Parnokianlipstic - thank you, friend! I thought these four deserved a chapter that was a bit less crisis and a bit more happiness and togetherness. The poetry took some digging, because I wanted exactly the right thing for them. I'd had Houseman on the brain because Inspector Lewis quotes that particular piece not once but twice, but the cummings took more digging. And I love both as part of the language these couples share.

Anyway, a bit of a turn into something different this week, but I've got plans for Jims and company. They're still very nacent plans but rest assured they're not forgotten :)

Afterwards, Jem blamed Constable Benwick, because the circus had been his idea. If Kitty had been home it almost certainly would have been hers, but since she was in Toronto, apparently mired reporting the annexation of the Sudetenland with accuracy, the circus was Benwick's idea. Probably because Kitty had put him up to it.

It started out a normal evening. Scratch that. It started out as normal as an evening at the circus could with the Blythe-Carlisle gremlins in tow. By now they were probably too old to be singing quite so raucously and lustily as they walked down to the field the circus had appropriated, but if that was so, it was news to the gremlins.

Van Amburgh is the man, that goes to all the shows…

Loud, definitely off-key, and led with vim and vigour by the younger Misses Blythe. Sophy and Isobel, in moments of informality. Which were plenty.

He sticks his head in the lion's mouth, and keeps it there awhile,
And when he pulls it out again – he greets you with a smile!

Tuesday, running helter-skelter between his disparate pack members, provided the best canine harmony he could. This too was boisterous, vociferous and verging on the ungodly. Jem thought half-seriously about suggesting they give it a rest and save their Superior Gremlins, or whatever the classification for related adult onlookers was, an everlasting earworm. But they were enjoying themselves. The air swirled with the heady smells of the sea, autumnal leaves, popping corn and animals. It was a potent combination. Little Nattie Carlisle trotted doggedly at Iain's elbow, and up ahead her brother hung like a limpet on Geordie's arm. He was saying, 'And will there be elephants, Dad? And Lions? And will someone really stick their head in the mouth of one?'

'Well,' said Geordie with gravity, 'They just might, Ben. I, for instance, know a boy, about so tall…' he indicated Ben's height with an increasingly gnarled hand, 'brown hair…' this being Ben's hair colour, 'and I guess I can think of a certain Superintendent who just might feed that boy, so tall, brown hair, like I said, to the lions if…'

'Dad!' said with indignation. 'Be serious!'

'I am,' said Geordie.

'If he were being really, truly, serious,' said Jem, 'he'd be threatening to feed Nattie to the lions, isn't that right, Ben?'

Cue squeals of indignation from Nattie, Iain and Sophy. Tuesday barked loyal defence.

'You,' said Judith Carlisle with all the elegant severity that was her birth right, to Jem, 'are not helping.'

'I dunno,' said Jem, and shrugged. 'I rescued Ben from the lions, didn't I?'

'Hypo-poetical lions,' said Ben with the solemnity of youth. Jem, studiously did not catch Judith Carlisle's eye. Hypo-poetical lions indeed. He slapped a hand to his thigh and brought Tuesday to heel. It at least gave them the trappings of order.

The tent hooved into view, gaudy in its circus stripes. Great pied bands of scarlet and canary yellow that dazzled the eye in the setting sun. Jem had never seen anything like it and he liked to think he'd seen his share of unlikely sights. If he squinted into the distance he could just make out a collection of motley caravans and tethered hores. Dogs too, from the way Tuesday's ears were twitching.

At the tent's mouth a man was bellowing ingress to the teeming masses. Parents fought to coral children, who wrestled and tumbled and cavorted on bales of hay. Tuesday pressed his long blue nose to the ground and snuffled furiously. Definitely dogs nearby. Or food. Or both.

Jem felt more than he saw the slight stiffening of Judith Carlisle and hid another smile. Judith's heritage didn't often betray itself. But then they'd ruck up against something like the straw and the animal smell of the circus, and one caught just a snatch of her origin story, of the kind of people who had written off Geordie Carlisle as being, in addition to the wrong age and religion, also, by virtue of his career as a policeman, the wrong class to be courting their daughter.

