After The Funeral

12

After The Funeral

    “Uh—good morning,” said Mike limply to the tall, thin young woman who’d opened Polly’s front door to him. “I don’t think we’ve met: I’m Mike Collingwood.”

    Jill replied grimly: “Yes, we have: at Polly’s birthday party last month. Only since I’m not a glamour-puss you’ve got some excuse for not remembering. On the other hand, you did ought to have a better excuse: what about the trained eye?”

    Mike merely returned limply: “Is Polly in?”

    “No,” said Jill in a hard voice, looking him in the eye.

    “Then how come her car’s out here?” he said feebly.

    “There could be any number of reasons for that, but I’m sure your trained deductive powers can supply those without my help.”

    What with the Pommy accent and the fact that he was making no impression on her whatsoever—and you could take that any way you liked, thought Mike with a mental sneer at himself—he could feel himself starting to get a bit hot under the collar.

    “Look, this isn’t a social call!” he said angrily.

    “I dare say,” replied Jill blandly.

    He got out his warrant card and thrust it under her nose.

    “That’s very interesting,” she said, peering at it. “How do I know it’s a real one, though?”

    “Ring the flaming Station!” he yelled.

    God knew what the terrifying young woman might have replied to that one, but at that moment Polly appeared behind her in the little passage and said in a soggy voice: “It’s all right, Jill: it’s only Mike. He can come in.”

    Jill stood her ground. “Do I still keep assorted Brownes, Jablonskis and Schmidts out, though?”

    “Yes,” said Polly with a shudder in her voice.

    Jill stood aside. “Go in.”

    Mike went in, hoping he didn’t look as small as he felt.

    Polly led the way into the sitting-room. “Don’t mind her,” she said, sniffing a bit.

    Mike sat down limply in the nearest cane armchair. “What in God’s name’s up? Are they all okay, down home?” he asked in alarm.

    “Mm.” Polly blew her nose. “They’re all fine.”

    “Oh. Good. Uh—not old Vi?”

    “No,” she said with a little smile. “I bet you’ve never called her that to her face, Mike!”

    “No,” he agreed, trying to smile back. “What’s up, then, Polly?”

    The terrifying young woman came in at that and said in a hard voice: “You might be excused for deducing from the reddened eyes that a true disaster had taken place. Like her cat had got run over, or something.”—Mike stared stupidly at the snoring furry grey heap on the couch next to Polly.—“Whereas,” said the terrifying young woman heavily, “all that’s happened is that that shit Jake Carrano’s dumped her. And good riddance!”

    Mike sagged in his chair. “Oh,” he said limply.

    Polly blew her nose. “Don’t you mean ‘And so say all of us’?” she said nastily, putting her hanky in her jeans pocket.

    “Yeah,” he agreed in a hard voice.

    “You never have understood human emotions.”

    “Is this a private fight, or can I watch?” asked Jill.

    Polly merely replied: “Did you lock the front door?”

    Jill sighed. “Yes. And the back door. Don’t worry, Browne shall not beard you in your den.”

    “He’s too— Well, you know. I couldn’t stand it.”

    Jill said to Mike: “Some of us understood that remark, because we’ve been putting up with Browne mooning over Polly at work for a year, now. But if you like to come out into the kitchen and give me a hand with a pot of tea, I’ll explain it fully.”

    Mike glanced nervously at Polly. “Uh—yeah, okay.” He got up.

    “I’m all right, if you want to talk to me!” said Polly crossly.

    “Yeah; only first I want to make some sandwiches, I’m starving.”

    He went out in Jill’s wake.

    “I’m Jill Davis,” she said in the kitchen, in a terrifyingly dry voice.

    Mike felt himself redden idiotically. “I know. I do remember you, now. I think it was the shorts put me off my stroke, for a minute.”

    Jill replied calmly: “Horrible, aren’t they? They’re an old pair of my father’s; I think they date from about 1942.”

    “There’s yards of material in them,” he murmured, staring.

    “Genuine British Army shorts were like that in them days. Designed to disguise the fact that sex of any sort, however unlikely, had ever been invented.”—Mike swallowed.—“If you’re really hungry, she keeps the bread in that cupboard.”

    “Eh? Oh—yeah. Ta.” He went and got the bread out, glancing warily as he did so at the serving hatch, which fortunately was firmly closed.

    “What happened?” he said cautiously. “And when?”

    “Uh—it would have been Monday, I think,” she replied, scratching her neat fawn head.

    Mike gulped. It was Thursday, today. And Polly’s eyes were still— Oh, Hell.

    “As far as I can make out, the shit just said he’d decided they ought to cool it, because he’s too old for her,” said Jill.

    “Oh. Uh—well, that’s true,” said Mike weakly.

    She sniffed.

    Mike buttered bread automatically.

    “She’d never have let on to me, you know!” she said abruptly.

    “Eh? Oh—wouldn’t she?”

