Suspicion

9

Suspicion

    “What if he did it, Joanie?” gasped Val, coffee mug suspended over her knee.

    The rest of the University Library staff who were on their tea break immediately stopped pretending they weren’t trying to hear what Val and Polly’s old school friend were saying, and joined in eagerly.

    When the furore of speculation had died away Joanie said repressively: “He didn’t, don’t be silly. He’s got an alibi.” Over the excited gasps and questions she said loudly: “I don’t know what it is, Polly said she couldn’t tell me because it involves someone else!”

    Mark from Acquisitions made a rude noise.

    “Not her?” asked Val uncertainly.

    Julia, who did the cataloguing of the French books, plus the linguistics books because orders slips signed “P.M. Mitchell” kept arriving at Acquisitions for linguistics books in French, so the other cataloguers had democratically decided Julia could do them, said loyally: “It couldn’t have been her, she’d have told Joanie if she was his alibi!”

    There was general agreement on this one, several people citing the niceness of Polly and, just by the by, the awfulness of that Mannie Halliday.

    Then there was a short silence. It was broken by Ron from Serials. He was actually in charge of Serials, and so quite high in the pecking order, but that didn’t mean he didn’t join in the library poker school every tea break, just like Mark from Acquisitions who was only twenty and slated for Library School this year, Cheryl, the Librarian’s glamorous secretary, and Mandy from Reference, who despite the cute name was about fifty-five and tough as old boots. Ron said: “Have the police accepted this famous alibi?”

    “Yes!” said Joanie crossly, her plump, fair-skinned face very flushed.

    Cheryl laid down her hand and said: “How do you know?”

    “Polly told me!” said Joanie crossly.

    “How does she know?” asked Ron mildly.

    “Because Jake Carrano—” Joanie broke off.

    “—told her,” finished Ron on a dry note.

    “So what if he did?”

    “He probably couldn’t tell the truth to save his life,” explained Mark, laying down his hand. “Remember that little company—um, down the South Island somewhere, I think; you know, the one he bought out last year and everybody thought it was gonna mean more jobs for the locals, only then he—”

    “That’s got nothing to do with it!” cried Joanie, very loudly.

    Everybody looked at her bright pink face in astonishment. It wasn’t like Joanie to burst out like that.

    Joanie got up, looking very dignified. “I’m going, I’ve been here ages. Coming, Val?”

    The thin, dark, meek-looking Val, who was nominally Joanie’s subordinate, since Joanie was second-in-charge of Cataloguing, replied brazenly: “No, I got here after you did,” raising her cold coffee to her lips, and Joanie went out, looking cross.

    Immediately a terrific hubbub of speculation arose in the University Library tea room; all based, of course, on the premise that Jake Carrano dunnit.

    Polly’s cousin Janet blew her nose morosely.

    “Stop that!” ordered Kay Field angrily. “You’re as bad as your Aunty Maureen!”

    “Yeah: watering-pot,” drawled Mirry from her position prone on the rug with a magazine. –Janet’s magazine that she’d brought out to the farm for Mum to borrow.

    “That’ll do,” said Kay grimly.

    There was a short silence in the Fields’ big, warm front room.

    “What if he did do it, though, Mum? Poor Polly!” quavered Janet.

    Kay got up. She was a commanding figure: both she and Maureen Mitchell, her twin, were around five-foot-nine and now, in their sixties, distinctly plump. Maureen, however, gave the impression of cosy, disorganised plumpness, while Kay was the firmly upholstered type. They had both had heads of glorious curly auburn hair in their youth, which was now pure silver: Maureen’s worn in an untidy bun and Kay’s swept up and back from her forehead in a short, neat crop. “That’ll be enough of that, thank you, Janet. He didn’t do it, and that’s all there is to it! –Where on earth’s your father got to, doesn’t he know it’s afternoon teatime?” she added crossly to Mirry.

    Shrugging, her youngest offspring replied: “Dunno. Can I have his bit of cake if he’s fallen down a ravine, though?”

    “Your varsity friends may think that sort of remark’s amusing, Miriam Field,” said her mother with terrific grimness, “but let me tell you, it’s not only in bad taste, it’s puerile!” She marched out on this.

    Mirry had cringed, but when her robust mother had definitively disappeared she rallied and said in a defiant voice: “So what if he did do it, who cares?”

    “Don’t be awful, Mirry; you’ve never been in love,” said Janet, her eyes filling again.

    In a way this was true, since Mirry was only nineteen. On the other hand, she’d been in love almost continuously—though with different personalities—since she was five years old. Currently it was Humphrey Bogart: she’d joined the University Film Society and they’d had a festival of his films earlier in the year. She merely sniffed scornfully, however.

    Janet looked at her sadly. After a while she said: “I don’t know how you’ve got the nerve.”

    “What, to stand up to Mum? I haven’t, mostly,” admitted Mirry glumly.

    “No, I didn’t mean that. To wear jeans all the time. I was never allowed to.”

    Mirry looked at her meek older sister and sighed. “You could wear them now, there’s nothing stopping you.”

    Janet and Dennis Bright lived in a nice New Plymouth suburb where the other young suburban matrons did not wear jeans to go to afternoon tea at their mother’s house. Or to afternoon tea anywhere. They occasionally wore jeans—designer jeans—to attend their sons’ soccer matches (soccer was momentarily In, rugby was Out) or hockey matches (hockey was even more In for boys than soccer was), and their daughters’ netball matches (girls didn’t get much choice, at least not in New Plymouth). Last summer Janet had wanted to wear jeans to the Sunday School picnic but hadn’t quite dared, and this cowardice had been fully justified: all the other mothers had worn flowery sun-frocks.

    “No, I couldn’t, really,” she murmured.

    “Haven’t you got any free will?” demanded Mirry fiercely.

    “Not much,” admitted Janet with a little smile. She blew her nose again but in a conclusive sort of manner, and put the hanky away in her purse.

    Mirry went back to the magazine. Naturally it was garbage— “Look!” she gasped.

    “Ooh, heck,” said Janet in a hollow voice. “I’d forgotten that was in it.”

    “It’ll set her off again, she’ll be going on about how unsuitable he is. I could tear the page out before she sees it!” offered Mirry.

    Janet looked at her plaintively.

    A determined look came over Mirry’s little heart-shaped face. She ripped out the page with the picture of the Maybelline and a gossipy piece on Jake Carrano featuring such matters as who the yacht might be named for and who had been seen prominently on the yacht with him in the past, and, since she could hardly light a fire in the sitting-room fireplace in December without arousing Kay’s suspicions, not to say ire, wadded it up and shoved it into her jeans pocket. “It doesn’t show,” she reported, peering at the magazine.

    Janet swallowed. “Don’t leave it in your pocket: she’ll find it when she does the washing.”

    “I’ll rip it up into pieces and flush them down the toilet!”

    “They’ll float,” she said faintly.

    “Aw. Yeah, they probably will. Blow. Um… I’ll burn it outside.”

    “Be careful, you could set the whole place on fire, it’s pretty dry.”

    Mirry looked out at the view of the farm, and sighed. “Yeah. I think it’s gonna be a drought year.”