It was only a moment. The gremlins were now singing with gusto,

The hyena in the next cage, most terrible to relate,
Got awful hungry the other day, and ate up its female mate.

They were still extremely loud, fantastically off-key and absurdly zealous in their singing. Tuesday was still their dedicated accompanist. Jem shook his head. Helped Geordie marshal everyone through the striped doors of the tent and up into the stands. This was not easy, because the gremlins were still wrestling and wriggling like snakes in a pit and Tuesday was trying to see how many ankles he could thread his long, blue body around.

But then the music struck up, even gaudier and more raucous than the gremlins in their multitude could muster. There were majestic elephants, and noble lions. One man really did stick his head in the mouth of one, as per Van Amburgh and his bizarre menagerie, and did, also, as per the song, greet them with a smile. Jem was still grateful for the acrobats that followed. It made him think less of the stuffed tiger he had once had the misfortune to see used as an unlikely murder weapon. Or of Puck, plucky and infuriating – the descriptions were entirely dependent on the Meredith letter writing – monkey of Trinity House, Singapore. Puck had a favourite tea and a special teacup. And not even his improbable nemesis, Una Meredith would have subjected him to the host of ludicrous tricks a young boy was currently coaxing out of his own monkey down below. The boy was a skinny thing, and sallow. Dark haired and probably underfed. But he charmed the monkey ably.

The crowd loved them. The gremlins loved them. Jem thought he might never look at a photo of beloved, irascible Puck the same way ever again.

Boy and monkey moved on to be displaced by a clown with outsized shoes, red nose and a bag of tricks that, while completely flat, could at least be laughed at without crushing the part of Jem's soul that fervently believed Tuesday to be human. Long nosed, short legged and canine, but also very definitely human and a part of the family. One clown whacked the other over the head with a hammer as outsized as his shoes and beside Jem, Faith grumbled that she had treated that particular clown days ago for concussion. She'd sent him away with strict orders to find a new stunt and he'd agreed. The evidence on stage said he patently had not.

Strange to say, that was not what led to the murder.

Though in point of fact, it wasn't murder. The curtain came up, the trapeze came down, and as the long ribbon uncoiled, a woman tumbled in a slow, graceful and leaden arc to the ground. There was a thud as she hit the straw. Jem was obliquely aware that this was not supposed to happen. He was more aware that what he had heard was not the sound of a person falling to earth. Around them awed spectacle had become horror-struck silence. One or two thrills of ecstatic shouting were converted mid-outcry to gasps of terror. There was screaming and scrabbling, and when Jem looked around all he saw was the poised attentiveness of Faith, Helen and Christopher, because they too knew what lifelessness sounded like.

So did Geordie, and he was on his feet now, bellowing to equal any lion, ordering people away and back, cordoning off the body of the unfortunate trapeze artist. Tuesday, dedicated but unintentional police dog that he was, followed suit, his considerable bark belying all four inches of stature.

'Come on,' said Jem, and hauled Faith out of her seat. Then, belatedly, 'Or would you rather…'

'Go on,' said Judith Carlisle, as if it was an everyday occurrence for circus outings to end in death, 'I've got the gremlins.'

They went down together, taking the stairs two and three at a time, Geordie slower only because he was still trying to hold off the panicked throng. Jem turned his head to signal him All right on our side and saw the lithe figures of Helen and Christopher dogging parental heels. It occurred to Jem that probably it wasn't normal for one's children to assist on an autopsy. He opened his mouth to say as much before becoming aware that that ship had sailed somewhere around the time he'd taken the children to work with him and let Faith sleep – oh lord, was it almost twenty years ago? Must be. Stable door locked, horse bolted, anyway. Nothing for it. The more the merrier.

'I thought you weren't going to be a doctor, ever?' Helen was saying to Christopher.

'I'm not,' he said. He said it shortly because there were more stairs than was normal on the risers and he was out of breath. 'But she's dead, so I guess we can't just sit there.'

