outstretched fingers and the startled eyes behind them suggested Sid was warding off a banshee attack. He must have been in the crypt before she arrived. He said nothing, no one took any more notice, and Shirley-Ann felt rather embarrassed for him.
'You must be local. Am I right?' Jessica inquired of Shirley-Ann in the charmingly assertive tone cultivated English women use to show that they ignore certain things.
'We have a flat in Russell Street,' Shirley-Ann answered. 'That is, Bert-my partner-has the flat. We've been together almost six months. He's local, born and bred in Bath. I'm afraid I'm not. I only arrived in the city last year.'
'Don't apologize for that, my dear,' said Jessica.
'Well, I do feel slightly ashamed among people who have been here for years. You see, I work with one of the bus companies, on their tours.'
'You're a guide, and you only came last year!' said Jessica with a peal of laughter. 'Good luck to you. Where are you from? You sound like a Londoner.'
'Islington, originally.'
'And your partner's a Bathonian. Well, you'll get all the gossip on the city from him, I expect. What does he do?' She was drawing out the information in a way no one could object to.
'Bert? He works at the Sports and Leisure Center. He's often out in the evenings, so the Bloodhounds would fit in quite nicely for me-if you'll have me. Who runs it?'
Milo pitched in. 'We're totally informal,' he claimed, though the evidence so far suggested otherwise. 'Two or three of us-that is to say, Polly Wycherley, Tom Parry-Morgan (now dead, poor fellow) and I-discovered a mutual interest in crime fiction through a dinner at the Pump Room a few years back, when the writer P. D. James was one of the speakers. We happened to be sharing a table, you see. Polly is one of life's organizers, as you will discover, and she made sure that we all met again. Periodically we've been traced to our lair by other Bloodhounds.'
'That's how you join,' added Jessica.
'Now I understand the name,' said Shirley-Ann. 'And is there a fee?'
'We chip in enough to cover the hire of the room,' said Milo. 'We used to meet in pubs at the beginning, but some of the ladies decided a meeting room would be more civilized.'
'That isn't true,' Miss Chilmark called across from the chair. 'We were asked to meet somewhere else after Rupert misbehaved himself in the Roman Bar at the Francis.'
'We could have gone to another pub,' said Milo.
'You know it would have been the same story.'
The information-gathering had not been entirely one-sided. Shirley-Ann did some mental addition and realized that she now knew something about all the Bloodhounds. Six, Milo had said. Three women: Polly, the Chair, famous for her organizing skills, but liable to be flustered if late; the Eco devotee, Miss Chilmark, ambitious to take over; and Jessica, the expert on the female private eyes. She was grateful for Jessica. And the men: Milo, probably a civil servant by his pedantic manner, and possibly gay; Sid, who hid; and Rupert, who misbehaved in pubs. Good thing she hadn't come here to look for male companionship.
'Rupert's all right,' Jessica told her. 'I think it's mostly role-play with him. He claims to have met all sorts of famous people. But he stops us from getting too stuffy and parochial. He's deeply into what he calls 'Crime Noir'- authors like James Ellroy and Jonathan Kellerman.'
'Will he be coming tonight?'
'I expect so, but not before we start. He likes to make an entrance.'
Shirley-Ann wasn't yet convinced that she would tolerate Rupert as blithely as Jessica did.
A voice from the door said, 'So sorry, everyone. What will you think of me? I dropped my car keys down a drain, and I've been trying to hook them up for the past twenty minutes.' It had to be Polly Wycherley, and the poor dear was flushed with the experience, or her embarrassment. Her breathing sounded asthmatic. She raised the average age of the group closer to sixty, but there was a reassuring softness and mobility in her features. Short, chunky, silver-haired and wearing a pale green Dannimac coat, she was Shirley-Ann's idea of a favorite aunt.
'Did you get them back?' Milo asked.
'Yes-thanks to a kindhearted taxi driver who saw me on my knees by the side of the road. It happens quite often, apparently. Not to me, I mean.' Dimples of amusement appeared in her cheeks. 'I could tell you what to do if it happens to you, but I've wasted enough time already. Listen everyone, I've got to wash my hands. Why don't you begin without me?'
'Good suggestion,' said Miss Chilmark. 'Sit down, ladies and gentlemen.'
'We can wait a few more minutes,' said Jessica quickly.
'Yes, let's wait,' Milo chipped in.
Miss Chilmark's eyes narrowed, but she said no more.
'What's the program tonight?' Shirley-Ann asked Milo.
'I'm not sure. We leave that up to Polly. We're not too rigid about the way we run it. One thing you should be prepared for: We take turns to talk about a book we enjoyed recently.'
'Don't you dare mention The Name of the Rose,' murmured Jessica.
'I hope I don't have to go through some initiation rite.'
Milo's eyes sparkled. 'A secret ceremony?'
Jessica said, 'Black candles and a skull? What's that club that writers belong to? The Detection Club.'
Polly reappeared, and there was a general move toward the circle of chairs. The Bloodhounds didn't look as if they went in for secret ceremonies.
Chapter Three
'Come in, Peter, we're waiting with bated breath,' said the Assistant Chief Constable.
'What for, sir?'
'You don't know?'
With distrust, Diamond eyed the amused faces around the oval table in the conference room. This was the evening when the ACC's monthly meeting of high fliers took place upstairs in the 'eagle's nest' in Bath Central Police Station.
'For the story of your latest arrest. How you nicked the Saltford bank clerk.'
'Am I being ever so gently sent up?'
'Good Lord, no. We want to share in your satisfaction. You let it be known in no uncertain terms that a decent murder hadn't come your way since you were reinstated as head of the squad. Now this falls into your lap.'
'I wouldn't call it a decent murder,' said Diamond. 'Two little men in a bank. One gets on the other's wick, so he shoots him. It isn't worth the paperwork.'
'Has he confessed?'
'In seventeen pages-so far.'
The ACC commented, 'That is some paperwork. It isn't so straightforward, then.'
'He has a list of grievances going back six years.'
Several sets of eyes met in amusement across the table. No one said it, but Diamond was well known for having grievances of his own, and one of them was the amount of form-filling in modern police work.
'Where did he get the gun?' someone asked.
'Right between the eyes,' said Diamond.
'I meant where-'
'We haven't got to that yet. About page twenty-five, I should think.'
'Don't despair, Peter,' said the ACC-a relative newcomer who hadn't really earned the right to call anyone by his first name yet. 'Keep taking the statement. Your bank clerk may turn out to have been a serial murderer.'
Polite smiles all around.
Diamond shook his head and said, 'A good old-fashioned mystery will do me. I don't ask for bodies at every turn. Just one will do if it presents a challenge. Is that too much to ask in Bath?'
'Anytime you feel like giving up…' murmured John Wigfull, head of the murder squad until Diamond's recall.