    Jill made a face. “No. Only I panicked, because I’d been leaving messages on that bloody answering machine of hers since Monday morning, and not getting any reply, and— Well, the great New Zealand Police Force haven’t managed to catch Ther Swimming Poo-wull Murderer yet, have they?”—Mike just looked at her weakly.—“So I came flying up here this morning, thinking God knows what, and she opened the door and—um—sort of fell all over me and bawled her eyes out,” she ended grimly.

    “I see,” he said faintly.

    “And before you ask, I haven’t a clue whether I’m treating her the right way or not, I’m no good at the womanly little comforter bit.”

    “No,” he agreed faintly.

    “But there’s one thing that can be said for me,” the terrifying Dr Davis finished, opening the fridge with suppressed violence: “and that is, that I’m not one of those creepy male hangers-on that’ve been trying to get into her knickers for the last century or three!”

    “Uh—no,” said Mike, sagging against the bench. “Oh—Browne, you mean.”

    “Him amongst others,” said Jill grimly, slamming the fridge door. “I hope you don’t take milk, because she’s given the last of it to the blasted cat!”

    Mike recalled dizzily that Carrano didn’t like the cat, either. Was that right? Or was he hopelessly mixed up?

    “Well, do you?” she demanded.

    “Eh? Oh—take milk. I prefer it without, really.”

    “Good. There is a lemon.” She set out a saucer of lemon slices neatly on a tray.

    “Well—uh— Well, do you think— Will she be okay if I talk to her?”

    Jill shrugged. “Don’t ask me. What were you intending to talk to her about?”

    “Uh—the Jablonski ménage,” admitted Mike weakly.

    Jill shot him a sharp look. “The whacking great debt that Carrano paid off?”

    “How the Hell do you— Yeah,” he said limply. “At least, I’ve already asked her about it, but I was gonna start with that. Yeah.”

    “Oh, everybody knows everybody else’s business in the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics,” Jill assured him sourly. “And if they don’t, you can bet your bottom dollar that Madeleine Depardieu or Maisie Pretty’ll rectify the situation in two seconds flat.”

    “Yeah,” said Mike feebly, not asking.

    “What in God’s name are you putting in those sarnies?”

    “This? It’s Mrs Mitchell’s special. Mint jelly: makes it herself.”

    Jill gulped.

    “Polly loves it, too,” he assured her.

    “With cheese?”

    “Why not?”

    Swallowing, she said: “Well, you’d better make twice as many, then, and we’ll see if we can get some solid nosh into her.”

    “Shit, hasn’t she been—”

    “Not so’s you’d notice,” Jill assured him grimly.

    Mike began buttering more bread. He was at the cheese and mint jelly stage before he felt strong enough to say: “Hasn’t anyone ever pointed out to you that we never say ‘sarnies’ out here?”

    Jill leant against the bench. “Now, how can I put this? It has been pointed out to me, yes. But since those who knew enough to understand the reference and correct me obviously understood the reference, I’ve never seen any need to—”

    “Don’t go on,” said Mike, groaning.

    Jill smiled a little. Then she said: “How well do you actually know Polly, Mr Plod?”

    “Uh—we don’t say that out here, either. Um—well, I’ve known her all her life, if that’s what you— No.” He rubbed his nose. “I suppose I know her fairly well—her character, anyway,” he said dubiously.

    “Mm. Well, in that case you can give me your considered opinion on a couple of points: One, will she be safe driving all the way down to the bloody East Coast in that damned bomb of hers; and Two, should I ring her bloody Aunt Violet?”

    “The answer to Two’s definitely ‘No’—well, it’d be a counterirritant, but—no. Definitely not. The old dame’d ear-bash her to death. I dunno whether it’d be pro or contra Carrano,” he admitted, “but it’d be a damn good ear-bashing. And Polly never could take that. Sort that curls up and dies inside—ya know?” he finished on a weak note.

    “What about One?”

    Mike grimaced. “She’s not the sort to drive herself over a cliff, or under a timber truck, I don’t think.” He hesitated. “As far as one can ever tell that sort of thing about another human being,” he said with difficulty.

    “Mm.”

    He gave a little sigh. “But I wouldn’t bet that her mind’d be on her driving, either.”

    “No.”

    There was a short pause.

    “Look,” he said, “I was going down just before Christmas myself to see my dad—he’s in a nursing-home in Napier; what say I offer to drive her?”

    “Can you get away?” she replied cautiously.

    He shrugged. “Dunno. Probably. Well, ya needn’t mention it to those mates in your faculty, or to anyone else, if ya don’t mind, but the investigation’s come to a standstill.”

    “Mm. Well, question three is, will she let you?”

    “Don’t you think I’ve got the force of character to insist?” he replied drily.

    Jill shrugged. “As far as my observations go, there have only ever been two fellows that have had the force of character to insist on anything in her vicinity.”

    “And?”