Jem caught Faith's eye. If ever anything had sounded more like the schooled medical doctor…

'Blood,' said Faith, getting to the body first. 'But not enough of it.'

She was right; there was blood on their corpse and on the rigging of the trapeze but only in the way there was also blood to be found on a kitchen counter after you'd diced a raw steak. There was also blood on the woman who had come to kneel and keen next to the deceased, but still not enough for a crime of this magnitude.

'Oh, good,' said Jem. 'So we're plus one corpse, less one crime scene. Any bets on – now what did that to you?' This as he turned over the body of the late trapeze artist and uncovered a spot of blunt trauma. Fingered the grooves of it experimentally. Unusual, definitely.

'Manner? Cause? Mechanism?' said Geordie, joining them.

'And look at that,' said Jem and grinned. 'An old dog can learn new tricks. Mac would be tickled. In another life you jumped straight to asking for a time of death, but you've only gone and remembered our triangle of important things.'

Geordie shrugged. Said, 'I took for granted that time of death was a given.'

'Crowds of witnesses?' Faith said and shook her head. 'Not likely.'

'Clouds,' said Geordie, but with affected severity. 'Just you ask my wife. Or possibly Mara. Compassed us round about with so great a cloud of witnesses. You should know better, ministerial background and all that.'

Faith snorted. She went on helping Jem examine the trapeze artist in situ. Geordie said, 'What do you mean not likely? We saw it happen.'

'We,' said Jem, 'saw a body fall out of a trapeze. Not the same thing at all.'

He motioned to the keening woman, face now smeared with smudged paint and said, 'If you would, Geordie…'

Geordie got the woman by the elbow and led her off to one side, inquiring for her name as they went. There was something not right about her, Jem thought. About the blood and the paint. Almost as if…but no. She wouldn't have painted over the blood. That made no sense. Jem watched Geordie settled her on the side-lines, next to the man who had motioned them into the tent mere hours ago, and lope patiently back, keen for what particulars his attendant medics could give him.

Helen pushed Tuesday's magnificent and overly-curious nose away from the corpse. 'Not for you, Tuesday. Look, Uncle Geordie, see here? That's a peri-mortem injury and it's a while ago. You can tell because…'

'I'll put in for retirement now, shall I?' said Jem.

'Sorry,' said Helen. But she didn't retreat from the body either. 'Though actually…what has done that?'

'Youth hasn't yet triumphed over experience, then,' said Geordie. Jem bent closer and looked where Helen's hands rested either side of the victim's head.

'That's not a normal shape,' Helen said, ignoring Geordie.

'No,' came various familial murmurs. Jem said, 'I'm going to have to test things against that. Back in the police surgery. Christopher, ring Teddy, can you? He's got the station house phone tonight. Tell him to send someone…' Christopher was off, loping gracefully towards the city centre and the nearest emergency telephone.

'Right,' said Geordie. 'I'm off to conduct interviews. Starting with Gladys over there.' He jerked a thumb in the direction of the circus trouper who had been so recently in attendance on Jem's corpse. She had circled back their way, Jem noticed, and was even now scrutinizing them carefully. Faith saw her too, a fact Jem realised when she nudged him and said with amusement, 'You've got an admirer, doctor.'

'Surely not,' said Jem. He was only half listening, anyway. He had both eyes on the corpse and half an ear on Geordie. He was saying, 'Faith, will you be needed at the surgery or can you – '

'I'll tell the others,' Faith said. 'This isn't my job for a reason. Jem, give Gladys there a prescription or something and cheer her up. She'll enjoy the attention.' Jem ignored her.

Geordie smiled benevolence. Then, spying a dubious personage in a grey overcoat and sporting a crooked hat, 'And for God's sake get rid of him, can you?'

Faith and Jem followed the older man's sightline. 'And that is…?'

'A hack,' said Jem and Geordie simultaneously. Faith snorted. Said, 'Like him that much, do you?'

Judith appeared through the crowd and said as he shepherded Jem's gremlins away from the scene, 'That's Kitty's replacement. I'll leave you to guess how well he's gone over.'

