‘But where does Salvatore fit in all this?’ Angelo asked.
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ Muffin said. ‘Sally’s a really nice guy. He really is. I like him a lot. And your family! I think you guys are about the neatest family I’ve ever met, I really do.’
‘Thank you,’ Angelo said.
‘When I got to Bath I tracked Tom to the university. And then I found out that he’s gotten himself a job there, and he hadn’t even told me! Back in the States when I asked his friends they all said he was going someplace for a couple of weeks’ vacation. But when I found out about the job … Well, the first thing I thought was how smart I’d been not to stay home. I’d followed him to the airport, see, and then to London and then to Bath. So I guess I’m sort of a private eye myself.’
Angelo nodded.
‘But then it hit me. How he must have laughed with all his friends about tricking me. And how he obviously meant to get lost and never let me know where he was. Well, I felt so humiliated, so depressed with myself! You just can’t imagine.’
Angelo couldn’t imagine.
‘And then I thought to myself, I thought, “Muffin, honey, what are you doing?” And it was about the first time I really asked myself that, and the answer was that I was peeing my whole life away, because I was dedicating it to someone who didn’t give a damn about me, not a single tiny damn. And it was all such a waste!’
Carefully Angelo said, ‘Had you not come to this assessment before?’
‘That’s the point, Angelo. I hadn’t. Not really. Not so intensely. I mean, I knew before that I’d been stupid. All I had to do was count up everything I did—all the letters, all the calls, drawing his picture over and over, talking to him when he wasn’t there, writing him poems. It’s too embarrassing. Sending him underwear, even. Awful. All I had to do was think about that, and I knew how stupid it all was. But before I got here I’d never felt it, not the way I felt it last weekend.’
‘So, maybe, this trip has been a constructive one for you after all?’
‘I sure thought so,’ Muffin said. ‘I kept saying to myself, “Muffin, honey, you can do better than this guy.” And that’s when I went down to your pub in town and met Salvatore. No, that’s wrong. I didn’t “meet” him. I picked him up. I can be real predatory when I put my mind to it. I made all the first moves. But don’t get me wrong. Salvatore is a real sweetie. I hit lucky there. But then …’
‘Then?’
‘After a couple of days Tom started popping back into my head. And at real intimate times. At first I was able to pop him out of my head again—your brother can be real distracting—but Tom kept coming back. I started thinking, “If Tom knew, then he’d be jealous.” And I started thinking up ways to let him know. And then last night …’ Muffin shook her head. ‘I was so disgusting. It was like nothing had changed. I didn’t care how he had tricked me. I found him up at the university and even though he wouldn’t talk to me I followed him home. And I put a lot of notes through the letter slot in his door. And I waited outside.’
‘All night?’
‘The whole night long,’ Muffin said. ‘See, I was sure he’d realize it was a good thing to have a friend in a strange country. So I just knew that when he thought it through he’d come out. Even if it was only to bring me a blanket. Anything. Something. It would show he still cared.’
‘May I help you?’ the Old Man said. ‘These are my properties.’
‘Mr … Lunghi?’ Jack Shayler said.
‘That’s me.’
Shayler glanced at his wife and said, ‘My name is Shayler. Eileen, my wife, tells me that she consulted you recently.’
Mrs Shayler took her husband’s elbow and drew close to him.
‘Ah,’ the Old Man said. ‘Not me personal, but junior members of my staff.’
‘Well, Mr Lunghi, Eileen and I have talked things over and we’ve decided to ask for some advice. It’s about the rather worrying situation that started this whole business.’
‘Advice, we specialize in,’ the Old Man said.
‘We know it’s short notice, but we’re prepared to pay a premium if you can arrange for a prompt consultation.’
The Old Man said, ‘Normally, a Saturday, we don’t work. But we can make an exception.’
‘Thank you, Mr Lunghi,’ Jack Shayler said. ‘We’re very grateful, aren’t we, Eileen?’
With a beatific smile, Mrs Shayler said, ‘Oh yes. Thank you.’