    “The first was Mannie Halliday: you know Mrs Mitchell, so you’ll have heard of— Yes. Quite. And the second, as has just been forcibly demonstrated, is Jake Carrano.”

    “I’d’ve said she could twist him round her little finger,” he said weakly. “In fact, I’m pretty sure the local sergeant has said as much to me. In those very words.”

    Jill groaned. “That’s only on non-important issues. When she’s fallen for them like a ton of bricks she goes all weak and femmy-nine.”

    “Eh?” said Mike weakly.

    “I didn’t manage to winkle the exact wording out of her—well, she was damned upset—but from what I can gather, when Carrano said it was all over she more or less—uh—let him. Didn’t stand up for herself.”

    Mike just stared at her.

    Jill picked up the tray of tea. “Come on, this is getting stewed. –Don’t ask me to explain it, but she was exactly the same with the frightful Manfred. All weak and female.”

    “Hell,” he muttered.

    “Open the door,” Jill responded grimly.

    He did so. She paused in the doorway. “‘Hell’ puts it very well,” she said in a tremendously hard voice. “Well done, that Mr Plod.”

    At first Polly claimed she wasn’t hungry and just sipped her tea. Then Jill got her to eat a sandwich. After that she perked up a bit and asked Mike what he wanted to ask her.

    “Um, well, the investigation’s going nowhere, like I was just telling Jill,” he said uncomfortably. “Um, well, if you feel like talking… Well, anything about anybody you know that knew Don Banks.” Jill was giving him a hard look. “Um—anything more about the Jablonskis or the Banks boy,” said Mike in a very weak voice.

    Polly took another sandwich in an abstracted manner. “I think I told you everything I know when you asked me before, Mike.”

    Jill was giving him another hard look. “Yes,” said Mike weakly. “Okay. Well, I might talk to Browne again.”

    “We had heard that you were pissed off with him,” noted Jill cautiously.

    Polly swallowed her mouthful. “What she means is, he rang her up and moaned all over her about having to be a witness against Margaret Prior and all that Forster stuff. But personally, I’d say that if he really meant it, he’d never have let on to you that he knew anything about Derek at all. That’s typical of Rog: he has to have his cake and eat it too. I did tell him once he was too fond of playing ‘Now I’ve Got You, You Bastard’ but of course he doesn’t read popular psychology, that’s for the masses.”

    “Mint jelly on the brain,” noted Jill. She fixed the basilisk eye on Mr Plod.

    Mike drained his second mug of tea. “Is it? Sounds like Browne to me. Well, I was pissed off with him—yeah. Silly tit. Thinks he knows better than the rest of the country—make that the rest of humanity. Pity about him. –Now, if you ladies’ll excuse me, I’ll use the facilities.”

    “The greenery in the bidet is Jill’s,” said Polly, a trifle dully.

    “Eh?”

    “The tubs are full of laundry. So I put some cuttings I took in the bidet,” explained Jill.

    Mike paused by the door. “Cuttings off what?”

    She winked. “It’d be much better to be able to disclaim all knowledge.”

    When Mike got to the bathroom, he got the point. They looked suspiciously like bits of the hibiscuses and oleanders in Carrano’s shrubbery. Up his. As for the flaming bidet—presumably Carrano had had it put in for her. Be the only one in the country: right.

    “What do you think of him?” asked Polly cautiously as they waited for Mike to come back.

    Jill perceived with tremendous relief that Polly—whilst far from her old self—was on the mend. And could safely be left for a bit while she nipped up to Browne’s and, oh vain hope, stopped him and Rod—supposing that the latter was still up there, it being several hours since she’d seen him heading that way—from putting their great feet in their mouths for Mr Plod’s benefit.

    “Pretty much what I thought of him last month at your birthday party,” she replied drily.

    “Oh.”

    “Give up, I’m a lost cause,” said Jill drily. “You have him,” she offered generously.

    “He’s terrifically handsome, isn’t he?” said Polly detachedly. “Only he doesn’t approve of me: on the one hand I’m too feminine, and that scares him; and on the other hand, I’m far too intelligent, and that terrifies him even more.”

    Jill’s eyebrows went up. “Therefore you deduced I’d do nicely for him?”

    “No!” said Polly, going very red.

    Jill gave a startled yelp of laughter. “You did!”

    “You’re much cleverer than him.”

    “This could be offset by my lack of femininity, though,” she noted. “Will you be all right if I go up to Roger’s and try to stop him and Rod spilling their guts?”

    “You can’t: Mike has vays of gettink idiots to spill their guts. But if you want to try, I’ll be okay.”

    “Mm; I’m being to think you might be,” conceded Jill, getting up.

    About twenty minutes later Mike passed a hand distractedly over his forehead and said: “This is getting us nowhere!”

    Rod and Roger had been working hard on Rod’s thesis notes, or such was their claim. When Mike and Jill arrived, however, they were drinking something that Rod claimed was a special Christmas punch that old Cousin Lotte made. However that might be, it certainly packed one.

