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I realize she has circled us around, and we are back at the gate through which I entered.

“It’s opening to the public Easter weekend to raise funds to pay for that monstrous leaky roof.” She gestures to the palace. “This morning we’re working on placing stanchions up to keep the public from certain rooms. You’d think after all we’ve been through that simple task would be easy.”

She nods to the gate behind me in one of the most gracious and polite dismissals I’ve ever witnessed. “Have a wonderful day, Miss Brown. Good luck with the butcher and Mrs. Beurton’s order. I hope to see you again soon.”

I walk away a little dazed, like I’ve sat too long in the sun or been rolled over by a lorry. Lady Marchmont is probably several years younger than Ursula, maybe in her mid- to late thirties, but there is an equal vitality about her, matched with an equal touch of mystery. And like Ursula, she’s often smiling and laughing. And also like Ursula, I sense she carries a fair number of secrets.

By the time I reach the butcher’s again, he’s opened his doors and patrons have already queued up for the morning’s best cuts. Three women bundled against the cold stand waiting at the counter as the butcher helps one select pork chops from the case and his assistant wraps meat for the second while the third looks on.

A few more customers are served before I step to the counter and give Ursula’s name. The assistant stares at me blankly until the butcher turns towards us.

“I’ve got that order in the back. Take over this one, Patrick, and I’ll go fetch it.”

“I can go,” Patrick protests.

“No. No.” The head butcher presses the paper of pork chops into Patrick’s hands as he speaks to me. “I put it aside special.”

Moments later he returns with the wrapped bundle and stretches it across the glass case. “It’s already been paid for.”

“Thank you.” I reach for it and gently place it in my canvas bag.

I exit the shop to retrace my steps towards the bus stop. The first thing I notice on my walk is yellow. The warm color of sunshine. The sun has come out and the day is beginning to turn lovely. I slow my steps. I’ve not been to Woodstock often, and all the yellow stone shops on its high street seem to glow with golden radiance. And there are so many more shops, too, at least a few blocks more than Great Rollright’s mere one. So much variety and beauty. Could I ever return to the crowds and smog and soot of London after such clear days and bracing air as this?

London . . . Ursula . . . The scrap of paper . . .

I’m sorting through all the details of my mystery again when a toy store catches my attention. It strikes me how much has changed since the war. Even in the years leading up to it, stores didn’t carry the colors, quality, and selection they do now, and I’m almost jealous of today’s children. I think of the Soviets’ atomic bomb, Klaus Fuchs, and the Red Scare. I think of Agatha Christie’s assertion that a feeling of ill will and malevolence is pervading us. I don’t envy the children anymore.

I’m about to walk on when movement snags my notice. Not something in the window, but something behind me caught within its reflection. It isn’t movement so much as the cessation of it, and it takes a flash for my brain to translate what my eyes saw. I stand still and wait until I recognize what happened—as I turned to the window and stopped, a man in a dark winter coat and black bowler stopped as well.

Through the glass’s reflection, I find him again and I watch him. He stands stock-still. I don’t move either. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a cigarette case and a lighter. As he lifts his hand to light a cigarette, he turns towards me. Yet I can’t see any detail. Between his hat pulled low and the fact I’m watching him from across the street and through a reflection, I can’t capture what he looks like.

I move along to the next window, this one full of beautiful dolls and dollhouses. The man is in the corner of the window’s reflection now, and he stutter-steps forward, then stops again as I do and fiddles with his cigarette once more.

My first thought is, of course, that Ursula is having me followed to make sure I run the errand correctly, without deviation, and do nothing suspicious. I don’t know how or why she’d arrange such a tail, but it’s where my imagination goes. Until a worse thought replaces it. What if someone was waiting and watching for the lamb shoulder to be collected?

I walk double-time to the bus. If Ursula has sent this man, I need to merely see the errand through. If someone else is following me, I’d rather them catch up with me on a crowded bus or in my own village rather than in Woodstock, where I know no one and no one knows me.

The man doesn’t follow me onto the bus, though he keeps me in sight until I board. As the bus pulls away, his head is tilted enough that I still can’t see his face underneath his hat. In a frustrated huff I plop down onto the bench.

Once the bus rolls to a stop in Great Rollright, I’m off and hurrying home. If I’ve been used as some type of courier, I should at least know what I’ve been carrying. Once up in my bedsit, I pull the lamb from the bag and set it on my counter. I carefully unwrap the newspaper and note the numbers scrawled across it in black pen. It’s a copy of the Oxford Times from yesterday, 14 February, and the front page, again, features an article about Klaus Fuchs. This one focuses more on the deep Soviet penetration into the UK scientific community than the specifics of his arrest and individual crimes.

I spread the paper out and read the entire article. It could, of course, be a coincidence and the numbers written on the outside could, of course, refer to a cut, a customer number, the weight of the lamb, or any number of things. And yet . . .

Leaving the lamb on the counter—and it does appear to simply be a lamb shoulder, and a nicely marbled one at that—I dash down to the store’s back room and grab a copy of yesterday’s Oxford Times, as we pull all newspapers from the counter at the end of day in preparation to lay out the fresh each morning.

“Gemma?” Mr. Hastings calls.

“Give me one moment. I’ll be right into work.” Back upstairs I wrap the lamb carefully in my newly obtained front page. I then tape it as closely as possible to the original. I even try to reuse the tape but am only successful on three of the four pieces. The fourth tears the newspaper’s edge, so I make do with three pieces and hope the tape bears no strange significance. Of course, this is where I start to make fun of myself, which comes out as a sad chuckle of self-derision—now I’m certain I’ve let my imagination run wild. But there’s no turning back. With a black marker I copy as best I can each of the numbers written in the exact place on the paper they were written on the original.

Len answers the Beurtons’ door five minutes later, and I extend my arms with the lamb shoulder. “Happy birthday. It’s your birthday, right?” He doesn’t answer so I prattle on. “Your wife asked me to pick this up for your supper.”

“Thank you.” If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it. And if there’s something strange about the lamb, perhaps he doesn’t know it. He accepts the lamb without glancing at it, crumpling the paper around it in his hands. “Ursula is so busy this week I worried we weren’t going to get supper at all tonight. Or worse, beans and toast again.”

“This morning Nina mentioned the family is going on vacation? There must be a lot to do.” I pitch my voice high and friendly, despite the fact that I have never before said more than half a dozen words to this man.

“They are, but not me. Not with this leg.” Len’s focus drops, as does mine, to three toes sticking out of his plaster cast. “I’m in this for another month. But at least I can put weight on it now and maybe it means I can work.”

“I’m sorry. About the work and that you’ll miss the trip and some sunshine.”