Now, I must tell you about Fenwick.

Fenwick Fox arrived with a laptop bag, a portable router, and glasses pushed up his nose in a way that suggested he had not pushed them up on purpose.

He had been called to help Robin Redbreast.

This, in itself, was something new.

Robin's BirdTok account — four thousand and nine followers, as of Thursday — had been interfered with. Someone had changed his profile picture. It now showed a pine cone.

Robin had responded with the kind of energy usually reserved for natural disasters.

"BREAKING," he had announced, from a second account created in the night. "WILLOWBURROW UNDER CYBER ATTACK. My account is DARK. The world must know. Follow this one in the meantime."

Pip and Whisker Ferret had been seen near the village Wi-Fi box the previous afternoon. Pip had been sniffing it. Whisker had been eating a biscuit beside it.

This, apparently, was enough.

Constable Bartholomew Badger had written six things in his notebook, which was more than usual.

"Digital interference," he said. "Ferret involvement cannot be ruled out."

Fenwick Fox sat in Tabitha's Tea Room with his laptop, said nothing, and typed for eleven minutes.

Then he looked up.

"Someone accessed the account from a device on this network," he said. "An older device. Small. Fast. Not registered to any local address."

He turned the laptop to show the device ID.

The ferrets looked at it. The ferrets did not have a device.

I, Benji, did not need Fenwick to identify the device. I had seen Marlo Pine three days earlier, sitting in the exact spot where the Wi-Fi signal is strongest — behind the post box, just above the bench — with something small and silver in his paw.

Marlo, it turned out, found Robin's commentary on village events professionally inconvenient. A pine cone as a profile picture seemed, in his view, like a fair response.