    “I shouldn’t be drinking, if I’m driving,” noted Jill, pouring herself another.

    “I don’t think any of us should be drinking, it’s about ninety proof,” murmured Roger. He drank some.

    “Yeah: good, eh?” agreed Rod. “Old Lotte always waters it down,” he noted, drinking some.

    Mike took a deep breath. “Look, Jablonski: how did you first hear about your father getting in debt to Don Banks?”

    “Didn’t I tell you that?” asked Roger in a puzzled voice. “On an earlier occasion?”

    “One at a time!” replied Mike loudly. “Rod!”

    “Eh?” He belched. “This stuff’s full of bubbles,” he noted. “Um—well, musta been after he came back from Tasmania. Um, yeah, at first I thought Jake had— Never mind.”—Mike glared at him.—“Look, I’m sorry, Collingwood, only I don’t live at home. I just tend to—uh—get an earful whenever I go round there. And depending on how sozzled the Old Man is, and what bee Esmé might currently have in her bonnet, it might or might not be—uh—”

    “An accurate earful,” said Jill. “Allow me.” She got up slowly, and refilled their glasses.

    Mike looked limply at his tape recorder and sent up a silent prayer that if there were any grains in this chaff—which he was beginning to doubt—the recorder’d be able to sort them out. Because he’d take a bet he wouldn’t be able to. Punch-drunk or not. “Look, for God’s sake make us a pot of that coffee of yours, wouldja, Roger?”

    “Yes,” agreed Jill in a hollow voice. “Some of us have just remembered we’ve got an appointment in town this afternoon.”

    Some of them had just remembered they’d intended to get into town today to chew the lab boys’ ears about that forensic evidence, too, reflected Mike guiltily. “Uh—look, if you’re too pissed to drive I’ll give you a lift,” he said weakly.

    “Thanks. –It’ll gladden Mrs Mitchell’s heart, if no-one else’s,” Jill assured him drily.

    Mike went very red, and laughed weakly.

     They did get away, about another half hour later.

    “We’ll go via Brown’s Bay, if you don’t mind,” he said, taking the Coast road.

    “If I did, wouldn’t it be too late to object? –Are you timing this?” she added incredulously as Mike glanced at his watch.

    Mike found himself reddening yet again. The bloody woman was as sharp as— “Yes,” he said shortly.

    “The roads are busier during the day,” she said conversationally.

    “I know that, thanks.”

    “Surely you’ve timed it already, if your suspicions are tending towards the debt-ridden and alcohol-soaked Jablonski père?”

    Mike’s lips tightened. He didn’t reply.

    “Or, on the other, hand, towards La Folle de Brown’s Bay,” added Jill conversationally.

    Mike didn’t reply.

    “She’s already got at least one vote,” said Jill thoughtfully. “One of Polly’s aunties, I think.”

    “What, old Vi?”

    “No, her money’s on Carrano.”

    “Whose is his on?” said Mike in a rude voice.

    “We-ell...” Jill looked at him thoughtfully. “He wasn’t letting on. Well, he appears to have had more on his mind lately than what we wot of, dunn’e?”—Mike glared.—“But my antennae picked up some sort of vague signal that his dough might be on la belle Esmé, too.”

    “Ever met her?” he said abruptly.

    Jill shuddered. “Once. At the Puriri tennis club’s opening tournament, back at the beginning of this season. A friend of Polly’s needed a doubles partner and we ended up playing against Mrs Jablonski and partner. God!”

    “She plays at the Puriri club?” he said cautiously.

    “Mm. Had a row with the Brown’s Bay club, or that’s Rod’s story.”

    “Sounds likely,” admitted Mike. “Well—uh—what was your impression, Jill?”

    “Before or after she threw her racquet at the umpire and stormed off the court screaming abuse?”

    “I get it,” he said weakly.

    Jill relented slightly and said: “Nutty as a fruit-cake. Plus an uncontrollable temper. You found anybody to tell you different?”

    “No.”

    She rubbed her nose thoughtfully. “Damned if I could say whether she’s a likely murderer, though. Might have something to do with me never having met one, of course.”

    “Yes,” said Mike heavily.

    Jill eyed him thoughtfully but said nothing.

    ... “Twenty-five minutes,” she said as he glanced at his watch again.

    “Yes.”

    “Some people stop for an ice cream in Brown’s Bay,” noted Jill detachedly.

    “Go on,” he groaned, pulling up by the dairy.

    “Want one, Mr Plod?” she said with a grin. “You can always hide it under your helmet if your superior h’officer ’appens h’along.”

    Mike took the line of least resistance and let her buy him an ice cream. He agreed that they might as well go the whole hog and sit under a tree and stare gormlessly (Jill’s word) at the sea while they ate them. They went and sat under a tree and stared gormlessly at the sea. Them and about five hundred other people that seemed to have decided that Brown’s Bay was the place to be, a week before Christmas.

    “Will she be all right, do you think?” he said abruptly.

