pplpod

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The registered envelope from Windle reaches the office, and Mr. Pond opens it, making him a witness. When Miss Murchison bursts into Mr. Urquhart's room she notices a dark line in the panelling behind his head. After hours she talks her way past the charwoman Mrs. Hodges, finds the sliding panel by accident, and opens the inner cupboard with Blindfold Bill's keys. Inside are Megatherium Trust certificates showing Urquhart gambled Mrs. Wrayburn's money, the will, and a foreign chemist's packet of white powder.

At Wimsey's flat, Parker lays out the case: Urquhart's motive is strong, but everything Philip Boyes ate or drank at dinner was shared or tested. Bunter reveals that Hannah Westlock found Boyes's bedroom water bottle emptied and dried. Then Bunter runs Marsh's test on Miss Murchison's sample and a dark ring with a metallic centre forms, confirmed as arsenic. Wimsey reads all night through the notable British trials and by morning announces he knows how it was done.

• Rule 7 of the Cattery: always distrust the man who looks you straight in the eyes
• Miss Murchison teasing Urquhart outside a butcher's window until he stalks off
• A scrap of silk torn from her own bag as her excuse to Mrs. Hodges
• Freddy Arbuthnot complaining that the chemistry show lacks pep
• The books left open for Bunter, from the Maybrick trial to A Shropshire Lad

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Staying the night at the house, Miss Climpson persuades Miss Booth to send the will by registered post to Norman Urquhart with a covering letter, and volunteers to fill the hot water bottles. Alone in the kitchen she steams open the sealed envelope over a slow kettle, hides the paper knife behind the stove when Miss Booth returns, reads the will in three minutes, and reseals it before calmly making tea.

Her letter to Lord Peter Wimsey, dated January 7th, 1930, sets out the terms. The real estate and 50,000 pounds go to Philip Boyes, with a paragraph forgiving the ill treatment she suffered from his family. The residue goes to Norman Urquhart, sole executor. Miss Climpson plans to stay on in Windle to warn Miss Booth against Mrs. Craig. Wimsey tells Bunter to have Mr. Crofts put off the case, claiming the criminal and the motive, though he admits he still does not know how it was done.

• Miss Booth showing unwelcome signs of independent judgment about keeping the will
• The kettle taking about seven minutes that felt like an hour
• The envelope hidden behind a dish cover with its flap doubled back
• The will's witnesses, Eva Gubbins, housekeeper, and John Briggs, gardener
• Miss Booth sealing the outer envelope with Mrs. Wrayburn's private seal

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Back at Hillside View, the boarding house ladies warn Miss Climpson off spiritualism. Mrs. Pegler is still furious that Mrs. Craig once claimed the late General had played the accordion at a seance, and Miss Tweedle suspects the henna haired Mrs. Craig of being on the make. Miss Climpson keeps her appointment anyway, and her invented control Pongo reveals himself as Pongocelli, a Renaissance acrobat who died nursing a child through the plague in Florence.

On Monday the Ouija board spells out a message from Cremorna, Mrs. Wrayburn's stage name, asking that her will be sent to Norman and saying it is 'in the B'. Miss Booth and Miss Climpson search the crammed, tasteless rooms for hours, stretching the letter B to cover bureaus, beds, boxes and anything big or black. A black notebook yields a row of seven figures, the library shelves swing out to reveal a safe, and on the second try the combination opens it. On top lies a sealed envelope: the will of Rosanna Wrayburn, dated June 5th, 1920.

• Miss Etheridge defending a spiritualist friend she calls a real saint
• Miss Climpson skipping Sunday's sitting because her conscience revolts
• The corridor lined with portraits, programmes and relics of the Green Room
• Miss Climpson's shame at the bedside of the tiny, helpless old woman
• Miss Booth deciding the B stood for black book, the hiding place of the combination

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After supper at the Wrayburn house in Windle, nurse companion Miss Booth goes up to settle the paralysed Mrs. Wrayburn, who can only mumble, and leaves Miss Climpson alone in her sitting room. Miss Climpson reads the mantelpiece like a case file: a silver framed photograph inscribed 'My dearest Lucy from her ever loving Harry', a Coventry photographer, a clergyman father with pupils, a Maidstone Ladies College prize, and a nephew in khaki named G. Booth.

Around a bamboo table in the firelight, Miss Climpson works wrist hooks and a soapbox on her garter to rock the table and rap out answers. Harry returns, forgives Lucy, and sends the old joke 'Go to Coventry'. A mischievous George Washington interrupts, a new control named Pongo sends him off, and a school friend from Maidstone recalls cakes eaten after lights out. Miss Booth is thrilled, calls her a wonderfully strong medium, and begs her to come back the next night.

