There was a long pause during which Frensic gnawed a nail.
'Oh well if you must,' said the voice at long last, 'the name is Dr Louth and the address is 44 Cowpasture Gardens...Hullo, are you there?'
But Frensic was miles away in a world of terrible conjecture. Without another word he replaced the receiver and staggered out into the street.
In Lanyard Lane Sonia sat at her typewriter and stared at the calendar. She had returned from Somerset, satisfied that Bernie the Beaver would use less forceful language in future, to find two messages for her. The first was from Frensic saying that he would be out of town on business for a few days and would she mind coping. That was queer enough. Frensic usually left fuller explanations and a telephone number where she could call him in case of emergencies. The second message was even more peculiar and in the shape of a long telegram from Hutchmeyer: POLICE ESTABLISHED DEATHS PIPER AND BABY ACCIDENTAL NO RESPONSIBILITY TERRORISTS RUNNING AWAY WITH EACH OTHER CRAZY ABOUT YOU ARRIVING THURSDAY ALL MY LOVE HUTCHMEYER.
Sonia studied the message and found it at first incomprehensible. Deaths accidental? No responsibility terrorists running away with each other? What on earth did it mean? For a moment she hesitated and then dialled International and was put through to New York and Hutchmeyer Press. She got MacMordie.
'He's in Brasilia right now,' he said.
'What's all this business about Piper's death being accidental?' she asked.
'That's the theory the police have come up with,' said MacMordie, 'like they were eloping some place with all that fuel on board when she blew.'
'Eloping? Piper and that bitch eloping? In the middle of the night with a cabin cruiser? Somebody's out of their mind.'
'I wouldn't know,' said MacMordie, 'all I'm saying is what the cops and the insurance company have come up with. And that Piper had this big thing for old women. I mean take his book. It shows.'
'Like hell it does,' said Sonia before recalling that MacMordie didn't know Piper hadn't written it.
'If you don't believe me, call the cops in Maine or the insurers. They'll tell you.'
Sonia called the insurers. They were more likely to come up with the truth. They had money at stake. She was put through to Mr Synstrom.
'And you really believe he was running off with Mrs Hutchmeyer and it was all an accident?' she said when he had given his version of the event. 'I mean you're not having me on?'
'This is the Claims Department,' said Mr Synstrom firmly. 'We don't have people on. It's not our line of business.'
'Well it sounds crazy to me,' said Sonia, 'she was old enough to be his mother.'
'If you want further delineation of the circumstances surrounding the accident I suggest you speak to the Maine State police,' said Mr Synstrom and ended the conversation.
Sonia sat stunned by this new development. That Peter had preferred that awful old hag...From being in love with his memory one minute she was out of it the next. Piper had betrayed her and with the knowledge there came a new sense of bitterness and reality. In life, now that she came to think about it, he had been a bit dreary and her love had been less for him as a man than for his aptitude as a husband. Given the chance she could have made something of him. Even before his death she had made him famous as an author and had he lived they would have gone on to greater things. It was not for nothing that Brahms was her favourite composer. There would have been little Pipers, each to be helped towards a suitable career by a woman who was at the same time a mother and a literary agent. That dream had ended. Piper had died with a surgically preserved bitch in a mink coat.
Sonia looked at the telegram again. It had a new message for her now. Piper was not the only man ever to have found her attractive. There was still Hutchmeyer, a widowed Hutchmeyer whose