    “Yes. Over the worst, I think.”

    Mike stared at the sea.

    “Your ice is melting, Mr Plod.”

    Jumping, he licked dribbles off his hand and ate the rest of his cone up quickly. “Ice”—didn’t think he’d ever heard anyone say that before, not even Roger Browne. Well, she was a Pom, too, he thought glumly.

    “Why the Hell did he do it?” he said sourly.

    “What? Oh! You mean Carrano? Why did he bust up with her?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Claims he’s too old for her. The minor infidelities on her part when he was off on his business trips weren’t mentioned.” She shrugged.

    “I see,” said Mike heavily.

    “Mm. Mind you, post-crisis behaviour was undoubtedly in there too, somewhere. I did try to suggest as much, but it didn’t go down awfully well.” She wrinkled her nose. “The more so since I fairly recently accused her of indulging in it, too.”

    “Post-crisis— Oh. I see what you mean,” he said slowly.

    “Yes. Well, it might have been mainly that: damned if I can see how he could have got to hear the details of this last year’s little indiscretions.” She frowned. “Unless Leo— No, don’t see how he could have known.”

    After a moment Mike said: “Who was it?”

    “This’d be highly germane to The Murder In The Swimming Pool Mystery,” she noted.

    “Would you rather I asked her?”

    Jill sighed. “No. All right, it was His Gorgeousness, the Serene Michelangelic One.”

    “Eh?”

    “Young Jablonski. It was feeble, I may add. Er, well, strictly speaking there were two episodes last year, both feeble. Um, close together, I think. Towards the end of the First Term, I think: Carrano had pushed off on one of his everlasting business trips abroad. Lovely night, midnight swim, wee fumble in the surf. Her claim was it had nothing to do with the way she felt about Carrano. The second episode was at the ruddy Grad Ball, and I admit Leo was there, and I further admit,” she said, frowning over it, “that Polly gave his gracious self the very definite brush-off. Some time after she’d vanished outside with Rod for a half hour. And please do not ask me for the gruesome details. All I can say is they both looked very pleased with themselves when they tactfully came back inside separately.”

    Mike swallowed. “Right. –I think Browne once said Rod looks like Michelangelo’s David, too, come to think of it.”

    “Mm. He was under the delusion the image was all his own, until some of us disabused him.”

    “I see...” he said vaguely. Well, it was something, theoretically, that Banks could have blackmailed Polly about, which would, theoretically, give her a motive for knocking him off before he could tell Carrano, but how could he possibly have got to know about it? You might say bloody young Jablonski could have boasted to his little gay pal and then Jack could’ve told his father, but they were barely on speaking terms, what with the gay bit and the insistence on doing anthropology or whatever it was instead of coming into the business...

    “Browne knows about it,” said Jill abruptly. “He was at the ball, too. Danced with Rod’s partner what time Polly got off with the Michelangelic one, actually. Mind you, he was pretty pissed by the end of the evening and he had some vague idea it wasn’t Rod, it was another lad, but last time we spoke on the subject yours truly stupidly put him right on that one. This was quite recently.” She hesitated. “Apparently just before Carrano busted up with Polly,” she added grimly.

    Gulping, Mike croaked: “You don’t mean— Would he have let on to Carrano?”

    She shrugged. “Who can say? Some of us are only humble pedagogues. No detective training, degrees in psychology, anything of that sort.”

    Scowling, Mike replied obliquely: “It was mostly watching bloody rats run in and out of mazes in my day, if ya wanna know.”

    “Yes: the last bastion of behaviourism. Should have thought of that before you picked the place as your alma mater.”

    “I didn’t— Oh, what does it matter,” he said tiredly.

    After a moment Jill said: “Well, rats or not, have you got any inkling whether Roger might have spilled the beans to Carrano?”

    Mike rubbed his chin and returned thoughtfully: “Could he be spiteful, do you reckon?”

    “He’s full of principles... I don’t know. On balance, I’d say yes, but… It’d take a fair amount of guts to come out with that sort of thing to Jake Carrano, you know!” she finished with a crooked grin.

    “Hadn’t thought of that,” admitted Mike, smiling sheepishly. “You’re right. I’d say Browne could probably work up the spite—especially if he was pissed—but not the guts.”

    “Ditto.” Jill finished her cornet and wiped her fingers neatly on her handkerchief.

    Mike sighed, and hugged his knees. “Polly wouldn’t have let on to Carrano herself, would she?”

    “No. Definitely not. I asked her and she said she didn’t. Well, I suppose I might have deduced it, if I hadn’t been all sort of shook up,” she admitted fairly. “’Fessing the little peccadilloes to the beloved object never was her thing.”

    “Tell us about it,” he agreed grimly.