    “It will be if we don’t get more rain soon.”

    “Mm. –Mum was saying Dad oughta retire and let Andy take over; what do you reckon, Janet?”

    “It’d kill him, he’d never be able to bear retirement! She’s not serious, is she, Mirry?”

    Mirry perceived that her attempt to distract her sister’s mind from the topic of their cousin’s involvement with a possible, nay probable murderer hadn’t been a total success.  “Um—no. Just an idea. Get Doreen on the job to talk her out of it, she’ll listen to her.”

    This was true. On the other hand their oldest sister had never been known to listen to Janet. “Um—ye-es…”

    “When do the boys break up?” said Mirry desperately.

    Janet’s face lit up. She began to tell Mirry eagerly all about her two little boys’ term, and what they had planned for the holidays...

    Mirry didn’t listen to a word. She sat up cross-legged on her mother’s tasteful grey and green rug with a listening expression on her face, thinking miserably that Jake Carrano must have been the burly dark man with Polly that time down Puriri shops, and they’d both looked really happy together, and what if it was him that had done the murder, ugh…

    Julie Thurston leaned on their mutual fence and said sympathetically to Polly’s elderly aunt: “It must be really awful for Polly, Miss Macdonald.”

    Violet, the oldest of the tribe of Macdonald sisters, was the only one to have escaped the Macdonald plump figure that both Maureen and Kay had inherited. She took after their mother, a little, spare, brisk person, whose chief characteristic had been a complete refusal to either give or ask for quarter. “It’s a nuisance, of course,” she conceded grimly.

    The misguided Mrs Thurston, who was only a young thing, pursued: “Could he have done it, do you think? Barry says—”

    Every second utterance of Julie Thurston’s was “Barry says.” So even although it was bad manners Miss Macdonald interrupted ruthlessly: “Of course he didn’t do it, I never heard anything so ridiculous in my whole life!” –This directly contradicted her expressed view to Polly herself, to her sister Maureen, Polly’s mother, and to various other relatives, but naturally family solidarity wasn’t going to let her admit to a mere neighbour that Polly could be mixed up with a man who might be a murderer.

    Julie Thurston’s amiable face fell. “Oh. But Barry says—”

    Miss Macdonald put her secateurs under her arm and removed her gardening gloves with a grim look on her thin face. “That reminds me, that Peace of yours has got aphids, you’d better get him to spray it.”

    “What? Oh.” Julie looked disconcerted: she knew Peace was the name of a rose, but she wasn’t sure which rose it was. The Thurstons weren’t such dedicated gardeners as their elderly neighbour. They were the new breed of villa owner, the sort that was at work all day, and that hadn’t put in their garden themselves, but got a firm in to do it.

    There were sixteen sections in Miss Macdonald’s quiet little back street, and only three of them were still owned by people of her generation, but nevertheless they, and the other people of their generation who lived in the neat block of four brick home units directly opposite Miss Macdonald, where an old villa had been torn down shortly before old wooden villas became extremely fashionable, had not failed to watch in horror as villa after villa had been renovated professionally and garden after garden had been put in by a firm. At the end of the street was a very large, very handsome villa, the sort with a verandah on three sides and lots of wooden lace on said verandah, and this belonged to a family with two children who were doing it up themselves. And its garden. These facts, however, did not mean that there was not an unending barrage of criticism from Miss Macdonald and the other households of her generation over the time Mr Heath was taking to do that place up, the noise Mr Heath made every evening with his hammering and his power tools as he did that place up, the state of the outer bits of the house that Mr Heath had not yet got around to doing up, the state of the patch down the back of the Heaths’ garden that the Heaths hadn’t yet touched, and the nuisance-value of the tree in the Heaths’ front yard that every autumn dropped leaves all over the footpath that Mr Heath never swept up. Mr Rowbottom from the end unit next-door but one pointedly swept them up when he swept up the leaves from the plane tree the Council had planted on the verge outside his unit, but unfortunately the Heaths had never realised he was doing it pointedly. And as the households of Miss Macdonald’s generation only voiced their criticisms to one another or to their own friends and relatives, the Heaths were blissfully unaware that there was any barrage at all.

    Miss Macdonald sniffed slightly, did not enlighten Julie Thurston as to which rose she meant, and saying: “Well, I can’t stand about chatting all day,” went indoors.

    Julie looked after her sadly. Oh, dear, had she put the old thing’s back up? Being a somewhat atypical villa-dweller of the new breed in that she did not go out to work but worked at home as a free-lance commercial artist, she then looked at her watch, decided she did have time to get a bit more done on that layout before it was time to pick the kids up from day-care (another subject of strong disapproval in the street: mothers ought to look after their children themselves while they were young), and went indoors. There she got side-tracked by a glossy gardening book. She looked through it carefully. Aphids… It didn’t seem to have anything on them; it had oodles on greenfly, whatever that was… Julie put down the expensive English gardening book with a puzzled look on her face and went off to her drawing-board.

    Miss Macdonald stowed her gardening gloves away in their precise spot in her enclosed back porch, wiped and oiled the secateurs and hung them on their precise nail in the porch, and washed her hands and changed out of her gardening clothes. Then, with a determined look round her mouth (that for a second made her look very like her niece, Mirry Field), she got out the bus timetables. Yes: if she caught the nine-five into town tomorrow, she could get the Hibiscus Coast bus that left at… Yes. Then she and Polly would have time for a good talk before lunch! She tucked the timetables back in their appointed drawer, looking grimly pleased.

    The total travelling time involved in this expedition to the Coast and back would be around four hours, since naturally none of the buses connected, but this did not deter the old lady for an instant.

    Jill had only gone in to the City Campus because her hutch of an office was cooler than her flat, certainly in the mornings, when the faculty building’s concrete walls and westerly outlook made it icy cold, and because her phone kept asking her fatuous questions about Ther Swimming Poo-wul Mur-der. But she couldn’t leave it off the hook: what if it was Polly panicking because the mad macho millionaire had been arrested or, unlikely but not impossible, Gretchen phoning from the wilds of Waikikamoocow to say they’d broken down, or even a toll call from England to say that old Aunty Emmy had been carted off to hospital? So she left the answering machine on in the faint hope that it might discourage the tender enquiries about the murder from people she hadn’t seen for years, and got out of it. This late in the year there wouldn’t be anybody in the place.

    Hah, hah. Bloody Maisie Pretty was first. How was she, Jill dear? The cow called Leo “Dr Schmidt” and Roger “Dr Browne”— Oh, forget it. Middle-aged women like her were culturally brainwashed—and if she hadn’t been, Maisie was the type to brainwash herself. Jill replied grimly that she was about the same as she had been last time they spoke. This was water off a duck’s back and she immediately asked how Polly was bearing up.

    “Fine, as far as I know.”

    “I did wonder if she was all right, because her phone always seem to be off the hook,” said Maisie artlessly. Innocent as the day was long—right.

    “I think that’s because nosy idiots keep on ringing her up with prying and unnecessary questions about the murder, Maisie,” replied Jill grimly.

    “People can be so insensitive, can’t they?” returned Maisie without a blink. “Well, if you see her give her my love, dear, and tell her I’m always here.”