‘One minute,’ the Old Man said, holding up a finger. He turned to David and Marie. ‘The job, I think, is finished, yes? Later your father will pay but I give you money too.’ He took out his wallet. ‘Get a decent lunch, have a little fun. Be back …’ He looked at his watch. ‘5.30.’ He gave each grandchild a ten-pound note.
Marie could hardly believe her luck.
David could hardly believe that he was not to be allowed to continue just when things were about to get interesting. After all those hours standing and watching the house!
The Old Man turned back to the Shaylers. ‘Now we go up to my flat and consult. Let my wife make tea. See if we can give some satisfaction.’
‘Muffin,’ Angelo said, ‘why did you ring Gina last night?’
‘I’m embarrassed to say now,’ Muffin said, ‘I was so cold and so crazy! But I thought maybe I could hire your agency.’
‘Hire us? To do what?’
‘To follow Tom for me. To make reports. And, maybe …’
‘What?’
‘Well, Salvatore told me how you and he scared that poor dish-washing detergent guy. Well, I thought maybe you could do something to … to scare Tom. Some last-ditch thing to make him realize that he should make his life with me and not … somebody else. Maybe …’ She lowered her eyes, ‘Maybe hurt him.’
Angelo stiffened. ‘We couldn’t! We don’t!’
Muffin covered her face. ‘I know. I know. But, please, Angelo … Even when I’m thinking straight these days I’m thinking crooked.’
They sat in silence for a few moments. Then Angelo said, ‘Muffin, I think it’s time for you to look at the larger picture.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘For a while, last weekend, you were thinking straight.’
‘I guess,’ Muffin said.
‘On a hard detective case a little progress sometimes, that’s success,’ Angelo said. ‘You shouldn’t forget a step forward even if later you take half a step back. Papa says that.’
‘He’s a pretty smart old guy, your dad,’ Muffin said.
‘Yeah,’ Angelo said. ‘He is.’
‘But it still doesn’t answer the question,’ Muffin said. ‘What do I do now?’
‘You should talk to someone.’
‘I am. I’m talking to you.’
‘But you should talk to someone who can help.’
‘You are helping.’
‘I mean …’
‘I know what you mean,’ Muffin said. ‘You mean a professional, a therapist.’
‘Well …’
‘I know. I know, I know, I know. But it’s so shaming. So humiliating! It’d be like a confession.’
‘But,’ Angelo said, ‘you confessed to me.’
‘And telling you wasn’t humiliating at all.’
‘Think it through. You feel bad. All right, what would make you feel better?’
‘Angelo,’ Muffin said, ‘you’re so sweet to listen to me talk. I must seem a real nutcase.’
‘No, no, no,’ Angelo said.
‘But I am grateful. I really am. And I do know what would make me feel better. A whole lot better. But … it’s not something I can do alone.’
Mama was on the telephone with her friend, Gabriella, from the same Piedmontese village as Mama and the Old Man. Gabriella was planning her youngest daughter’s wedding. The celebration was getting bigger every day, which made for many problems.
Mama had sympathy for Gabriella’s plight. She contributed to the talk about wedding plans with enthusiasm. And if the
event’s approach made it easy for Mama to continue to omit the news about Walter’s absence, so much the better. Perhaps Walter would be back—or replaced—by the time the wedding was successfully executed. Or, God forbid, cancelled.
Then Mama heard footsteps. She said, ‘Oh, he’s on the stairs.’ Gabriella understood immediately, and said goodbye. Mama hung up the telephone and picked up a duster. She was facing the door when her husband walked in.
‘Back already from your walk?’ Mama asked. ‘No stamina?’
Mama was not surprised when the Old Man did not answer her. But she was surprised when a man in his mid-forties and a woman in her mid-thirties followed the Old Man through the door. And she was astonished when he introduced them as Mr and Mrs Shayler.
‘Do you want some of my fries?’ David asked.
‘Your yukky fries with mustard all over them?’
‘And blue cheese mayonnaise off the burger,’ David said. ‘Good. Good. Good.’