    They stared at the sea in silence. Shoppers’ cars came and went busily before the Brown’s Bay shops, small kids screaming their heads off raced up and down the beach, more even smaller kids screamed their heads off because they weren’t allowed further ice creams or further swims or the beach balls their siblings were playing with, and more gormless gawpers came and sat on the lumpy greensward under the Norfolk pines and gawped gormlessly at the sea. Jill debated pointing out that it was lapis lazuli today, but didn’t bother.

    Eventually Mike said sourly: “S’pose you could say she deserved what she got. Asking to be dumped and he bloody dumped her.”

    “Depends on your definition of morality, doesn’t it?” replied Jill with a shrug. “Telling him about the bits on the side would only have resulted in hurting his feelings, according to her.”

    “What about doing it?” he said loudly and angrily. “That wouldn’t result in hurting the poor bastard’s feelings, of course! Look, I reckon she’s bloody abnormal, that’s what!”

    “Mm... Too bright for her own good, is one theory that’s been advanced.”

    Mike’s mouth tightened. He glared at the sea and didn’t respond.

    “Or too honest,” added Jill, very drily indeed. “I might have mentioned post-crisis behaviour, just now. Shortly after the unlamented Banks turned up dead in his pool she told Carrano that when he was off on his ruddy business trips abroad the relationship didn’t seem real to her.”

    Mike gaped at her.

    She made a face, and shrugged heavily. “If you want honesty in a relationship, that’s honesty for you. Or her version of it.”

    “Is she mad?” he said limply.

    “Dunno. As I say my, interpretation is post-crisis behaviour. As to whether the not-real stuff is genuine—well, when she said it, I’d say that’s what she felt, or believed she felt, same thing. And possibly when he was away she did feel as if the relationship wasn’t too real. Well—hard to categorise the chap’s not being there a large part of the time as a relationship at all, if you’re being objective. But in my opinion—and I know I’m gonna sound like my old Aunty Emmy—if the man had given the slightest indication he wanted something more than one of his too well publicised flings, she’d have felt as if it was a lot more bloody real!” She scrambled up. “Aunty Emmy would have wanted to know why he didn’t ask her to marry him, and as matter of fact, most of her friends have been wondering just that for nigh on a year!”

    Mike got up, scowling. “Maybe she didn’t bother to hide the fact that she fancied other blokes beside him, that’d put most blokes I know off proposing, I can tell ya. Come on, I’ve got work to do.”

    They walked slowly back to the car in the heat, not speaking.

    “What are you doing here?” said Jill numbly, finding a Michelangelic behind upended over the big dictionaries in the French Department’s tiny library.

    Rod straightened. “The place is still open,” he replied mildly.

    “Nominally, yeah. There’s no law that says Ph.D. students have to slave in here the week before Christmas, you know.” Jill perched a hip on the table.

    “There’s no law that says they have to hang round their dad’s place being harangued by a sodden Pole and a cracked stepmother, either, or that they have to hang round home being pestered by bloody reporters, for that matter.”

    “You could always hang round Jake Carrano’s reputed Olympic-size indoor swimming-pool drinking his reputed Glenlivet,” noted Jill.

    “Yeah, I could if he wasn’t in the bad mood to end all bad moods,” he noted sourly.

    “Well, figures,” she allowed.

    Rod looked at her dubiously. “He wasn’t that fond of ruddy Don Banks, ya know.”

    “Not that!” said Jill scornfully.

    He goggled at her.

    “Bugger,” she said elegantly.

    The perfect mouth tightened. “Look, if that jerk Collingwood let something out to you when you were cosying up to him in his car full of old Lotte’s punch—”

    “Eh? Oh, good grief! If Polly’s never managed to get anything out of him, what the Hell chance do you imagine I had?”

    Rod eyed her thin figure in its respectable and intensely boring blue cotton slacks and striped tee-shirt. “Not much,” he conceded.

    “Quite.”

    There was a short silence.

    “What didja mean, then?”

    Jill swallowed.

    “Look, if ya do know something about Jake, I’d quite like to know, he is practically my godfather, you know!” he said heatedly.

    “The Godfather,” she murmured. “Um—you haven’t seen Polly, I gather?”

    Rod stared. “Hasn’t she gone down home?”

    “Mm. Driven by the close-mouthed jerk.”

    “Eh?”

    “Albeit in her car.”

    There was a short silence. During it Jill perceived that the Michelangelic Roderick was not only looking baffled, he was also beginning to look angry. As well as rather scared, which in fact he had been looking for some little time. She was wondering how the Hell to put it when he croaked: “Look, has she given Jake the push for that stiff-necked cop?”

    “No.”

    Rod passed a hand over his face. “No. Well, why the fuck did they go off together, or were they just sharing petrol costs?”

    “An unlikely contingency, on Mitchell’s past form, I grant you.”

    Very red, the young man cried: “I thought you were supposed to be her friend?”

    Jill rubbed her neat nose. “Mm. I’m just wondering how the Hell to put it, Rod. But I don’t think there is any way of putting it tactfully. Carrano’s given her the push.” She was interested to see the Michelangelic colour fade right out. He went all bluish round the mouth. “Look, if you’re going to chuck up, for Christ’s sake don’t do it on Robert!” she said, heaving it out of the way.