    That was a lie, normally the woman was out of it for four solid weeks over Christmas and New Year’s.

    “If I see her,” agreed Jill.

    “You never know, do you?” she offered darkly. “And they say Jake Carrano’s parentage is completely unknown: goodness knows what sort of background he came from. And a man like that, that’s been used to having his own way all his life…” She shuddered artistically. “No restraint, Jill! Of course, he was never taught better.”

    Jill opened her mouth to say she was bloody sure the nuns had taught him better, and thought better of it. Never descend to their level and actually exchange remarks: first law of self-preservation.

    “Mm. Oh, by the way, if you were looking for some work, I’ve got some typing—”

    Gee, that had got rid of her! Sighing, Jill attempted to rebury herself in work.

    She was recruiting her forces with a coffee when flaming Bill Michaels wandered into the staffroom looking insouciant. There was absolutely no valid excuse for his presence in their building: he was Dean of the Faculty of Engineering—so called: one department, inflated, the so-called departments within in it having been mere units well within living memory, up until approximately the time that that huge and luxurious building on the other side of their mutual side street had been built and the mighty Michaels empire had taken off. He wasn’t entirely bad, and he was certainly on Polly’s side, Jill wouldn’t have said platonically, exactly, but innocently enough: he was very happily married and in fact Polly was very fond of his wife. None of which meant he had any right to their coffee. Him and those disgraceful old denim shorts and worn black tee-shirts he favoured his audience with in the holidays. As opposed to the battered jeans and slightly less worn tee-shirts and/or daggy old jerseys of term-time, yeah.

    “Go away, Bill.”

    “Any coffee left?” he replied.

    “No,” lied Jill firmly.

    Bill wandered over to the sink-bench and inspected the coffee-pot. “Ah!” He poured the last precious drops into a mug for himself—with any luck it’d poison him, no-one washed the bloody mugs properly—and awarded her and the saggy old couch his horrible warm, hairy presence. “So?”

    “I know nuh-thing.”

     The engineer rubbed his chin dubiously. “Did Carrano do it?”

    “I have no idea, but my bent sixpence’d be on ‘No’. Not necessarily on the EnZed cops not arresting him, however. Can I finish my coffee in peace, alone? Like what I come in for?”

    “That was a mistake: that moo in your faculty office is in today.”

    “Ya don’t say!” replied Jill bitterly.

    Bill’s shrewd eyes twinkled. “And I thought I spotted Madame Defarge’s Volvo in the carpark.”

    Rubbish, the woman hadn’t been seen at work since early October! “Balls. And if it was there Madeleine will have left it overnight for some obscure reason which’ll entail that miserable little Patrice having to trail into town on the bus and collect it!”

    “It’s your funeral. Um, you have met Carrano, haven’t you?”

    “Yes, but as I’m not a combination of Dr Freud and M. Poirot, I can’t tell you whether he dunnit, Bill.”

    “Can’t you at least tell me what he’s like?” he said crossly.

    “Thought you’d long since got the good oil out of Rog Browne?”

    “‘A very masculine type,’” quoted the burly engineer neutrally.

    Jill had to cough. “Yeah. Well, okay, he is.”

    “Rog thought ’e was brighter than what ’e looks: that right?”

    “He doesn’t, all prejudice apart, look all that thick, actually. But yes. And disabuse your mind of the idea that I’m here to gossip rather than to get some work done. Oh, and if Kevin catches you in here once more stealing our expensive coffee, that our departmental staff fund pays for, from our coffee-pot that belongs to our departmental staff fund, he’ll explode.”

    “Good: I’ll be in regular as clockwork!” he promised cheerfully.

    “Of course you’re always welcome, Bill, dear,” cooed a horrible saccharine baritone, “but dear Kevin won’t be pleased about the coffee, you know!”

    Michaels, Jill was very pleased to see, had gone sort of green under the tan and the not-bothering-to-shave because macho technological idiots didn’t shave in the hols in order to reinforce their status as macho technological idiots.

    “Hullo, Madeleine,” he croaked, tottering to his feet.

    Madame Defarge surged in. “Goodness, don’t get up for little me, Bill, mon chou!” she cooed. –God, the woman was wearing yet another new silk dress! Every time you laid eyes on her she was in a different outfit, and as she was the size of a house, they must set Patrice back a mighty packet. Well, Madeleine Depardieu was a full lecturer, she’d got that before Kevin McCaffery, to give him his due, had made H.O.D. and been in a position to ensure the lazy cow wouldn’t go any further, but the salary wouldn’t run to the way she dressed or what she drove. One was tempted to wonder what on earth the downtrodden Patrice got out of the relationship, only then the mind started boggling, so one stopped.

    “Um, no, I wasn’t; I mean, I gotta go,” said the engineer lamely.

    “He’s left a hot computer on the stove,” explained Jill.

    “Silly one!” she returned with a merry titter.

    “Something like that. Um, see ya,” croaked Bill, edging past Madeleine towards the door.

    “Joyeux Noël, mon cher!” she carolled.

    “Yeah: merry Christmas,” said the engineer feebly, sliding out.

    “Naughty fellow!” said Madeleine with a fruity chuckle. “I dare say you can’t see it, Jill, dear, but ra-ather attractive, in his macho way!”

    Jill opened her mouth and thought better of it. Never exchange remarks with ’em, remember?

    “I suppose the naughty man came over here to pump you, did he?” she said kindly, sitting down—mercifully in an armchair, not on Jill’s sofa. “A terrible gossip, of course. Isn’t it funny how one never hears men called that—but they are, my dear!”

    “Um, yes,” said Jill feebly, getting up.

    “Don’t go, ma chère, I wanted to ask you about poor dear Polly,” the woman said blatantly.

    Jill didn’t sit down. “She’s okay.”

    “But my dear, what if that man did it? Of course the local media are frightful, but I must say— And they say there’s no smoke without fire!” she said brightly.

    Jill took a deep breath. “Madeleine, I realise English isn’t your native language, so perhaps you can’t be blamed for not realising that only cretins say ‘they say.’”

    “O, là-là, so you do suspect him!” she cooed.

    Gritting her teeth, Jill walked out.

    After this you might not have thought the day could get worse, but gee, know what?

    It was well into the afternoon when her office door opened and a snake in human form wriggled in. No, well, to the unprejudiced eye, which cut out all who knew him, Leo Schmidt was a very handsome man: tall, blond, lovely slim figure. Though if you looked closely, not that one would want to do that, the lovely line of the jaw was just starting to show a little sag, and under the smooth honey tan the odd red vein indicative of advancing age, not to say advanced dissipation, was starting to show.

    Jill had known the snake was around: Gretchen had mentioned he’d been up at Polly’s. But since at one point he’d declared his intention of yet again inflicting himself on his unfortunate relatives in France for the hols she was able to say: “You still here? When are you leaving? Today, I hope?”

    He shrugged. “No, ma belle, I have decided not to go.”

    “Oh? Run out of cash?”

    “No.”

    She shrugged, and allowed her gaze to return to her work.

    Leo came and perched a hip on her desk. One of the blasted man’s attractions—not that Jill would have him served on a platter with free chips, thanks—was that he always smelled distinctly wonderful. Lemon verbena. Jill tried not to breathe.