‘No, I do not want any of your fries,’ Marie said.
‘What are you going to do now?’ David asked.
Marie considered. ‘I’ll think of something.’
‘Shouldn’t we look for Dad?’
‘Why?’
‘To see if we’re really finished with the job.’
‘Grandad said we were. So we are.’
‘I know,’ David said, ‘but—’
‘What I say don’t count around here all of a sudden?’ Marie said in a deepened voice and with intonations that David recognized immediately.
David giggled at the accuracy of voice and content. Marie laughed too and said, ‘Careful, you’ll spill your shake.’ She tossed her hair.
‘My shake don’t count around here all of a sudden?’ David mimicked.
‘You’re not half as good at him as I am,’ Marie said.
David agreed by not contradicting. ‘But really, shouldn’t we look for Dad? He’d want to know, wouldn’t he? We’ve got to report.’
Marie considered. They could charge it as more working time. Why not? ‘Where?’
‘Well, he’s with that Muffin,’ David said as casually as he could.
‘Doctor Muffin to you,’ Marie said.
‘He’s probably showing her tourist things. We could try the Abbey and the Roman Baths.’
Marie straightened, struck by an idea.
‘Marie?’ David said.
‘Yeah, all right,’ Marie said with mysterious resolution. ‘Let’s look for Dad and Doc Muffin down the Abbey. Come on, Davey.’
‘Charlie,’ Gina said, ‘is this all there is on the Adamson case?’ She held up the computer print-out she had been studying.
‘Don’t even ask,’ Charlie said. ‘I don’t have access, and what you’ve seen already would get me sacked.’
‘I understand,’ Gina said, holding her hands up.
Charlie thought about it. ‘You could talk to Varden again.’
‘He won’t be back till later,’ Gina said.
‘Will I regret it if I ask?’
Gina tried to explain her unease. ‘You’ve got a burglary in a modest house. The burglar is surprised by the homeowner, so the burglar whacks the homeowner on the head. And it all takes place about midnight.’
‘OK,’ Charlie said.
Gina said, ‘After the burglar hits the homeowner, he leaves the house, but he doesn’t go empty-handed. He takes eight antique pistols and rifles. So he hasn’t panicked.’
‘Sounds reasonable.’
‘But the first thing I don’t understand,’ Gina said, ‘is that there is nothing in what I’ve read that mentions a forced entry.’
Charlie shrugged. ‘So maybe entry wasn’t forced.’
‘Maybe,’ Gina said. ‘But the house was pretty secure, in line with standards set by the antique gun club. To me that suggests a professional burglar.’
‘OK,’ Charlie said. ‘A professional.’
‘But all he took were the weapons. And they are relatively difficult to sell. Why nothing else?’
‘Well …’ Charlie’s face suggested that he took the point, but did not think it conclusive.
‘And he left cash. Thirty-eight pounds in Adamson’s wallet. Why would a pro do that, Charlie?’
‘Didn’t want to hang around a dead body?’
‘The body wasn’t dead. The ME’s report said Adamson took hours to die. So was it a pro, or an amateur?’
‘Sorry,’ Charlie said. ‘I’m just a poor computer copper. You’re the private eye.’
‘Of course,’ Gina said, ‘all this is probably resolved in the full case file.’
‘You got a problem,’ the Old Man said when the Shaylers were settled on the couch. ‘We’ll talk about that in a moment, but so everybody knows what’s what, we better agree money.’
‘I appreciate your direct manner, Mr Lunghi,’ Jack Shayler said.
‘Suppose we go fixed-fee and then just let it take whatever time it takes,’ the Old Man said. He suggested a figure. ‘That’s acceptable?’
‘In the circumstances, very acceptable,’ Jack Shayler said. ‘Eileen?’
Mrs Shayler took a cheque book from her handbag and passed it to her husband. Jack Shayler wrote a cheque and passed it to the Old Man who examined it and then put it in a pocket. At that moment, Mama appeared with a tray.
The Old Man said, ‘Tea we throw in free.’
