The Judas Pair

'Was it over her you… ?' She hesitated.

'I what?'

'You were going to kill somebody?' Word had spread, then. Not really surprising, the way I'd behaved.

'How did you hear that?'

She leaned forward excitedly. 'You mean you are?'

'Do I look in fit state to go on the prowl?'

She looked me up and down. 'Yes, probably.'

'Well you can think again.' I offered biscuits while I got myself another cup.

'The whole village was talking about you.'

'Even more than usual?' My sarcasm hardly touched her.

'We were all agog.'

'Well you can de-gog then. I'm better.'

'Oh.' Her disappointment should have been a bright moral glow of relief at salvation from dastardly sin.

'Sometimes I wonder about you women.'

She beamed roguishly. 'Only sometimes?'

'I mean, you're all interested when you think I'm going to go ape and axe some poor unsuspecting innocent'— the word nearly choked me—'yet when I'm going straight again you're all let down.'

'You must admit, Lovejoy,' she was reprimanding, so help me, 'it's more, well, thrilling.'

'You read too many books for your own good. Or letters.'

She accepted the jibe unabashed. 'No need to read letters, the way some people carry on. You found quick consolation, Lovejoy.'

'What do you mean?'

'I nearly saw her the other night, and her natty little blue pop-pop.' She poked her tongue out at me.

I gave a special sheepish grin but shook my head. 'I don't know what you mean.'

'Oh, no,' she mocked. 'Just good friends, I suppose.'

'It must have been the district nurse.'

'Like heck it was. Nurse Patmore doesn't go shoving her bike in the hedge. It's been here twice. I saw it.'

'One of the forestry men,' I suggested easily.

'On a woman's bike?' She fell about laughing. 'You're either kidding or you've some funny friends, Lovejoy. It's an old-fashioned bike, no crossbar.'

'You're mistaken.' Keeping up my smile was getting very hard.

'Can't she afford a car, Lovejoy? Or is it just that it's quieter in the dark and easier to hide?' She snorted in derision. 'You must think we're dim around here.'

I surrendered, grinning with her. 'A little of what you fancy,' I absolved myself.

'They run a book on you down at the pub.'

'In what race?'

'The Marriage Stakes.'

'Out!' I said threateningly, and she went giggling. 'You're probably being raped, according to that nosy lot of Nosy Parkers.'

'That an offer?'

'Don't be cheeky to your elders!'

'Any particular cheeks in mind?'

I waved her off, both of us laughing. She pedaled down the path and was gone. I went in to clear up.

Now, Rose starts her work about five, but her actual round only begins once the sorting is ended. That could take up to an hour. So she was around my place no later than six-fifteen in the morning. Her afternoon round was much more variable on account of the number of chats she had to have between the sorting shed and our lane. She must have glimpsed the woman's —if it was a woman—bike at the 'ungodly hour' of six A.M. or so. How much light was there at that time? I couldn't remember whether the clocks had been put ahead an hour or whether we still had that to do.

Rose would be out of our lane by now. I locked up, chucked the robin some bread and cheese, and walked down to the lane. It's a curving road no more than twelve feet across, with high hedges of hawthorn and sloe on either side. My own length of it is two hundred feet, dipping slightly to the right as you look at it from the cottage. A house is opposite, set a fair way back from the lane like mine. I hardly ever see him, an ascetic chap interested in boats and lawn mowers, while she's a devotee of amateur opera. As I said, it takes all sorts. They have two grownup children who periodically arrive with their respective families.

Down the lane is a copse, if that's the right word, a little wood joining my garden. For some reason old people once built a gate into the copse, perhaps to let pigs in to rummage for berries or acorns. Now it's derelict and failing apart. Up the lane but beyond another strip of hazels and birch is a cluster of a dozen houses centered on a well, then the lane gradually widens and levels off to join the main road at the chapel.