    “Darling, but of course I am after the gossip from the Hibiscus Coast!”

    “Ring Polly yourself. Though as she doesn’t know anything, I’m damned if I know what she can tell you.”

    “Isn’t she the egregious Jacob’s alibi?” he drawled.

    “No: only—” Jill broke off, mentally kicking herself.

    “On-lee?” he drawled, raising his blond eyebrows very high.

    Guaranteed to reduce timid First-Years to tears though this gesture was, Jill was made of sterner stuff. “Only for the later and, one gathers, more enjoyable part of the evening, Leo,” she said affably. Ooh, hurray, the man actually flushed! “You could try ringing Rog, he knows even less than she does,” she added.

    “Well, yes, though he does appear to have admitted to himself that Jacob might have done it,” he drawled.

    All right, sod the man! Any other bloke with his looks would have pulled his socks up and offered the girl decent suburban domesticity, instead of those ruddy propositions he’d favoured her with any time these past— Yeah. He was asking for it, so she gave it to him.

    “I think all the ineffectual males with huge unreciprocated crushes on Polly are hoping that.”

    “Are they really? Possibly not only the males,” he murmured.

    Jill was unmoved, she’d been expecting something like that.

    Leo gave her a mocking look and slid off the desk. “Ciao, ma belle.”

    “Ta-ta,” responded Jill sourly.

    Smiling, the snake wriggled out on a last waft of lemon verbena.

    All in all it had been pretty much a wasted day and Bill Michaels mooched down to catch his ferry at the end of it telling himself that it served him bloody well right for farting around gossiping instead of getting some solid work done.

    He leant on the rail watching the wake of the ferry, something of which he never tired, summer or winter, though he’d lived in the city all his life, and felt simply glad that he was him, with a decent wife and a clutch of decent kids, and an interesting job to boot, and not, to name one, a diffident young shaver in his twenties, at sea in a strange country, not really sure of what he was, who he was, or what he wanted, or, to name another, a luscious bit in her late twenties, far too bright for her own good—specially in this neck of the woods—with a habit of falling for the wrong blokes.

    “Hullo!” he said in surprise to the sturdy brown-haired figure leaning on the station-waggon outside the long, covered wharf. “Whatcha doing here, Chicken?”

    “I came to meet you,” Barbara returned simply.

    Bill eyed her warily.

    “I’m not a kid, I’m nilly fourteen!” Barbara assured him loudly.

    “Uh—yeah. Came on the bus, didja?”

    “No, I walked, Mum said I needed to shake the fidgets out. –And don’t keep calling me Chicken,” she added by the by: “it’s dumb!”

    “Yeah. You and your mum had a barney?”

    “No,” said Barbara. “Only I was bored, so she said I’d better walk.”

    Bill gave her a sharp look but she appeared genuine. “Yeah.” He unlocked the waggon.

    “C’n I drive?”

    “No.”

    “Aw-wuh!”

    Bill ignored that and got in. He managed about a hundred yards before Barbara burst into an excited and complex speech involving an intricate plan whereby Dad and her would get up before sparrow-fart and sail up the coast, see, and then Barbara would groom and exercise her blessed nag, and then they could take the boat up to— Yeah, yeah.

    “What about Helen?” he said mildly.

    Barbara looked blank. “She can come if she likes.”

    She’d better like: Babs and him couldn’t manage the boat on their own.

    “Yeah, could do that,” he said mildly. “Only one of the others’ll have to come, that boat’s too much for you and me on our tods.”

    “Aw-wuh! You an’ me can—” Barbara explained at length what they could do while managing a large yacht. Bill didn’t listen but he was quite flattered, really.

    “Here,” he said as they trundled along the waterfront.

    “What?” replied Barbara warily.

    “Just you mind you don’t fall for some clod of a property tycoon when you’re in your twenties.”

    “DA-AD!” she roared, turning puce.

    “It’s been known to happen,” replied Bill mildly.

    The macho Barbara, stating by the way that she wasn’t interested in stupid Men, expounded at length the economic and social theories of one, Mis-tuh Faw-sutt, heart-throb of the Form Three social studies set and apparently slated to be New Zealand’s first Communist prime minister. Bill didn’t listen much but he was quite glad that Babs was starting to get a few faint glimmerings of what might be called abstract ideas into her noddle at last.

    “Yeah, good. –I wouldn’t mention any of that to Col, if I was you,” he said mildly.

    Colin, only a year older than Barbara but much brighter, had won a scholarship to Queen’s School, which his parents were now bitterly regretting they’d ever let the snot-nosed little snob sit for.

    “Huh! He’s a dill!”

    On the whole Bill was inclined to agree with this sentiment, but he could hardly take sides to that extent. So he returned: “I dare say. Anyway, just you mark my words. No property tycoons, ta.”

    They turned into their street in the peaceful backwater of Narrowneck as Barbara replied with complete scorn: “Huh! Don’t worry! I’m not a female idiot like Polly Mitchell! Mum reckons that that man isn’t serious and it’s on the cards he done that murder and she’s gonna come down to our place and bawl all over the show like she did when that horrible American pig dumped her.”

    “Yeah,” said Bill weakly, wincing slightly at the sight of the even more macho Helen—or at least of her legs—sticking out from under the back bumper of Mark’s incredibly clapped-out Mini. “What’s your sister up to?”

    “Mark reckoned she could have the Mini for two thou’ if she could get it going.”

    “Did he, just?” said Bill on a grim note. The rust-bucket was worth two hundred, tops. Christ, what with one son rapidly being turned into a screaming little snob at bloody Queen’s, and the other one apparently Hell-bent on turning himself into a flaming capitalist at eighteen—

    “She can do it, if anyone can!” said Barbara stoutly.

    Bill patted her scabby brown knee. “Yeah, I’m sure she can, Petal.”

    “DON’T CALL ME THAT!” she roared.

    “Sorry,” he said meekly, drawing up in the driveway well clear of Helen’s feet. “I keep thinking you’re me daughter—funny, that: dunno where I got that notion from.”

    “Hilarious,” replied Barbara coldly, getting out.

    Bill got out, too, grinning. “Gidday, Nellie Dean,” he said to the feet.

    From under the Mini came a muffled roar of: “DON’T CALL ME THAT, DAD!”

    Bill ambled on into the house, grinning.

    “Well?” demanded Angie the minute he poked his nose into the kitchen.

    Bill came in, pecked her cheek, and perched a hip on the kitchen table. “Your youngest offspring reckons,” he said detachedly, pinching a sliver of carrot, “that—hang on, hang on, gotta get it right—that ‘Mum reckons that man isn’t serious, and it’s on the cards he done that murder, and Polly’s gonna come down here and bawl all over the show like she did when that American pig dumped her.’ Unquote.”

    Angie replied huffily: “I have to talk to someone, shut up in the bloody house all day! And at least Barbara sometimes actually listens, not like Helen, never thinking about anything but her blessed boats! –Anyway, why are they always my offspring when they open their great fat mouths and shove their feet into them?”

