Once downstairs, I nearly piled into Madame Groot's ample backside as she clomped out of the kitchen door and into my path. She bawled into the common room as she passed it, "I go. I will be back when I can. Dinner will be late."

Conversation in the big room quieted for a moment, then resumed. Groot steamed ahead for the front door, and I followed for a moment, trying to think if I needed anything from the surly proprietress.

Sunlight streamed into the common room from French doors that led onto the back garden and its huge oak. I blinked. I found the change from rain to sun unsettling in its suddenness. The new light made the piano glow gold and brought out floral reds and greens in the upholstery of some of the chairs. But faded spots and stains became visible, too, and mouse holes dotted the wall baseboards.

I did not follow Groot down the hall to the front door, but as she reached it, it popped open. A dark hunched shape filled the doorway, outlined in bright light.

"Hey!" she said.

"Ah!" Flip squeaked. Never did I dream to hear Flip unnerved, but I heard it in this moment of startling encounter. He clutched a paper bag tighter as he grimaced at Madame Groot.

"Get out of my way." Groot waved thick arms.

Flip backed up and watched the sand colored woman march away toward the street. I joined him on the porch. "Hello, Constable. Stroopwafels?"

"Ja. And a wheel of Edam." His eyes still followed Madame Groot as she banged through the gate and disappeared into the lonely neighborhood. Wind ruffled our hair.

"Good. Thanks."

He handed over his bag. "You're all right, then? Not poisoned?"

"Fine, thanks." I did not care to describe the brutal intensity of my pounding headache to him.

"All right. See you."

"Bye."

I watched his comforting bulk recede. A cloud came over, plunging the neighborhood into shadow. I choked back an urge to call out to him as he got into his car. It sagged under his weight.

I sighed and turned. A soft impact at my ankle made me look down with a start. A cat, striped with gray, bumped its hip into my leg, tail high.

"Oh!" I breathed. "Silly cat."

I pivoted for the house, but the cat followed.

"Shoo! Go on! This is not your home. Go!"

I shut the door on the stare of its patient greenish eyes. "What is it with the cats?"

"Inspector Visser?" The new voice made me whirl around. The moth stare of Alice Bree's dark glasses replaced the cat stare, and I didn't think it was an improvement.

"Miss Bree."

"I'd like to recheck your pulse. Could you come here, please?"

The lower half of her face seemed calm as still waters, though the color resembled polished bronze. Those were scars angling down her left cheek, tracking some unknown length up behind her dark glasses and black bangs. I saw no reason to protest. "Well, all right. Are you a doctor?"

She fanned her hand in the air until her fingertips brushed my forearm. In an instant, her cool fingers lay across my wrist. Her lips twitched into an ironic smile. "That's an unexpectedly difficult question. The first of many, I expect. You'll be wanting all sorts of personal details about each witness."

"It's difficult to know if you're a doctor or not?"

"Not difficult to know. Difficult to share. Do you have any shortness of breath?"

"No."

"Headache?"

"Yes."

"Nausea?"

"No, but I feel unsettled in the stomach."

So firm were her fingers on my pulse that I felt their authority. Her accent struck me as layered. On the surface the American diction tripped along, but underneath something more exact held sway. "I'm not surprised. Whatever that poison was, it was potent. Did it have any particular taste?"

"Eucalyptus," my tongue said before my suspicious brain could lock my lips closed.

"The bark, the leaves, or the oil extract?"

Could Alice Bree indeed be a doctor? She analyzed like one. But who was pumping who for information? I inhaled and exhaled. "At a perfumery, I once tested a hand lotion." This was a lie, but a small one. She who rubbed the creamy lotion into her porcelain skin vibrated in my memory, but the affair lasted only a week. "I remember the sharp smell."

"That might narrow the possibilities a bit. Plant-based poisons, perhaps, or a cytotoxin. As for you, drink an extra glass of water today. It will help you equilibrate." She released my wrist. "Pulse normal."