David and Marie approached the Abbey from the Guildhall side, but long before they got there the density of the town-centre crowds was evident. The pavements were packed and currents of people passed in and out of the shop-lined passageways. The quantity of humanity did not please Marie. ‘Bloody tourists,’ she said.
‘If it’s so crowded here, maybe they went to the Parade Gardens,’ David said, looking across the traffic circle to the park beside the river.
‘Go and look there if you like,’ Marie said. She continued toward the Abbey.
After an indecisive moment David followed his sister. ‘It’s getting on for teatime,’ he said. ‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe he took her to the Pump Room.’
Getting out of the Ham Gardens car-park proved a great deal easier than getting into it. That was just as well because Gina was preoccupied with what she had read in Charlie’s room. And there would be more to come if Charlie could manage to catch Varden.
At Henry Street Gina turned right, and got hooted at because she hadn’t realized quite how close the oncoming car was. She waved to acknowledge her error, but the other driver hooted at her again. He’s probably tired after a long day shopping, Gina thought.
Although Gina’s day had been long, she was not tired. She was excited. But she recognized that even for the short drive to home she would have to buck up her concentration on the external world. She moved early into the left-hand lane for a turn at the corner.
Traffic slowed Gina’s progress to the lights at the foot of North Parade. But no sooner had she crossed the intersection and turned into the Orange Grove roundabout than she saw David and Marie crossing to the Abbey courtyard. Impulsively, Gina hooted at them. Neither of her children noticed. But the driver of the car in front of her did. He turned and waved a fist.
Gina ignored him. She was puzzled why the children should be heading that way, at this time of day, together.
The car behind Gina hooted, and she moved ahead until she was stopped again, at the next lights. Then Gina remembered that David and Marie were working, following the Shaylers. If David and Marie were together, then the Shaylers were together. Gina smiled. Chances were that Angelo was paying the children to follow the Shaylers as they went into town to do their shopping.
Gina’s smile evaporated a few hundred yards closer to home. As she waited by the Pig and Fiddle to turn into Walcot Street, a glance to the right confirmed that there was no oncoming traffic. But the same glance caught sight of Muffin and Angelo across the road. Muffin and Angelo were together. They were holding hands. And they were headed for the entrance of the Hilton Hotel.
The longer he trailed after Marie the more convinced David became that she was not looking for their father. Marie seemed, instead, to be checking out the buskers along Stall Street, especially those with big crowds around them.
At first David thought Marie had decided their father would be showing Muffin Bath’s buskers. Maybe they didn’t have buskers in America. But it soon became obvious that Marie was not studying the crowds, she was studying the buskers themselves. She would push to the front but once there she retreated and refused to stop and watch.
David enjoyed Bath’s buskers. On an ordinary Saturday he might well walk into town and spend his time going from one street act to the next. They came from miles around to perform in Bath, especially in good weather, and especially on Saturdays.
Marie’s rapid retreats offended David. He felt it was only courtesy to spend at least a couple of minutes watching or listening. It was also courteous to give money. It wasn’t as if he and Marie didn’t have any. There was plenty of change from the Old Man’s tenners. Plus whatever their father paid them later. Marie was just so tight-fisted. Chronic, in fact. Nevertheless David continued to follow his sister while keeping his eyes peeled for his father and Muffin.
Eventually Marie led away from the Abbey and into the small square called Abbey Gardens. Here there was a juggling clown, and at the far side a musical group. Marie ignored the clown entirely and made for the thin crowd listening to the musicians.
When David caught up she said, ‘How do you like these?’
‘Which?’
‘This group, thickness!’
David looked at the three young men. One played a keyboard. One played a wailing clarinet. A third sang into a microphone that, along with the keyboard, was powered by a car battery. The music owed a lot to reggae and was not jazzy enough to suit David’s taste. ‘They’re OK,’ he said.
‘Shows what you know!’ Marie said.
Because the amplification was not of very good quality David could hear only snatches of the lyric. ‘Lit-tle girl,’ the singer sang. ‘Lit-tle vir-gin and ton-ic.’
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