    “To take your points in reverse order,”—Angie glared—“in the case of the fourth offspring, that rug before the very sitting-room fireplace as I speak could speak of what it wots of, if it could but speak.”—Angie bit her lip and tried not to giggle.—“As to the next point, there’s not much I can do about Nellie Dean; at least she’s got a few brains to rub together and she’s not a flaming little snob like Someone I Could Mention. And boats are better than being mad on boys and getting herself up the duff before she’s finished her degree. And last but not least, no-one’s shutting you up in the house: if you wanna go back to work it’s your decision. Personally I’m all for it, but don’t let me influence you.”

    Angie was now looking distinctly sulky. Bill just waited. After a while she admitted: “I hated work, I was always bored stiff.”

    Bill experienced a huge surge of relief that she was admitting it at last: he felt quite weak and shaky. “Yeah. Well—wanna go back to varsity, love? Do your Master’s?”

    “No, I didn’t much like being told what to think,” she admitted glumly.

    Bill hadn’t thought she had—no. Served her right for doing a B.A., mind you.

    “Um—would you think I was mad if I took up weaving, Bill?” she burst out.

    Bill’s eyes bulged slightly: far’s he knew, good old Ange didn’t have an artistic bone in her body! “Uh—no,” he got out in a strangled voice. “Weave away, if that’s what you want.”

    Immediately Angie produced a sheaf of night school brochures and burst into an excited and complex speech—be where Babs got it from.

    “Yeah, good one,” he agreed weakly when she’d run down. Probably get sick of it after three months or so. Well, a bloke could only hope.

    “Well, did you see Polly?” she said eventually.

    “Nope; went over there but Jill Davis was the only one in. She didn’t say much but I got the impression that she thinks Carrano mighta done it but—and this may surprise you—she hopes he didn’t. Then bloody Madeleine swanned in, so I crept quietly away again.”

    “Oh.” Angie hesitated. “Well, um, did Jill say how Polly’s getting on?”

    Bill sighed. “Not really. Two syllables, kind of thing. Sounds as if she is okay, though. As much as anyone could be with the boyfriend the favourite candidate for First Murderer.”

    “That isn’t funny!” she snapped.

    Bill was gonna reply with something terribly injured, only he saw in time that there were tears in her eyes. He put an arm round her. “No. Sorry.”

    After a bit Angie said: “We’d better put that idea of having them round for tea on hold, I suppose. Mind you, whether he’d want to come is another matter—but we can’t go on ignoring the fact that they’re a couple, Bill, it’s been over a year, now! Um, drat, I mean, if it wasn’t for this murder business, we couldn’t ignore it—um, you know what I mean. It’s a pity, because I was going to ask Jill and Roger, too.”

    Bill winced. “Uh—wouldn’t say they were each other’s type, love. Jill’s bloody bright, ya know. Never mind his flaming Oxford degree, her mind can run rings round his. Don’t think she thinks much of him. Well, um, wouldn’t say she dislikes him,” he ended dubiously.

    “All right, we’d better just have him.” She paused. “I’ll make sure Helen’s home for tea that night!” she decided with horrible determination.

    Bill gave a yelp of laughter.

    “Don’t LAUGH!” cried Helen’s mother in anguish.

    “She’ll get to that stage soon enough, love,” he said, patting her shoulder and releasing her. “Let her have her time of blissful innocence and bloody boats while she can, for the Lord’s sake.” He wandered back to the table and pinched another strip of carrot. “Besides, Rog Browne isn’t exactly—” He choked slightly, more or less in spite of himself.

    “He might—um—give Helen some idea of what a sophisticated man with an English education can be like,” said Angie weakly.

    “I wouldn’t call ’im sophisticated,” croaked Bill. “English—yeah. Oxford degree and la-de-da Pommy accent—yeah. –Incidentally, Jill reckons ’e comes from Little Tooting Under Woggle, so ’e musta learned up the accent at school, can’t be ’is native wood notes wild. Uh—where was I?”

    “Little Tooting Under Woggle,” said Angie faintly.

    “Yeah: not bad, eh? All ’er own, too: there’s stout stuff in that young woman. Uh—oh, yeah: the only thing Helen’s gonna learn from having tea with Rog, me ole love, is just how wet a Pommy wet can be. Oh, and possibly not to eat peas off the knife, I’ll give ya that.”

    Angie sighed. “Oh, well, it was just a thought. –And don’t call me ‘me ole love’!” she added crossly, rallying slightly.

    Bill cringed. Cripes, a bloke could hardly open ’is mouth in ’is own— “Eh?”

    “I said, Leave those carrots alone!”

    “There’s millions of ’em.” Bill took another look. “Little itty-bitty strips: they for a salad?”

    “No,” said Angie, now rather pink and flurried-looking: “they’re julienne strips, I used that funny-looking attachment on the food-processor— Anyway, they’re not for a salad, it’s a new recipe.” She paused. “Out of that French book of Polly’s,” she admitted in a small voice.

    “Crikey, I hope ya didn’t get Babs to translate, we’ll all be poisoned, she told me the other day that champignon means toadstool!”

    “Don’t be silly, it’s not in French: it’s that book her Aunty Kay gave her.”

    “Won’t be French cuisine, then,” he said instantly.

    “It is, it’s by a real Frenchwoman! Look, JUST GET OUT OF THE KITCHEN!” yelled Angie.

    “You’re restricting me rôle to the traditionally limited so-called masculine tasks of dustbin putting-out and light-bulb changing, it’s warping me psyche,” he whinged.

    “Get out. And wash your hands before tea,” said Angie limply.

    Bill took a handful of carrot strips and wandered over to the door. “Righto, then, Rog but not Jill, this time round.”

     Angie looked up from the cookery book. “Yes. Um, Bill,” she said in a very weak voice, “what does éch—um, échalottes émincées mean?”

    Manfully Bill repressed a grin. It was her that claimed to have done French in her blessed B.A., after all. He was merely learning it in his spare time, with a bit of help from Polly in the holidays. He came and looked over her shoulder. “Um… Not too hot on cookery words; I can do you a nice Racine, though. Um… Minced sperm whales, I think,” he said weakly.

    “That’s cachalots!” said a cracked voice with huge scorn.

    Bill looked up with a sigh. Angie merely glanced in that direction and said: “Get out of that school uniform if you want any tea, Col.”

    “‘Dinner’,” corrected the Queen’s scholar coldly. He went out.

    Angie groaned.

    Bill was reading on. “Um… sauter, blah, blah… She keeps mixing in bits of French.”

    “Yes. Well, that proves it, she’s a Frenchwoman, see? And this book is written especially to show English-speaking readers different things to do with vegetables!”

    Written especially to sucker unwary aunties like Polly’s Aunty Kay that wouldn’t know cuisine if they fell over it into buying it for their unfortunate nieces, ya mean, thought Bill, considerately refraining from saying it. “Mm. Well, judging from what she tells ya to do with these here minced sperm whales, I’d say she means shallots,” he said kindly.

    Angie’s jaw sagged. “I’ve never even seen…”

    “I’ve seen ’em,” admitted Bill. “In that poncy greengrocer’s in Newmarket, that time I got you that new fruit with the weird yellow bumps all over it, forget what they call it. You know: full of nasty bright green seeds.”