'Lead balloons come to mind,' said Faith. 'Oh, and Geordie, in-between interviews, see if you can't find the actual crime scene, hm? This isn't it.'

The following day was Saturday. This should have meant a lazy day roaming the woods with Tuesday, and the possibility of tea at Fox Corner. Instead, Jem spent a fruitless morning bent over the body of the former trapezist trying and failing to match potential murder weapons to the shape of her head injury. By the time Benwick appeared to say the others were convening at the Superintendent's house and would Jem join them, all Jem knew was that it wasn't a hammer, or an axe, or a wrench. It wasn't any part of an automobile that Jem could discern, nor was it medical. He had even had one of the lads send for and fetch him back the harnessing kit for the trapeze and it couldn't have made the dent, either. Exasperated, Jem took a mould and left it to set before setting out for the Carlisles.

But not before Benwick said as he dogged him down the hall, 'Oh, and some woman from the local circus – Gladys something? – called to see you, Doc.'

Jem frowned. Benwick said, 'Not to worry, I fobbed her off. Figured she probably didn't want to see her dead friend and all that.'

'Thanks Benwick,' said Jem wryly and left the station house behind him.

He arrived to find the others there already, one of Judith Carlisle's famous teas dominating the living room coffee table. Jem picked out scones and fresh cream, rugalach, finger sandwiches, and shortbread. This last was presumably Mara's contribution to the affair. She was even now wrangling the tea service with Judith while Shirley relaxed against a much-battered armchair and talked over Kitty's latest telephone call with Teddy.

As Jem came into the room, Teddy was saying, '…and they had the gall to ask her to keep quiet, apparently. About a thing like that – can you imagine?'

'No danger there,' said Shirley, laconic as ever. 'Keeping quiet is anathema to Kitty.'

'Especially where the gremlins were concerned,' said Faith, waving Jem into a spot beside her on the sofa. Jem took it, gratefully. He had been bent entirely too long over the late Flying Flora,late Trapeze artist, and was now feeling the after-effects in his back. He rubbed at it, saw that Tuesday was gnawing gently on what appeared to be Judith's tapestry work and twisted around to divorce dog from ill-got edibles. He felt the ill-considered effects of that, too. Sometimes time would insist on reminding you it had marched stolidly on.

Judith and Mara seemed to have reached a truce over the tea. Mara took a cake hostage and Judith carried the tray in and set the china down with a rattle. It had nothing on the noise ricocheting off the windows. Jem glanced towards them and saw earlier deductions had been right; The gremlins were out there, their usual game of Circus now involving an unlooked for and murderous plot twist. Ben, as the Carlisle baby appeared to have drawn the short straw and was filling in as the corpse.

'Well, Doc?' said Teddy, accepting one of Judith Carlisle's teacups, 'Got a verdict for us?'

'Manner was murder, cause was blunt object to the head, mechanism was severe haemorrhage of the brain and cracked skull as a result of the trauma,' said Jem. He rattled it off easily, but that didn't take the sting of frustration out of the fact that he had as yet to deduce what had caused the trauma to the back of Flying Flora's head.

'Weapon, before you ask, still undetermined.'

'Undetermined?' asked Geordie. 'Do I want to know?'

'It was a very unusual shape,' said Faith in conciliatory tones.

'Unusual how?' asked Judith.

'Unusual in the sense that none of your standard blunt objects fit the injury,' said Jem. Geordie grimaced. Said, 'Well, that's not exactly new. But let us know when you crack it, eh?'

Jem said he would do and sipped thoughtfully at his tea. It was spiced with cardamon and cloves. One of Judith's more extravagant purchases, Jem supposed. Nice, anyway, whatever it was. He sipped at it and listened to Teddy's bubbling frustration over their inability to find the crime scene.

'It's definitely not the circus,' he said. 'We've looked. Short of having you use that blue stuff on it, Doc…'

'Luminol,' said Jem reflexively.

'Yeah,' said Teddy, 'that.'

'Not without a murder weapon,' said Geordie. 'What do you think we are? Made of money, Inspector? We can't just traipse through every house between here and Christendom asking if, oh, by the way, have you clobbered anyone lately, what with and how did they clean up.'

