the study wringing my hands with the others. I was clearly very upset.
Three weeks later Margaret was quizzing me again. I was just back from George Field's.
'What did he say when you told him you'd found the Judas guns?'
There'd been no mention of Margaret's husband. We'd just taken up together, going into her arcade shop daily and scratching a living. Naturally, the inevitable had happened, as it always does when a man and a woman live in one dwelling, but that was all to the good and it was long overdue anyway, as we both knew.
The trouble was this conversion gimmick they have. That I was quite content to drop in to my old garden and still hadn't started clearing away the cottage's ruins obviously niggled her. She'd let several hints drop, asking what plans I had for rebuilding and suchlike. You have to watch it.
'Lovejoy!' she complained. 'You're dreaming again.'
'Oh. He said he didn't want anything to do with them, said it was poetic justice.'
'And then?' she pressed.
'He shut the door.'
'I don't think he likes your instincts very much, Lovejoy.'
'I'm surprised,' I said. 'I'm really quite lovable.'
'Won't you offer them back to Muriel?' was her next gem. Sometimes I think women have no sense at all.
'Of course,' I said, thinking, That's not poetic justice.
'When?'
'Well,' I said after a long, long pause. 'Well, maybe later.'
'No, look, honestly,' I began, searching desperately for some way out. 'It's honestly a question of time and personal values.'
'Lovejoy! How
'Honestly, love, judgment comes into it,' I said. 'I'd take them back this very minute but—'
'You've absolutely no excuse!' She started banging things about.
'Maybe in time, honestly,' I said. 'I'm only thinking of her.'
Women have no tact, no tact at all. Ever noticed that?