    “Oh, yes, it was horrible. Um—they’re only a kind of onion, aren’t they?”

    “Yeah. Bung a bit of onion in, love, that’ll do it.”

    “All right,” said Angie weakly. “Um, Bi-ill…”

    Oh, God, here it came. “Yeah?’

    “What if Jake Carrano did do that murder?” said Angie in a very small voice.

    Bill sighed. He pulled her slight frame against his sturdy one. “Don’t anticipate,” he said into the ruffled yellow curls.

    “Mm. But what if?” replied Angie into his chest.

    “Then we’ll just have to stick around and help pick up the pieces, eh? Dunno that he’d be right for her in any case; might be a blessing in disguise.”

    “Mm.”

    “All right?”

    “Mm.”

    Bill didn’t chance his luck: he released her, and went out.

    Angie sautéed some onion half-heartedly, her mind no longer on her cooking. Jake Carrano probably was all wrong for Polly—well, a corrupt property tycoon that put little companies out of business without even thinking twice about it and took half his business “offshore” for the tax advantages and then had the brass-faced gall to say it was because the New Zealand worker couldn’t pull his finger out? Only, a year was a long time to be involved with someone that turned out to be rotten. And it wouldn’t be the first time, would it? Though of course Mannie Halliday hadn’t been a murderer, but he’d been really horrible: she was well rid of him! But maybe Jake Carrano didn’t do it... Oh, dear, what a mess!

    “Of course he did it,” said Count Jablonski in Polish with a distasteful curl of the lip.

    “He did not, Dad!” cried Rod in English, flushing.

    “Speak Polish,” said the old man wearily in that language.

    Rod glared.

    “It’s obvious it must have been him: who else is a crude brute with an ungovernable temper?” continued the old man, still in his native language. “And the only reason he hasn’t been arrested by now is that he’ll have paid off the corrupt incompetents in the local police force.”

    Rod bounced up, bright scarlet. “JUST SHUT UP, DAD!” he howled in English.

    Although he was seated in a large, shabby armchair in his hideous and stuffy front room, somehow the Count managed to give the impression that he was looking down his still elegant, slender nose at his son. “Pray don’t take that tone with me, Roderick.” –This was still in Polish: sometimes Rod wondered madly how his Mum had ever talked the old joker into letting him be given an English name—not that “Roderick” was exactly the sort of handle that every New Zealand kid aspired to, either.

    “Look, you owe him the—the fact that you’re sitting there in your blasted armchair in your blasted house drinking yourself into a stupor as usual, instead of out on the streets!”

    “Rubbish; I have no doubt whatsoever that he will foreclose whenever it suits him. That is,” he continued with great precision, pouring himself a minute portion of kirsch, “if he isn’t serving a life sentence for murder.” He sipped elegantly.

    “BULLSHIT!”

    “Don’t speak to your father like that, Roderick,” said the old man sternly.

    Rod lapsed into Polish and shouted: “I’ll accord you some filial respect when you give me something to respect, you old sot!”

    The old man opened his mouth but was forestalled by his wife’s coming in with a plate of rock cakes, saying grimly: “What’s all this about? Can’t you leave your father in peace for five minutes? If you’re staying for afternoon tea, sit down.”

    Rod looked sourly at his stepmother’s gangling figure, short, straight grey hair, hacked off about ear-level, and bony, unmade-up face with its large red nose. “No, thanks, hemlock cakes aren’t my bag,” he replied witheringly. He strode out without waiting for the reaction.

    “‘My bag?’” echoed the Count with extreme distaste.

    “Ignore him, the boy’s a fool, he takes after that first wife of yours.”

    Jerzy Jablonski’s narrow lips tightened. He said nothing, but reached for the decanter.

    “And LEAVE THAT BOOZE ALONE! Isn’t it enough that you have to drink yourself silly every night, without starting on it in the afternoon, too? And if you think I don’t know where you’ve been hiding it, you’re wrong, see! I know your little tricks, you drunken old fool!” Esmé snatched up the decanter and went out with it. There was the sound of a terrific crash. From the kitchen she shouted: “YOU CAN DRINK TEA, AND LIKE IT!”

    The old man sat there, not moving. When she came back with the tray of tea he said tiredly: “The boy thinks that Jacob Carrano did it.”

    “Did what?” she returned grimly, pouring.

    “Did the MURDER!” he shouted angrily.

    “Rubbish: he thinks the sun shines out of that accursed man’s ears,” said Esmé grimly. “Another proof of his innate stupidity, if one was needed!”

    “Be that as it may, he thinks Jacob did it.”

    Esmé shrugged. “I dare say he did. So what? Who cares? That Banks was a nasty piece of work, he deserved to die.”

    Jerzy Jablonski was used to her; nevertheless he swallowed.

    “Eat something: it might help to sop up the alcohol,” she said nastily.

    He took a rock cake. The boy was right: hemlock. He ate the cake slowly, meditating on possible hiding places for his vodka. He didn’t look at his wife, and she didn’t look at him.

    Polly’s mother wiped her eyes and blew her nose on a hanky that was already soggy.

    “Don’t cry, Mum,” said Marilyn Mitchell uneasily, wishing that her sister-in-law, Vonnie, had come over this afternoon, she’d have been moral support.

    “But what if he did it?” wailed Maureen.

    Marilyn looked helplessly at her mother-in-law. She didn’t know what. Well, presumably he’d be arrested: things were pretty bad, what with this Government selling off the country’s capital assets and pandering to the unemployed and dismantling the Welfare State and never giving the farmers any support—Marilyn’s politics were somewhat muddled but on the other hand so were the Government’s—but they weren’t that bad! Never mind if he was one of the richest men in the country: if he was the murderer the police’d get him. Only what Polly would do, goodness only knew…

    “Maybe he didn’t do it,” she said weakly.

    Maureen burst into tears again, pointing out that the man had been found in Jake Carrano’s pool, and there’d been all that stuff on the news about him half-strangling that same man in the Puriri Council Chambers just the week before, and he must have done it, who else could have done it, and why wouldn’t Polly at least come down to the farm early and get away from it all, and why wouldn’t David go up there and get her, and couldn’t Marilyn persuade Vic to go up there and get her if his father wouldn’t, and Vi needn’t say Polly had made her own bed and had to lie on it, she was still only young and ever since that huh-horrible other man—

    “He wasn’t a murderer,” said Marilyn unwisely.

    Maureen’s sobs redoubled themselves.

    Marilyn patted her on the back for some time but that didn’t work so she said desperately: “I’ll make another cup of tea, shall I?”

    Maureen went on sobbing, so Marilyn got up and plugged the jug in again.