• Miss Booth explaining that the blue rays of daylight shatter the spirits' vibrations
• The table lurching violently because Miss Climpson overestimated the force needed to move bamboo
• A falling coal breaking the spell just as Miss Climpson fakes a trance
• Miss Climpson privately scolding herself for slipping up over George and choosing the name Helen
• Miss Booth describing Mrs. Craig's control Fedora, a slave girl thrown to the lions under Nero

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After Parker's news about the packet, Mr. Crofts says 'I told you so', and Lord Peter Wimsey endures a week of forced idleness and the doting happiness of Parker and Lady Mary. Freddy Arbuthnot confirms Norman Urquhart was deeply involved in the Megatherium Trust disasters. Meanwhile, Miss Climpson writes from Hillside View boarding house in Windle on January 1, 1930. She has seen the 18th century house at Appleford with its cedar and Italian porch, and learned from the gossip Mrs. Pegler that Mrs. Wrayburn's nurse companion is a Miss Booth, about 60.

Miss Climpson stakes out the town's tea shops, consuming cup after cup, and finally trails a stout nurse to a boot shop and the dim Oriental Cafe. Using a parcel of stationery she pretends to have found, she sits down beside Caroline Booth, who is reading a book called Can the Dead Speak? Seeing her chance, Miss Climpson claims to be a medium and wins an invitation to the house. She rigs a soapbox on a garter to crack on command and wire up her sleeve to tip a table, then sets out to steal Mrs. Wrayburn's will.

• Miss Climpson's grateful reflections on first class travel and on how much freer women are than in Queen Victoria's day
• Her cover story of a small inheritance and sketching trips, backed by girlhood watercolour lessons
• The chase through Windle with a flapping black veil and a pretend errand for an India rubber
• What a Psychical Research man taught her in Bournemouth about sealed slates and wax spirit hands
• Caroline Booth's reliance on a medium named Mrs. Craig, who is conveniently abroad

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After a celebratory lunch at Rules, Lord Peter Wimsey takes stock and finds little progress. His faith in Urquhart's draft will is gone, the Nine Rings packet is still missing, and it is December 30 with no plan. Pacing his book lined room, he catches his own reflection in the Venetian mirror, a fair and foolish face with a monocle, and nearly smashes it with a bronze. Instead he sends Miss Climpson to Windle in Westmorland to reach the paralysed Mrs. Wrayburn at Appleford and find her will within about a week.

Then, in a gentler mood of melancholy, he goes to Scotland Yard and demands to know Chief Inspector Parker's intentions toward his sister Lady Mary. Parker protests that a policeman cannot presume, and Wimsey tells him he is making Mary unhappy after five years of mooning. Only then does Parker reveal his own news: the police have found the white paper packet from the Nine Rings, traced it through one of the barmen, identified it, and analysed it. The chapter ends as Parker, looking like a man breaking bad news, prepares to say what was inside.

• Wimsey's grim thought of how easy it would be to hasten the death of a frail 93 year old
• His instruction to Miss Climpson to stay at a boarding house for the gossip and find the nurse's weakness
• Miss Climpson asking the vicar for a special intention for someone on a difficult undertaking
• Wimsey's suggested proposal lines, from a spot of matrimony to going down on one knee
• Parker exploding at the idea that he could be making Lady Mary unhappy

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Miss Murchison deliberately leaves a paragraph out of an urgent affidavit so Mr. Urquhart will order her to stay late and retype it. Once Mr. Pond leaves for the Tube, she climbs a wobbly revolving chair to reach the Wrayburn deed box, only to find it moved to the bottom of a new stack. Then Mr. Pond returns for a forgotten jar of caviar, and she claims she was chasing a mouse while praying her skeleton keys are not lying in plain view on her desk.

Spooked again by boys chasing a ball and a possible policeman outside the unblinded window, she carries the box into Urquhart's private office and, following Blindfold Bill's advice not to hurry, opens it. There is no will inside. Instead she finds a list of securities, a power of attorney from January 1925, and a deed of trust from July 1920 making Urquhart sole trustee of Mrs. Wrayburn's entire property, attached to a letter from the old woman asking him to take charge of everything.