    Rod gulped. “By God, that’s you all over!”

    Jill eyed him mockingly: the colour had come back, so her all over or not, it hadn’t been the worst thing she could have said. “Mm. Well, that’s why he’s in such a foul mood.”

    Silence fell in the small, stuffy room the French Department kept its dictionaries in. Together with the class sets of dreadful one-act plays that old Prof. White had been wont to force the kids into performing. Now yellowing and ignored but, in the way of academic institutions, not discarded. The University Library had wondered if they ought to catalogue the stuff and shove it on their database, since it was university property, but once they’d got a look at it they hadn’t bothered.

    Finally Rod swallowed and said: “I don’t see why he’s in a mood, though. Well, if it was him that gave her the push...”

    “Mm. Something to do with his advanced age, I gather. Well, she didn’t tell me all that much, only I gather there wasn’t all that much to tell.” She paused. He was very pale again. “At least one of us concluded he’d gone into some sort of post-crisis behaviour thing,” she said mildly.

    Rod looked at her blankly.

    “He didn’t give Polly—er—any specific reason for his unilateral decision,” said Jill, looking at him hard.

    “No,” he said, gulping. “I mean—” There was a short pause. “Didn’t he— Was that all he said? That he was too old for her?”

    “Mm, so I gather.” She hesitated and then said: “Her telling the poor sap that she couldn’t see him as quite real unless he was there on the spot wouldn’t have gone down too well, though, I’d guess.”

    Rod’s jaw had dropped. Finally he said cautiously: “Ya mean she said that after he’d said he wanted to break it off?”

    “No,” replied Jill baldly.

    “Ya mean she said it before?” he gasped.

    Jill sighed. “At least one of us in this room has refreshingly normal reactions,” she noted. “—Don’t get your dander up, Jablonski, that was a compliment. Not to say downright envy. Yes, she seems to have said this to the poor bugger a few days after the shock of Whatsisface’s corpse turning up in his patio pool hadn’t had time to wear off, if you get my drift.”

    “Why?” he croaked

    “Uh, well, situations of stress tend to—” She scratched her fawn head. “To produce aberrant behaviour, I suppose you might say.” The young man was looking baffled and angry again. Jill recognized quite clearly he was too young to understand, but saying that wouldn’t have gone down too well with an adult Ph.D. student of the great age of twenty-three or so, so she didn’t. “It’s a fairly well-recognized phenomenon, I believe,” she said cautiously. “Um, people tend to tidy up loose ends in their lives; um, whether or not it’s appropriate or—or what they really want.” She stopped: she didn’t seem to be making it any clearer and there didn’t seem to be any point in stressing something he was incapable of grasping.

    Rod thought it over, frowning. Finally he said: “You mean both of them were doing it?”

    Jill swallowed a sigh. “I think so.” She eyed him cautiously. Rod said nothing. Finally she offered: “One of Mitchell’s tenets—to call it a principle would be a misnomer, I feel—is that ’fessing up to the beloved object on the subject of the odd little bit on the side is a no-no, if that’s what’s worrying you.”

    His Michelangelic ears went very red.

    Jill eyed him cautiously, wondering how the Hell to get herself out of the room.

    “She is in love with him, you know,” he said in a low voice.

    She sighed. “As much as one of her temperament can be, yes: I’d agree.”

    “They— I’d have said they were ideally suited!” he blurted, very flushed.

    “Well, I suppose you could say he can certainly handle her,” she agreed. “More than any other chap has observedly been able to do, at all events. Though why an adult woman should wish to be ‘handled’—!” She shrugged. “Wanna come over to the Graduate Club for a jar?”

    “What?” he said distractedly. “Uh—no, thanks.”

    Good. “Well—uh, see ya. And don’t brood on it, will you?”

    Rod scowled and didn’t reply.

    She went over to the door. “How’s your friend Jack?”

    “Eh? Oh—all right, I think. He’s at his mum’s.”

    “Mm.”

    “He could never stand his dad, you know,” the young man said awkwardly.

    “No.” It was going to be a merry Christmas in the Banks house this year, then. She looked dubiously at Rod and wondered what sort of Christmas he was going to have. But as she didn’t feel he’d enjoy being invited to share salad and pressed ham with a haggish female lecturer, she didn’t invite him to share hers. “Well—see ya.”

    “Yeah. See ya,” said Rod dully.

    Jill went out quickly before she could shove her great flat feet any further down her throat.

    Rod sat down slowly and looked blankly at the dictionaries. He was experiencing a bewildered whirl of emotions but amongst them, he was not too young or too naïve to recognize, was certainly a spiteful relief that Polly was free and a sort of... bloody stupid hope, or something. He bit his lip hard and clenched his large fists, but the feelings didn’t go away.