    “Why couldn’t she choose that nice Roger?” demanded Maureen soggily, clutching her soaking hanky tightly, when the tea was ready and Marilyn had sat down again at her shiny pale blue Formica kitchen table. –Marilyn, who was a round-faced, good-natured blonde woman, was very fond of blue, and of course it wasn’t practical to have it in the sitting-room, it faded so in our sunlight, so she had a blue kitchen, a blue master bedroom and a blue bathroom. All nice and modern, she wasn’t into dark old farmhouses and never ceased to thank her lucky stars that after her father-in-law had built the new house, which was shortly after she and Vic got married, Maureen had burst into tears and refused to move into it, declaring she loved the old farmhouse. So the new house had become the manager’s house officially, for the farm books, and actually Vic and Marilyn Mitchell’s house. And they’d been in it ever since, fully appreciating its low modern bath without legs, its modern shower, its sliding glass doors onto its patio, and its convenient kitchen with the vinyl floor and steel bench. Over the years they had added a waste-disposal unit, a microwave oven (of which Maureen was terrified) and, most sybaritic of all, a dishwashing machine to the kitchen. Besides doing it up fairly recently, with modern blue-veneered cupboards, a new blue vinyl in a Spanish tile pattern, and blue and white Dutch-look tiles over the sink, which Marilyn had always wanted! Loving relatives now as a matter of course gave Marilyn for birthdays and Christmases, according to their closeness, age and purse strings, variously blue and white china jars to add to her set (the sort with a suggestion of curlicue to their outline and knobbed lids), blue- or white-handled kitchen implements of the unnecessary variety (cheese slicers, cherry-pitters), blue and white tiles to serve as teapot stands, or pretty blue and white tea-towels.

    “Um, Roger?” she echoed weakly. Had Polly ever had a boyfriend called Roger?

    “Yes. You know, dear, that lovely Englishman that Vi told us about! The one with the lovely manners, who gave her that lovely bunch of flowers when Polly brought him over for afternoon tea! Why couldn’t she have chosen him?” Maureen blew her nose again.

    “Um…” During the past year Maureen had pointed out to the family, more than once, that it was no use Vi saying that that English person would be more suitable for Polly than that awful man, people couldn’t make themselves fall in love with people, and if they asked her, he sounded really weird, she couldn’t believe that any man could really have been interested in Vi’s boring stories about her secretarial career, and it was all very well to talk about manners, but there was a difference between being polite and being a hypocrite, and just because he was a lecturer at the varsity didn’t mean he was suitable for Polly! And at one point, after Aunty Vi had rung her up and gone on at her, she’d said he sounded like a Pommy drip.

    “Um, yes, he sounded very nice, Mum,” she said weakly.

    Maureen sniffled sadly. “There you are…”

    Marilyn watched her uneasily but she drank up her tea without crying again, and took a piece of cake. When she said it was lovely, Marilyn revealed thankfully that it was a new recipe, it was an orange cake, she’d got it off Sheila Dawson, who’d got it out of an Australian magazine, and she betted Mum couldn’t guess what it was made of!

    Maureen duly expressed astonishment when Marilyn revealed that it was made of semolina—sem-o-lin-a? Yes, semolina! And accepted a copy of the recipe, though pointing out dubiously that it was a wee bit newfangled for her, dear.

    After more harmless chat of this nature she thought she’d better get back: she had to get David’s tea, and she hadn’t even thought about what veges to do, yet. She kissed her daughter-in-law fondly, mentioned for about the fourteenth time that week that she wished the boys were home, she was so looking forward to having them home for the holidays, and had Marilyn noticed, the schools seemed to be breaking up later and later these days, and took herself off, waving cheerfully.

    Marilyn stood on her front steps before her smart modern varnished front door with its panel of dark gold moulded glass that matched the strips of dark gold glass at either side of it (done up a few years back) and waved, as her fluffy-minded watering-pot of a mother-in-law guided the huge station-waggon competently down the rough dirt track that linked the manager’s house with the old farmhouse, two miles away up the valley, and vanished over the crest of a low rise.

    Neither of them was aware of anything incongruous about this scene: it was one that happened every other day: if Marilyn hadn’t popped up to their place then Maureen would pop down there.

    “Questioned everybody in the Bay, be now, I reckon,” said Dave, the heavy-set proprietor of the Pohutukawa Bay Dairy. He sniffed. “Everybody on the entire Hibiscus Coast, more like,” he corrected himself sourly. He weighed some bananas for Daphne Green. “What’s more, if it comes to a trial, I’ll be a star witness!” He grinned.

    Daphne asked him about it eagerly. Roger listened just as eagerly: there was no point in pretending he wasn’t interested, and Dave always seemed to have Puriri County gossip at his fingertips. –Usually, of course, it was a question of thinking up some excuse not to have to stand here and listen.

    Dave revealed that Don Banks had called in at his little shop just before nine on the evening of the murder—ostensibly to buy a paper but actually, or so Dave evidently felt, to boast that he “had Carrano over a barrel.”

    “Goodness!” said Daphne “Did he? What was that all about, I wonder?”

    Dave shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Don’t ask me. You know Don Banks: always too blimmin’ full of himself. Shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, and all that, but— Well! Ya can’t get away from it, can ya? ’E was a real bastard when ’e was alive!”

    Eagerly they agreed that you couldn’t and he had been.

    Dave began totting up Daphne’s grocery bill. Twisting items to see their prices, he offered: “Something about some property up north, I think it was. Reckoned Jake Carrano didn’t want to sell, see? Only he was gonna.”

    Roger cleared his throat. “Why?”

    “Dunno, Doc.” –It was Dave’s own idea to call him this. Roger wasn’t absolutely sure whether it had started off as ironic, or not, but by now it had become a habit. “Ten to one he made it up, anyway.” He punched the last of the prices into his cash register and said: “That’ll be thirty-two sixty-nine, thanks, Daphne.”

    Daphne moaned faintly but handed over a sheaf of notes.

    Sympathetically Roger said: “At this rate we soon won’t be able to afford to eat at all, will we?”

    “You said it!” she agreed.

    “It’s these canned and frozen things,” Dave explained. “The wholesalers just keep putting their prices up—what can ya do?” He picked up Daphne’s packet of frozen peas and made a rude noise. “National Foods—National Bloody Highway Robbery, more like!”

    Daphne gave Roger a sideways look. “Philip Cohen,” she murmured.

    Roger’s jaw dropped. He gaped at her in sheer dismay.

    “You know: they were at that dinner party of Mr Carrano’s a couple of weeks back,” she reminded him.

    “Yuh—I—” Jesus! He’d forgotten he was supposed to have a date with Debbie Cohen this coming Saturday— Hang on, what was the date? “What day is it?” he croaked.

    “Tuesday. Week since the murder. Well, a week tonight,” said Dave.

    “No, I mean the date,” he croaked.

    It was the ninth. Roger sagged. He hadn’t missed the date, though he’d certainly forgotten all about it.

    “Sixteen days to Christmas,” said Daphne heavily.

    “Yeah, catches up on ya, doesn’t it?” agreed Dave sympathetically. With quick, almost finicky movements which assorted oddly with his burly physique he wrapped Daphne’s frozen goods in newspaper and slipped them into a large plastic bag. “So you’ve met Philip Cohen, eh, Doc? Friend of Mr Carrano’s, is ’e?”

    “Er—an acquaintance, yes,” he said faintly.

    “His wife’s terrifically elegant,” added Daphne on a wistful note.

    “Dare say she can afford to be,” allowed Dave drily. “That the dinner you hadda dish up at, eh?”

