going on about his being unfaithful. That's why you got those steroid pills from that beastly Dr Kores and now all he does is sit in front of the telly.'
'Yes,' said Mavis, cursing herself for ever mentioning the fact. 'All right, but you said Henry was undersexed. Anyway that only goes to prove my point. I don't know what Dr Kores put in the mixture she gave you...'
'Flies,' said Eva.
'Flies?'
'Spanish flies. That's what Henry called them. He said they could have killed him.'
'But they didn't,' said Mavis. 'What I'm trying to get across is that the reason he wasn't performing adequately may have been'
'He's not a dog, you know,' said Eva.
'What's that got to do with it?'
'Performing. You talk as though he were something in a circus.'
'You know perfectly well what I meant.'
They were interrupted by the arrival of the tea. 'All I'm saying,' Mavis continued when the waitress had left, 'is that what you took for Henry's being undersexed'
'I said he wasn't very active. That's what I said,' said Eva.
Mavis stirred her coffee and tried to keep calm. 'He may not have wanted you, dear,' she said finally, 'because for the last six months he has been spending every Friday night in bed with some American servicewoman at that airbase. That's what I've been trying to tell you.'
'If that had been the case,' said Eva, bridling, 'I don't see how he could have come home at ten thirty, not if he was teaching as well. He never left the house until nearly seven and it takes at least three-quarters of an hour to drive out there. Two three-quarters make...'
'One and a half hours,' snapped Mavis. 'That doesn't prove anything. He could have had a class of one.'
'Of one?'
'One person, Eva dear.'
'They're not allowed to have only one person in a class,' said Eva. 'Not at the Tech. If they don't have ten...'
'Well, Baconheath may be different,' said Mavis, 'and anyway they fiddle these things. My bet is that Henry's teaching consisted of taking off his clothes and'
'Which just shows how much you know about him,' interrupted Eva. 'Henry taking his clothes off in front of another woman! That'll be the day. He's too shy.'
'Shy?' said Mavis, and was about to say that he hadn't been so shy with her the other morning. But the dangerous look had come back on to Eva's face and she thought better of it. It was still there ten minutes later when they went out to car park to fetch the quads from school.
'Okay, let's take it from there,' said Colonel Urwin. 'You say you didn't shoot Major Glaushof.'
'Of course I didn't,' said Wilt. 'What would I do a thing like that for? She was trying to blow the lock off the door.'
'That's not the version I've got here,' said the Colonel, referring to a file on the desk in front of him, 'according to which you attempted to rape Mrs Glaushof orally and when she refused to co-operate you bit her leg. Major Glaushof tried to intervene by breaking the door down and you shot him through it.'
'Rape her orally?' said Wilt, 'What the hell does that mean?'
'I prefer not to think,' said the Colonel with a shudder.
'Listen,' said Wilt, 'if anyone was being raped orally I was. I don't know if you've ever been in close proximity to that woman's muff but I have and I can tell you the only way out was to bite the bitch.'
Colonel Urwin tried to erase this awful image. His security classification rated him 'highly
