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Peggy raises a brow, and I can’t refute her skepticism.

“It’s worth a try.” I shrug. “My bet is we can knock the gossip down one by one, like candlepins, and the truth will be left standing.”

Peggy lifts her hand and waves towards the door. “Mimi and Dinah just walked in. I suggest we change topics.”

“Agreed.” I stretch in my seat to see across the room and wave. “Can we meet tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow.” Peggy raises her sherry in toast. “Let Operation Ursula begin.”

Chapter 19

Sunday, 12 February 1950

The past week and a half hasn’t yielded a lot of fruit in our “investigation.” Really it’s my investigation, as we haven’t gone much further than Peggy paying better attention at the parish committees she helps coordinate and me being suspicious and trying to ask innocuous questions during my baking lessons.

Yet my every effort has failed.

Ursula has been quieter, more distracted, and more intense since that Friday. In fact, she completely forgot last Wednesday’s lesson altogether. I showed up at her door and was greeted with dark circles around red eyes and a blank stare. She recovered, but barely. Her behavior actually makes me believe I’m right, but I’m still no closer to getting beyond the story I’ve created to the facts that might prove it.

Peggy and I finish washing up the dishes from the after-services tea and walk out the door. She sets off to her flat, and I grab my bicycle to ride the opposite direction back to the village green and my own home.

Reaching the main square, I decide to stop in and say hello to Charlie, who is on duty today. Just as I turn into the constabulary, however, movement at the telephone box catches my eye. Ursula stands inside talking on the telephone and gesturing wildly with her free hand. By her sharp, forceful gestures and glowering appearance, I sense the conversation is not going well.

I step round the corner to watch. She talks a few more minutes, then pushes out of the box and climbs onto her bicycle and pedals south along High Street. I hop on my own bicycle and start to follow her. There’s no need to race after her as I, at first, assume she’s only riding the few blocks to The Firs.

But when she doesn’t turn into her walk but continues south, I push down harder on the pedals. There’s one turn at the next rise that could throw me off. If I don’t see which way she’s goes, I’ll lose her.

At the corner I catch a glimpse of her turning left onto Oxford Road rather than continuing straight to the nearest village, Chipping Norton. I think of all the places she could be going: Enstone, Wootton, Woodstock . . . Kidlington! She does her weekly shop there each Tuesday. But this is Sunday, and Kidlington is twelve miles away!

I slow to a stop and almost turn around. But I can’t. Either I believe I’m on to something important or I don’t and I tell Peggy we’ve let our imaginations carry us away. Besides, this could be one of those turning points. If Ursula is who she presents, she’ll merely run some errands or do something equally innocent and life resumes as it was. If she isn’t . . . Well, I don’t know what comes next.

After about an hour, I try to pick up speed, as she’s too far ahead for me to accurately gauge her turns as we approach Kidlington. I don’t do a great job and am forced to stall at corners here and there to search for her again.

Kidlington isn’t large—about five times bigger than Great Rollright, which isn’t saying much—but it is large enough to boast more streets in its central shopping area than a mere couple blocks of a high street. Thankfully, the streets are crowded just enough to camouflage me if she happens to spin around, but not so much as to hide her. She keeps to the same road we’ve ridden for the last hour until she finally stops at a bench. I stall a full block away to watch.

We wait in these positions so long my feet start to grow numb with the cold. Then a short man in a dark-brown coat and black fedora passes by her. Unlike every other man who has walked by, this one stops. He turns back to her, they talk briefly, and he walks away.

As he does, she twists in the opposite direction with such a rigid posture I get the impression she’s making sure not to watch him. Nevertheless I know she’s fully aware of his every move because the instant he turns the corner onto Lyne Road, she hops on her bicycle again and is off.

She’s caught me unawares this time, and I have to hurry to chase. After swerving out of the way of a cabbie and almost crashing into the curb, I am able to settle in behind her once more. But not five minutes later, she’s off her bicycle again at a house on Oxford Street. She props it against the house’s front brick wall, and she pulls a key from her handbag and opens the door.

Unsure what to do next, I tuck myself into a doorway of the Kidlington Library across the street and watch—and the first thing that catches my eye is a massive antenna mounted on the house’s roof!

No one comes out of the house. No one else at least. After about a half hour, Ursula walks out again, locks the door, gets on her bike, and heads back in my direction. I duck into the library alcove and watch her ride past from the shadows.

Part of me says to follow her, but the greater part says to stay and investigate the house. As of now I know no more than I did before, but I’m freezing cold and my legs have long ago turned to jelly. I’m not sure I can ride back home right now.

I cross the street, and my mind fills with a dozen possible excuses as to what I might say in the next moment. As silly and trite as it sounds, I land upon “Have you seen my dog?” as I knock on the front door. No one answers. After several more knocks and even a call through the post slot, I wiggle the knob. It’s locked.

The house sits centered on the street between two alleys, so I walk to one and circle behind the row of connected homes and double back. The back door is numbered as 134, and it is locked as well. I peer into the windows. All is dark. It feels cold and vacant too. Not like someone lives in the home at all.

I step back. Maybe no one does live here. Maybe it’s only needed for that radio antenna mounted atop the roof.

I can’t ride my bicycle home, I simply can’t, so I beg a bus driver to let me haul it aboard, and since there’s hardly anyone on his bus this late on a Sunday afternoon, he grumbles a bit but gives me permission.

The trip to Great Rollright only takes about a half hour, and I find myself back on the village green far faster, and warmer, than I thought possible. Less discouraged too. We’re on to something. Nothing good, I realize, but feeling closer to answers feels better than all the stories, hypotheses, and dark musings that have been keeping me awake each night. I actually feel a bit like a real Miss Marple, a Father Brown, or as Charlie once said, a lovely dapper Nora.

But telling Peggy will have to wait. It’s time for a hot bath, a cuppa, and supper. I turn towards home when my new favorite voice in the world calls my name.