• The pile of deed boxes: Universal Bone Trust, Trubody Limited, Flatsby and Cotton, Sir J. Penkridge, and Bodgers
• Mr. Pond lamenting that typewriters make clerks careless and promising to fetch a kitten
• The charwoman Mrs. Hodges noticing she had not heard the typewriter going
• Rosanna Wrayburn's 1920 letter, written at over 80, saying she might one day become feeble in her head
• Miss Murchison heading to Soho for supper, humming the Whitechapel hymn

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Miss Joan Murchison, 38, spent twelve years with a financier whose schemes collapsed, leaving her out of work until the Cattery took her in. Now she visits Lord Peter Wimsey's flat for crumpets and hears him play Bach's Italian Concerto. She reports that the office typewriter was bought new three years ago and that Urquhart stayed late typing the night of Wimsey's visit. Wimsey concludes the will draft was typed fresh to fool him, and asks her to break into the Wrayburn deed box to find the real will.

For that she needs training, so Wimsey takes her to Whitechapel Road to see Bill Rumm, once the great safe breaker Blindfold Bill, now a converted locksmith whom Wimsey once caught breaking into his safe. They arrive mid prayer meeting, join in 'Sweeping Through the Gates', and then Bill teaches her to lift a spring and slip a catch with wire picklocks. Wimsey cracks a combination lock from a sinner named Sam, sings 'Nazareth' for little Esmeralda, and everyone sups on eight beautiful trotters.

• Miss Murchison's detective work pacing Red Lion Square until Urquhart turned off the light at 7:30
• Wimsey warning her the job could mean a charge of possessing safe breaking tools
• Bill's boast that he could open any deed box blindfold in boxing gloves with a stick of boiled macaroni
• His lament that nobody does an artistic job now that any fool blows safes apart with explosives
• Wimsey's instructions to memorise the residuary legatee and any mention of Philip Boyes

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Christmas at Duke's Denver begins badly when Mrs. Dimsworthy asks Lord Peter Wimsey over tea whether he is defending 'that frightful poisoning woman'. Captain Tommy Bates condemns Philip Boyes's books from a newspaper excerpt, Miss Titterton would commute Harriet's sentence for a new novel every six months, and Mr. Harringay cites Madeleine Smith as proof that an arsenic poisoner can make a good wife. Bates then declares the police never put innocent people in the dock, forgetting that the Duke of Denver himself once stood trial for murder.

Escaping to the billiard room, Wimsey hears from Freddy Arbuthnot that Urquhart has reportedly been dipping recklessly into the markets, and that Freddy is marrying Rachel Levy in a synagogue after winning over Lady Levy by claiming he had served nearly seven years for her, like Jacob for Laban. At two in the morning on Boxing Day, Lady Mary Wimsey visits her brother's room, and he quietly steers her toward Chief Inspector Parker, who has been dining with her.

• Mrs. Featherstone praising Boyes's prose as Gallic in its audacity and restraint
• The Dowager Duchess thanking the press for picking out all the plums so nobody has to read the books
• Miss Titterton wondering whether a murderess's husband would always check the taste of his coffee
• Freddy explaining how a Bible in the pew at a late wedding gave him his winning line
• Lady Mary offering to give up her self designed pyjamas if Parker proposes

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Over breakfast Norman Urquhart shows Lord Peter Wimsey the draft of Mrs. Wrayburn's will and explains the family tree. John Hubbard, a Nottingham banker, lost everything and left three daughters: Jane, whose line produced Philip Boyes; Mary, Urquhart's grandmother; and Rosanna, who ran away to the stage as Cremorna Garden, took money, jewels, and carriages from fashionable London, and turned it all into consolidated funds. Jane's husband Henry Brown even tried to have her thrown out of church at his wife's funeral, and the old actress never forgave.

The draft leaves everything to Urquhart and forbids him to give or lend any of it to Philip Boyes, which seems to support a suicide from despair. But Wimsey notes it was typed on a Woodstock machine with a chipped lowercase p. After a jealous visit to Harriet Vane, including talk of his lost love Barbara, he gets a report from Miss Murchison: Urquhart hoards chocolate creams and Turkish delight and may be tangled in the Megatherium Trust crash. Her letter shows the same chipped p and misaligned A.

• Why the Hubbard bank failure left three well educated sisters penniless
• Urquhart's grandparents taking a box at Cremorna Garden's shows while the Browns returned her letters unopened
• Wimsey grinding his teeth over Harriet's novel about two Bloomsbury artists and a poisoning
• Harriet's warning that he would always be jealous and never give her a square deal
• Wimsey reciting logic mnemonics as romantic poetry for Barbara near St. John's