Whimbrel hall stood, a lordly, white, four-towered mansion, in Mayfair only a block away from Florence Nightingale's house. At nightfall, still carrying my old brown leather satchel and still dressed in the same dark frock I had thrown on that morning, standing across the tree-lined street in the shadow of a friendly oak to study Whimbrel Hall, I wondered whether its address might have been the one, written upon a card, that Florence Nightingale had given to Mrs. Tupper amidst the horrors of Scutari so long ago.

The Italianate mansion, with its multiple quoins and brackets, looked temptingly simple to climb. But climbing, I had to remind myself, is not the answer to everything; even if I could scale the fence, evade the inevitable watchdog, swarm up the mansion, find entry, avoid detection or capture, and succeed in locating Mrs. Tupper, what then? I could hardly expect her to clamber out of a tower window and down its wall along with me.

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