Adam And Eve And Pinch Me

up and now showed a healthy growth of young weeds. Something of a coincidence, she thought, that one of the murder victims had died within a stone’s throw of where the other victim’s girlfriend-or one of them-lived.

Two rows of squat Victorian houses, with mostly neglected and very small front gardens, some of them packed full of bicycles, pushchairs, the occasional motorbike, rolls of wire netting, and pieces of broken furniture. Disproportionately large bay windows jutted out downstairs, and dusty plaques under their eaves were engraved with names such as Theobald Villa and Salisbury Terrace. One house only had been smartened up and to an extent that offended Natalie’s taste. This was number 37, whose front had been refaced with blocks of (probably fake) gray granite, whose paintwork was white and front door a deep rose pink. Multicolored dahlias and dark blue Michaelmas daisies filled the garden. Next door, Natalie’s goal, was neat but dowdy, the garden paved over, the paintwork worn though clean. Jeff must have been on his uppers to come looking for succor down here, she thought. And then she recalled the leaps-and-bounds increases in London house prices, that this place was not so very far from fashionable Notting Hill and a tube stop on the Bakerloo Line was just a little way down Harrow Road. If he could have got his hands on a house here…

She rang the bell. A woman came to the door and stared at her. It wasn’t a stare like Nell Johnson-Fleet’s and she wasn’t at all like Nell Johnson-Fleet, not Jeff’s type except insofar as she was fair and thin. A little wispy woman, very white-skinned with pale, no-color eyes, thin lips, hair like a baby’s. But what startled Natalie, what almost frightened her, was that she looked mad. Natalie would never have used this politically incorrect word except to herself, in her own thoughts. No other really described Araminta Knox’s wide stare, her large pupils, the tiny smile that came and went.

“Ms. Knox?”

A nod and the smile flickering.

“I’m called Natalie Reckman and I’m a freelance journalist. I wonder if I might talk to you about Jeff Leach.”

“Who?”

She plainly didn’t know what Natalie meant. There had been not the faintest flicker of alarm or memory or pain or anger in those glassy eyes. And there would have been, for this was the sort of woman unable to conceal what she felt, unaware, showing every nuance of emotion in her expression. She’d either come to the wrong place, got the wrong woman, or Jeff had used one of his not very subtle aliases. “Jerry perhaps? Jed? Jake?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You didn’t have a boyfriend who was murdered in a cinema?” Natalie never minded what she said to anyone. She couldn’t, not in her job. “Jeff Leach or Leigh?”

“My fiance died in the Paddington train crash,” said Minty and shut the door much more sharply than Nell Johnson-Fleet had.

It was possible she was on the wrong track. Natalie remembered that she’d assumed this was the right woman only because Jeff had said she lived near Kensal Green Cemetery and had called her Polo. Polo was a mint and the one person in the whole area with the right kind of name was Araminta Knox. But he might have called her Polo for any number of other reasons. Because she liked those mints he ate, for instance, or even played polo. Just the same, she rang the bell of the gaudy house with the pink front door.

The occupant was a big, handsome woman in a tight black skirt and scarlet shirt, technically black but in fact almond-colored with a Roman nose and full lips. Natalie said who she was and what she wanted.

“Would you mind telling me your name?”

“Sonovia Wilson. You can call me Mrs. Wilson.”

“Have you ever heard of a Jeffrey or Jeff or Jerry Leach or Leigh?”

“No. Who is he?”

“Well, I thought he’d been your neighbor’s boyfriend.”

“She’s only had one and he was called Jock Lewis. Or so he said. He said, or someone did, that he died in that train crash, but he never did and I know that for a fact. What d’you want him for?”

“I don’t want him, Mrs. Wilson. It wouldn’t be much use if I did, seeing he’s most likely the Jeffrey Leach who was murdered in the Marble Arch Odeon. J. L., you see, it was always J-something and L-something with him. May I come in?”

“You’d better talk to my husband. He’s in the force.”

In a quandary, Laf didn’t know what to do next. What to do at all, come to that. He and Sonovia watched Natalie Reckman cross the road and get into her car.

“It’s only what she thinks,” Laf said. “We’ve known since the beginning Jock Lewis wasn’t killed in that train crash. The only evidence she’s got for thinking Minty’s friend was this Jeffrey Leach is that they’ve got the same initials.”

“Well, not really, Laf. She seems to know Leach had a girlfriend who lived round here that he called Polo.”

“Jock Lewis never called Minty Polo, so far as I know.”

“We could ask her,” said Sonovia. “I mean, I could. I could say something casual, like ‘Didn’t you tell me Jock was fond of Polo mints?’ or get the conversation on to pet names and ask if he had one for her. And then, if she came out with it, I’d tell her. I mean, she ought to know, Laf, you’ve got to admit it.”

Laf turned away from the window, sat down in an armchair, and motioned Sonovia to another, with the masterful gesture and wearing the steady frown he used only on the very rare occasions when he thought his wife had worn the trousers long enough. “No, I’ve not got to admit it, Sonovia.” He called her by her full name only in his severer moments. “You’re not to say a word to Minty. Is that understood? This is one of those times when we’ve got to heed Daniel. You remember what he said? It was the last time you asked if she should be told about Jock. ‘I wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t.’ You told me yourself what he said. Now when our son became a doctor of medicine I made up my mind I’d take his word on medical matters like I take Holy Writ. And you’ve got to do the same, right?”

Meekly, Sonovia said, “Right, Laf.”

Dressing to go out on her fifth date with Ronnie Grasmere, Zillah thought it was the babysitter when the doorbell rang. She zipped up her new black dress-tight but not too tight, low-cut, flattering-slipped her feet into her Jimmy Choo shoes, and ran downstairs. Two men were on the doorstep. Even if one of them hadn’t been in uniform she’d have known they were police officers-she could detect them from a distance now. Immediately, with a lurch in her Lycra-controlled stomach, she concluded that they were here to arrest her for bigamy.

“Mrs. Melcombe-Smith?”

One thing that phony marriage had done for her: everyone assumed it had been genuine. “What is it?”

“South Wessex Police. May we come in?”

They’d found Jerry’s car. The boneshaker. The twenty-year-old Ford Anglia. That was all it was about, his old banger. In Harold Hill.

“Where?” said Zillah.

“It’s a place in Essex near Romford. The car was parked by the side of a road in a residential area where there are no parking restrictions. A resident called us to complain about it. He said it was an eyesore.”

Zillah laughed. “What am I supposed to do about it?”

“Well, Mrs. Melcombe-Smith, we thought you might know how it came to be put there.”

“I don’t know but if you want my opinion, Jerry-I mean, Jeffrey-dumped it there because at last he’d found a woman with a nice car who’d let him have unlimited use of it. For the first time in his life, probably.”

They exchanged glances. “He didn’t have any particular associations with Harold Hill?”

Eugenie had come into the room. “Who’s Harold Hill, Mummy?”

“It’s a place, not a person.” Zillah said to the policeman who’d asked, “He never mentioned it to me. I should think he just used it as a rubbish dump. He was like that.”

“Who was like that?” Eugenie asked after they’d gone and the babysitter had come. “Who used a place as a rubbish dump?”

“Just a man,” said Zillah.

Neither child had once referred to their father after Eugenie first asked and got no reply. Accomplished at