know there’s nothing we can’t fix between us.” Vienna’s face softened and she spoke as one might to a child. “I’ll just show Mrs. Haskell into the sitting room and be right with you.” She opened a door, and taking my cue, I stepped inside. Clearly the scones were burning in the oven or possibly one of the Norfolk terrier bitches was in the process of giving birth. Watching Jonas stump down the hall after the sisters, I wondered if something about this house set the stage for melodrama.
    The sitting room looked different from when the Lady in Black had lived at Tall Chimneys. The once-dark walls were now painted an off-white. The dingy net curtains were gone from the windows, letting in a view of the front garden. There was new furniture: a red carpet and a comfortable-looking sofa and chairs; a secretary desk and several sets of nesting tables. But what really caught my eye was the life-size portrait in an ornate gilt frame above the mantelpiece. It was of a Norfolk terrier with lilac bows in her hair and a shilling-sized red stone flashing on her left paw. Jessica, I presumed.
    I was so busy looking at it that for a few seconds I rudely ignored the fact that several members of the Hearthside Guild were grouped in front of the fireplace like a bunch of candlesticks. Sir Robert Pomeroy, who was inclined to hold forth if given half a chance, was talking about the flower fund and how, if he were not very much mistaken, there had been a misappropriation of money. His wife—the former Maureen Dovedale being a new bride—was naturally paying close attention to his every syllable. Brigadier Lester-Smith appeared to be studying the design on the hearth rug. The fourth member of the group was Tom Tingle, who had moved to the village a couple of months previously. He was a gnome-like man with a large forehead accentuated by a receding hairline. He looked crabby. But being stuck with a name that made one sound