“Only Mrs. Lumley, she wanted to know if you’d like your potatoes fried, or boiled in their jackets? She’s got some of each.”
“Boiled in their jackets,” said Tuppence promptly. “I love potatoes—” She stopped dead with her mouth open.
“What’s the matter, Tuppence? Have you seen a ghost?”
“Tommy,” cried Tuppence. “Don’t you see? That’s it! The word, I mean. Potatoes! ‘My first you put on glowing coal’—that’s pot . ‘And into it you put my whole.’ ‘My second really is the first.’ That’s A, the first letter of the alphabet. ‘My third mislikes the wintry blast’—cold toes of course!”
“You’re right, Tuppence. Very clever of you. But I’m afraid we’ve wasted an awful lot of time over nothing. Potatoes don’t fit in at all with missing treasure.
Half a sec, though. What did you read out just now, when we were going through the box? Something about a recipe for New Potatoes. I wonder whether there’s anything in that.”
He rummaged hastily through the pile of recipes.
“Here it is. ‘ To Keep New Potatoes . Put the new potatoes into tins and bury them in the garden. Even in the middle of winter, they will taste as though freshly dug.’ ”
“We’ve got it,” screamed Tuppence. “That’s it. The treasure is in the garden, buried in a tin.”
“But I asked the gardener. He said he’d never buried anything.”
“Yes, I know, but that’s because people never really answer what you say, they answer what they think you mean. He knew he’d never buried