    Mike drove in silence through a pearly December morning. After a while Polly said in a sulky voice: “You didn’t need to come. I’m capable of driving myself down to the East Coast—I’ve done it often enough.”

    Mike didn’t reply.

    Polly said crossly: “If I could get myself down to your place without driving under a truck, I could have driven the rest of the way home!”

    “Shut up.”

    “Well, that stretch up at Dairy Flat’s the worst—”

    “Shut—up.”

    Polly shut up, pouting.

    Round about Huntly the morning had started to warm up and he said: “Do you want to stop for a piss or an ice cream, or anything?”

    “No!” replied Polly crossly.

    Mike drove on.

    About nine K further down the road she said: “Um—I could do with a pee, actually. Um—could you look for a service station, Mike?”

    Mike sighed heavily. He looked for a service station.

    In Taupo he said: “We could stop here for lunch.”

    Polly replied sulkily: “It’s far too early.”

    Grimly Mike drove on.

    “I’m awfully hungry,” she said, quite some time later in the middle of nowhere.

    “We’re in the middle of nowhere,” Mike pointed out sourly.

    “Yes,” said Polly in a small voice.

    Wearily he said: “We’ll stop at the next dairy, or fish and chips shop or service station—whichever happens to turn up first, okay? And depending what it is, you can have bread and Chesdale slices, or greasy fish and chips, or Coke and flaming cheeseballs—and LIKE IT!”

    “Mm. I’m sorry, Mike.”

    Mike sighed.

    They drove on in silence. Eventually Polly ventured: “How is your father? Did they say, when you rang up?”

    “About the same.” He hesitated. “Well, no: getting slowly worse; but that’s to be expected.”

    “Mm.” She swallowed. Mike glanced at her cautiously. She was staring straight ahead but he could see she was blinking behind the sunglasses. “I’m awfully sorry, Mike,” she said.

    “Yeah.” He sighed. “Well, it was a question of what’d get him first, the D.T.s or the Alzheimer’s, really.”

    “Yes,” she whispered.

    “The nursing home’s all right.

    Polly sniffed a bit. “I know. Mum said.”

    “She’s been awfully decent to him,” said Mike awkwardly.

    Polly replied simply: “Mum’s like that.”

    He drove on without saying anything for quite a while. Then he said abruptly: “She doesn’t need to keep on visiting him, you know. He’s long past recognising anybody.”

    Polly smiled a little. “That wouldn’t stop Mum. Anyway, she reckons he still enjoys having a visitor.”

    Mike sincerely doubted this. He sighed a bit. “Yeah. Possibly.”

    “There’s a dairy,” she said at last.

    “Eh? Oh—yeah.” He pulled in.

    “I’m sorry I’ve been such an ungrateful pig,” said Polly, not looking at him.

    “That’s all right.”—She looked up at him uncertainly.—“I didn’t mind the dour silence: I can’t stand being jabbered at by females when I’m driving!” Mike admitted suddenly, grinning.

    “I know,” she said, smiling at him. “That’s why I’m only apologising, not actually grovelling!”

    They went into the dairy, smiling.

    In Napier Polly, who had driven for the last stretch, pulled in at his motel but said: “You could always come home for Christmas, you know.”

    Mike raised his eyebrows. “And raise false hopes in your poor mother’s breast yet again?”

    Grinning, she said: “You could tell the relations all about the Swimming Pool Murder, too!”

    “That’s actually the main reason I’m not showing me nose there,” he admitted.

    “They’ll be awfully disappointed,” warned Polly.

    Mike had heaved his bag out. He set it down and gave her a wry look. “Did you tell them I was coming down with you?”

    “Um—no, I didn’t, actually,” she admitted, going very pink.

    Mike hadn’t thought so. He didn’t think she’d have told them about busting up with Carrano, either. He didn’t ask, though. “See ya,” he said.

    “Are you sure you can’t come over for Christmas?”

    “Quite sure. The Chief Super said it was either a couple of days this week or Christmas, but not both.”

    “Have I upset your plans?” she said in a small voice.

    My plans to spend a thrilling Christmas in a stuffy little motel in Napier, the highlight being the visit to me old man what doesn’t know me from Adam any more, thought Mike sourly. “No. Get going, or it’ll be pitch dark before you get to Totara Crossing.”

    “Yes. Righto. Thanks, Mike.”

    Mike wanted to tell her to behave herself and not do anything stupid like throwing herself at the first bloke that crossed her path on the strength of being dumped by bloody Jake Carrano. But he somehow didn’t have the guts. If it was guts that was called for.

    “See ya,” he said again.

    Polly hesitated. He looked sort of forlorn, standing there in his neat fawn slacks and short-sleeved white shirt beside his neat fawn suitcase. But Mike never had been a huggy sort of person, and since she’d grown up she hadn’t seen all that much of him, really— So she didn’t give him a hug or kiss his cheek, but said: “Bye-bye, Mike. I’ll see you in the New Year.” And drove away.