"Normal is good."

"It's excellent. And what sort of cat was it?"

My forehead wrinkled. "Um. Gray?"

Mario Costa's head angled out from behind Alice Bree's shoulder. His English emerged thickly Italian. "Cats? I hate-a cats. All of-a the cats."

Mariam Saab's voice drifted in from the common room. "Cats are lovely. Oh, look, there's one at the back door."

I shuffled forward for a look. Thick, watery squares of glass filled the panes of the French doors. A white cat prowled back and forth outside, its long fur ruffling in the wind, visible despite the wavy distortions.

Feet clattered and distracting calves silhouetted themselves against the French doors. Mariam's dress descended to the knees in trendy Paris fashion, leaving only stockings to cover her lower legs. She reached for the door handle. "Here, puss puss puss!"

"Don't let it in!" Mario's hands clutched at his hair.

"Nonsense," Mariam said as she cracked the door open. Wind roared as she slipped through the door in a flutter of fabric. "Meow? Meow?" she called, before the closing door cut off both voice and gust.

"Uffa!" Mario gestured in the air with both hands. If I hadn't already known his Italian origin, the gesture would have told me. Only in Italy do they speak with their hands so eloquently. He wheeled about. "Where didda Groot hide-a the brandy?"

"I say, old chap," Trevor said from by the fire. "It's not even noon yet. Why don't you lay off the stuff?"

"Husha, you. I am a grown man." His powerful shoulders hunched, he stalked toward the kitchen. If Flip was a fat and lazy September bear, Mario Costa was a lean and hungry March bear.

After a glance toward the French doors, through which I saw distant dancelike movements, my eyes fell on the Englishman. His hair parted down the middle and feathered back. The ruffles in his shirt gave him a proud bird aspect, the more so because of his stork legs. His eyes met mine coolly.

I strode forward a few steps. "Mr. Brashear, I presume?"

"Yes."

"Could we speak, up in the little lounge? In a minute. I should have a glass of water, first. Doctor's orders."

"Brandy beats water," Mario growled, out of sight in the kitchen.

"Of course, Inspector." Trevor Brashear inclined his head.

Mariam Saab blew through the back doors in a gust of laughter and wild air. "Skittish animal," she reported. "Why would it not let me pet it? Such lovely white fur."

A voice spoke at my shoulder. "Is there a chess board?"

I started and whipped my head around to the placid golden countenance of Alice Bree. "Why, yes. It's by, I mean, it's behind the chair you sat in when I fainted."

"Thank you."

I glanced over, just to make sure I hadn't lied. I hadn't. Soapstone chess men marched in rows on the checkerboard pattern, awaiting their next contest.

Mario passed me, coming out of the kitchen. He smirked and saluted me with a tumbler of brown liquid. I plopped the bag of stroopwafels and Edam on the counter and scrounged for my own glass of tap water.

I emerged from the kitchen door next to a hovering Mariam Saab. At sight of me she laid a vertical finger on her lips and winked a brown eye at me.

I must have frowned. She leaned closer and whispered, "Any second, now."

Her face glowed with humor, and I felt mine begin to warm at the tease of her partial information. But then Mario Costa whooped in his seat. He leapt up and his tumbler flew through the air. He pranced frantically and beat his left hand against his right shoulder. "Get it off! Get it off!"

"What? What is it?" A chorus of concerned voices babbled.

Mario gained a grip on his panic and stood panting, trying to turn his head to examine the back of his own shoulder. "Is it gone? A green thing. A caterpillar. Please tell me it's gone."

Mariam's whispered syllables caressed my ear. "A bug crawled on him. Such a reaction, don't you think?"

The gleeful glint in her eye told me exactly who had arranged the show. It must have showed on my face because she dropped her eyes.

"I'm terrible, I know. I salted somebody's toothbrush yesterday, but I never saw the results. I wonder whose it was?"