    “Mm. Thai silk, I think her dress was,” she sighed. “Shot: dark blue and turquoise. And chunky jewellery: real turquoises set in gold.”

    Dave winked at Roger. “That right? Earrings big enough to eat off, eh?”

    “No! I said, she’s very elegant! They were just big enough!” she snapped.

    “I’m no expert, but I have to concede she’s right,” said Roger quickly.

    Dave winked again. “You wear your best Thai silk too, Doc?”

    “Er—a dinner jacket, certainly,” he said feebly.

    “Yes, and you’re not funny!” Daphne informed the shopkeeper fiercely. “It was a—a gracious occasion! It’s just a pity the rest of you can’t take a leaf out of their book!” she informed him, stalking out.

    “I’d take a few leaves out of Jake Carrano’s book any ole day,” noted Dave. “Starting with that Merc of his. –She was telling me before,” he said on a reminiscent note, “that Polly made you all eat asparagus with your bare hands at that do: that right?’

    “Er—yes. Fresh buttered asparagus. One does,” he said limply.

    “Not out here one doesn’t, mate,” he said kindly.

    “No, I gathered that,” agreed Roger faintly.

    Dave eyed him expectantly.

    “What?” he said defensively.

    “Did ya have little pudding bowls to wash yer hands in after, or did she make that bit up?”

    Roger hadn’t expected to see fingerbowls in Pohutukawa Bay, either. “Fingerbowls,” he said feebly. “Yes.”

    Dave broke down in agonised splutters.

    “I don’t normally dine formally like that, either,” said Roger limply.

    “No!” he gasped. “Not on what ya buy from me, anyway!”

    “And not off a full set of antique Spode, either,” he said heavily.

    “Eh?”

    “The dinner-set. It was exquisite; Natalie—Mrs Cohen—was ecstatic over it. It must have cost him a fortune: you sometimes see the odd piece in the arts and antique catalogues, but never a full set.” He gave Dave a dry look. “You can keep the Merc, I’ll take the dinner-set.”

    “It’s a deal!” agreed the shopkeeper with a grin. “So what can I do yer for, Doc?”

    Roger had forgotten what he’d come in for.

    “Nice bit of ham? Ya won’t need them fingerbowls for that.”

    “Hah, hah,” he said weakly. He gave in and bought overpriced pressed ham, adding a bag of apples, as it seemed hardly fair to buy half a pound of ham—or however many grammes it was—and walk out. The apples looked rather tired, but Dave assured him they were all right: cold store. He was halfway up the hill before he remembered he’d meant to buy butter.

    … Oh, Hell, he’d have to ring and cancel that date with young Debbie. Well, aside from the fact that he’d completely forgotten about it, which showed how much it must have meant to him, he couldn’t possibly involve a girl of that age with The Man Who Found the Body. The Press were still hanging about at the head of the track: in fact the Cohens must have seen his brief and inglorious appearance on the television news yesterday, in which he’d come over as a cross between an absent-minded professor and Second Murderer. He’d better speak to her mother, not to the girl herself… Could he put it off till tomorrow? No, he couldn’t, it’d be bloody rude, and they must be wondering why the Hell he hadn’t already called. Damn.

    Philip Cohen had actually managed to get home early, for once. He was thus just in time to see the storm break.

    “What was that?” he said numbly to his wife as, having slammed the phone down on a burst of violent tears, their only daughter rushed upstairs, sobbing loudly.

    Natalie sighed. “Roger Browne. She would insist on speaking to him.”

    “You mean he rang her?” said Philip cautiously. Debbie had been trying to get hold of Roger ever since the news of the murder had broken.

    “No, dear, he rang me,” said Natalie tiredly. “Unfortunately she was right beside me when I picked up.”

    Ouch! Debbie was a determined little thing—added to which she was too young to know when to leave well enough alone. Kindly Philip led her into the sitting-room and made her sit down. “Like a sherry?”

    Natalie sighed. “I think I’d prefer a gin and tonic, thanks, dear. A stiff one.”

    “Understandable,” allowed Philip drily, pouring them each a stiff one. “I must say,” he said, sitting down next to her on the sofa, “that I suspected she was more than keen on this Browne type when she was so eager for us to go to that damned dinner party at Carrano’s.”

    “Mm. –I thought you enjoyed yourself?” said Natalie cautiously.

    “Well, more or less. Given that I haven’t a thing in common with the man.”

    “I rather liked him,” she murmured.

    Philip eyed her drily; the ladies all liked Jake Carrano. “He is quite a likeable chap, yes. And I suppose he has the merit of not pretending to be anything other than what he is.”

    “I should say so! Compare that evening to that truly frightful dinner Phyllis Harding threw last winter!”

    Which of the many? “You’re not wrong there,” he agreed placidly. “I did quite enjoy myself, apart from the small fact of having to watch my daughter throwing herself at that long drink of water of an English arts graduate all evening.”

    “Mm. Well, I didn’t dislike him,” she murmured. “And he spoke very properly to me on the phone just now. He said he wouldn’t dream of taking Debbie out while his face is all over the media as the man who found the body.”

    Philip sighed. “Look, Nat, that date was all Debbie’s idea. Much as I love her, I have to admit she’s as unstoppable as a tank when she gets an idea into her head. If he’s broken it off, I’d say it was twenty percent not wanting to involve her in the damned publicity and eighty percent not being keen.”

    Natalie finished her drink. Then she said: “She’s been pining over him for a year, now. I didn’t realise it at first, but he was the man she met when Rod Jablonski took her to that ridiculous barbecue of Carrano’s last summer.”

    “Oh,” said Philip weakly. “Right. Before all that wonderful Dr Browne lending her his very own dictionaries business, eh? Well, perhaps the break in Honolulu will take her mind off him.”

    “Maybe,” said Natalie without conviction. “I suppose I ought to go up to her.”

    He patted her knee. “I’d leave her to have her cry out, love. If you think you should speak to her, leave it until she’s calmer, mm?”

    “Very well, darling, if you think so,” she said in patent relief.

    Neither of them expected that Debbie would come down for dinner that evening without considerable persuasion, but to their astonishment she was down in good time for it, red-eyed but entirely composed. “The meat’s lovely, Mummy,” she said politely as Natalie murmured that the lamb might be a little overcooked. “That’s good, Daddy,” she said politely as Philip said uneasily that he’d managed to make bookings for all of them for Honolulu.

    “There’s some fruit salad left over from yesterday: I didn’t get round to making any pudding,” said Natalie as they finished their first course. “But there’s plenty of ice cream.”

    “Not for me, thank you, Mummy, it’s fattening,” replied the plump Debbie with calm determination. “Hawaii’ll be a very good opportunity to lose some weight, and I might as well start now. –Don’t get up, Mummy: I’ll get it.” She collected up plates and went out.

    After quite some time Philip said in a shaken voice: “My God, she had that determined look on her face that Grandfather Cohen used to have when he’d decided to go ahead with a business decision that’d risk the entire family fortune! I’d say Browne had had his chips,” he concluded drily.

    Natalie opened her mouth to object that possibly Debbie, on the contrary, had decided to forget him. She met his eye. “Yes,” she said faintly. “I think you may be right.”