'She's cooled toward me for some reason. Probably something I said. People like you and me ought to think before we speak. But I don't go to please Polly anymore. I go to be entertained. The members are well informed, but I can tell you there are some pretty eccentric ones among them.'
'Lost their Marples, you mean?'
She raised her eyebrows. 'Did I hear right? Was that meant to be a pun?'
' 'Meant to be.' What a brutal expression.'
Now she laughed, and it was clear from the look she gave him that she was beginning to alter her assessment of this paunchy policeman. 'Anyway, 'eccentric' was the word I used. The Bloodhounds aren't so dim. They're well read. I like scoring points off them when I can.'
'The meetings can be lively, then?'
'Lively? Deadly, as it turns out.'
Now Diamond smiled.
'Yes,' Jessica went on. 'There are personality clashes. Rupert gets people excited.'
'Mr. Darby, you mean?'
'Do I? I only think of him as Rupert. He's harmless, in my opinion, though others will tell you different. A classic case of arrested development. He's locked into the nineteen fifties, when it was chic to hang around Soho smoking Gauloises and going to jazz clubs. You'll get on famously with him, by the look of you.'
Diamond's hand curled protectively over the trilby on his knees. 'There were incidents with Miss Chilmark, I'm told.'
'Silly old duck, yes. She's a frightful snob. The Chilmarks once owned half the city, if she can be believed. She can't understand why we don't prostrate ourselves each time she appears. What really gets to her is that Rupert is manifestly several points above her in the social scale and doesn't give a toss about decorum.'
'How is it manifest?'
'His accent. To borrow a phrase from Dylan Thomas, he talks as if he has the Elgin Marbles in his mouth.'
'There was an incident on Monday, I heard.'
'There's an incident on most Mondays. He insists on bringing his dog, and she gets herself into a state about it. She started to panic, and we calmed her down.'
This account was all too perfunctory. Julie intervened to say, 'You're understating it, aren't you?'
'In what way?'
'Wasn't she hyperventilating? And didn't you act quickly to stop it?'
'Just the old remedy of holding a paper bag to her mouth,' said Jessica dismissively. 'She soon responded.'
Diamond wasn't going to let this crucial matter get by. 'What happened to the bag?'
'What do you mean-what happened to it?'
'Afterward.'
'I don't remember, unless…'
'Unless what?'
'… I kept it.'
'Did you?'
'I may have done. In fact, I believe I did, just in case she started up again; She insisted on staying for the rest of the meeting. Rupert removed the dog, but I didn't want to take any chances, so I kept the bag by me. Now what happened to it at the end?' She hesitated. 'Is this important?'
'Possibly not, but I'd like to know.'
'Sid produced it in the first place.'
'I know,' said Diamond.
'I don't have any memory of returning it to him.'
'Would you have thrown it away?'
'Doubtful. Not after it came in so useful. I'm wondering now if I kept the thing. I didn't want it in view, right in front of Miss Chilmark. I may have stuffed it in my handbag.'
'You would have found it later, then.'
'Not me. I carry things for years before I turf them out. It's probably still in there. Want me to fetch my bag?'
'Presently,' said Diamond. The questioning had settled to a tempo that he didn't want interrupted. Give her half a chance and she would go back to her window dressing. 'Tell me about Sid.'
'That won't take long,' she said. 'He was a member before I joined. Polly told me once that he came on the advice of his doctor. He was painfully shy, poor bloke. The doctor's idea was that he was a crime fiction buff, so he would be encouraged to chip in. He hardly ever did.' She smiled. 'It was so rare if he did that we all turned our heads and scared him rigid.'
'Did anyone try making friends with him?'
'Polly fussed over him sometimes like the old hen she is. If anyone else had spoken more than a couple of words, I'm sure he would have run a mile.'
'And I understand you spent some time with him in the Moon and Sixpence on more than one occasion.'
She colored slightly. 'Are you trying to trip me up, or something? You make it sound like infidelity. I felt sorry for the guy, that's all. I thought someone should try and draw him out a bit, for his own sake. The others simply ignored him.'
'No one was hostile?'
She shook her head. 'There was nothing you could dislike about Sid.'
'Someone must have objected to him.'
'I know,' said Jessica.
The coffee arrived in bone china cups, AJ. bearing it in on a lacquered tray. Potential buyers of the art had to be cosseted. From the efficient way he handed the cups around, AJ. had performed the duty more than once. 'If it doesn't seem frightfully rude,' he said, 'I'll take mine to the front of the shop and carry on with what I was doing.'
Alert to the possibility that AJ. was something more in this setup than a volunteer window dresser, Diamond watched him with interest. The man had an air of confidence that belied the menial tasks he was performing here. There was poise in the way he moved, and a suggestion of anarchy, as if any second he might execute some Chaplinesque trick with the tray, and his dark curls and mobile brown eyes reinforced the idea, though he was actually quite tall. However, Jessica was content to treat him as a domestic in spite of the approving things she had said earlier. They both appeared at ease with each other.
Intriguing.
But there were things still to be asked. 'On Monday after the meeting ended, what did you do?'
'Went home,' Jessica answered.
'Immediately?'
'Yes.'
'Where's home, Mrs. Shaw?'
'Widcombe Hill.'
'You've got a good view from there, I dare say.'
'A view of a chapel roof with the words PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD painted in big white letters across it, if that's what you call a good view.' She laughed. 'A nice message to see each morning when we pull back the bedroom curtains.'
'If that's the Ebenezer, it must have been there when you moved in.'
'Of course. Actually, it doesn't bother us. I was just amused when you mentioned the view.'
'When you got home that evening, was Mr. Shaw there?'
She put down her cup of coffee. 'This is becoming rather intrusive.'
'I'm sorry. That's my job,' said Diamond. 'I need to know if anyone can vouch for the time you got in.'
'So I'm a suspect?'
'We're doing our best to eliminate you.'
'That's precisely the message I see from my bedroom window.'
