By the pricking of my thumbs: While visiting Tommy's Aunt Ada at Sunny Ridge Nursing Home, Tuppence encounters some odd residents including Mrs. Lancaster who mystifies her with talk about "your poor child" and "something behind the fireplace".

Pale horse: When an elderly priest is murdered, the killer searches the victim so roughly that his already ragged cassock is torn in the process. What was the killer looking for? And what had a dying woman confided to the priest on her death bed not even an hour before? Mark Easterbrook and his sidekick Ginger are determined to find out. Maybe the three women who live at the Pale Horse, and who are rumoured to practise the 'Dark Arts', can provide some answers?