'I know!' said Teddy, exasperated. He gesticulated with a shortbread biscuit for emphasis. 'I know! All I'm saying is if we had some kind of idea what had done for this circus clown – '

'Trapeze artist,' said Jem. 'Not clown. Her name was Flora. And that reminds me, her friend dropped by the station.'

'Friend?' said Teddy. Geordie groaned. 'Not the one that's so keen on you?' he said to Jem.

'I hardly think…' began Jem, and then, realising the futility of the exercise, 'Benwick saw her, not me. Thought you might like to know. In case she saw something, or someone.'

'Or killed Flora?' offered Shirley.

'Well, if she did it's the best performance since your turn,' with a nod to Mara, 'in Dear Octopus.' Then, with reflection, 'Mind you, it wouldn't be the first time.'

They began to bat theories around as to the murder of Flying Flora, trapeze artist. But without a murder weapon or a crime scene it was difficult to know where to start. And, if you took the interviews of the other evening seriously, which Jem and the others didn't particularly, there was not motive, either.

'Well,' said Mara, ever practical, 'they've got to have moved her, if Jem and the others agree she wasn't killed on the trapeze.'

'Right,' said Faith. 'And that's difficult work. Try moving a body, sometime.'

Resolute demurrals from the others. Teddy said, 'It would be messy, too, yeah? If they were carrying around a dead woman with a head wound? Or…Doc, how long before the bleeding stopped?'

So they debated that academically, too, until Jem saw fit to point out that they might not have simply carried Flora into the circus. 'They could,' he said, 'have rolled her up in the living room carpet, or something.'

Teddy groaned. Geordie said, 'Look at it this way, Teddy, if they've done that then there's chances you'll get blood for the good doctor to run.'

'You might, anyway,' said Judith. 'She was dressed for the trapeze. So either the murderer did that – which can't have been easy – or she was murdered just before going on.'

'Dare I ask?' said Geordie. 'Does the timing work?'

Jem looked at Faith, who looked back at him, unblinking. Jem sipped his tea and declined comment. In the ensuing silence the gremlins came tumbling back into the room and descended in a hoard upon the remains of the food. Obviously their murderous circus excursion was faring better than the reality.

'Nothing for it,' said Geordie when nothing was forthcoming. 'My sweet, do me a favour and call that awful hack, will you?'

'Out of the goodness of my heart, is this?' said Judith. 'Cultivating press relations?' Geordie snorted. Jem thought Helen choked on a biscuit. 'Find out what he knows, why don't you?' he said. 'See if the bloody man has a lead.'

Judith hummed agreement.

'And my sweet,' said Georde to Judith now halfway across the room.

'Hm?' said Judith.

'Trail your coat.'

Looks of bafflement from the gremlins. Gentle laughter from the women.

'Trail what?' said Helen for her contemporaries.

'Flirt,' said Judith, Mara and Faith in unison.

'But – ' stammered Nattie Carlisle around a finger sandwich.

Geordie was unfazed. 'She's very good at it,' he said. The children stammered harder. Jem made the mistake of catching Faith's eye and choked on his tea.

It was Sunday. The mould had set, and Jem was no further in identifying the weapon. Frustrated, he took the mould home on the chance the untrained eye would have better luck with it than he had.

He found the untrained eye finishing off the remnants of one of Teddy's Sunday roasts. It smelled divine, the air still redolent of sage and rosemary.

'You,' said Faith, seeing him. 'I have a bone to pick with you.'

'Oh?' said Jem.

'You'll never guess who turned up at my improvised Sunday Surgery.'

Jem blinked. Said, 'Bet I can't either. Rubbish at that sort of thing. 'S'why it's not my job,' and he grinned at her.

'I'll have a go, shall, I?' said Mara. She beamed the sort of grin Jem more usually associated with her Beatrice. 'Name as starts with G, rhymes with 'lattice', keen on our doctor?'

'I really don't think,' began Jem, but it was useless.

'Well I do,' said Faith. 'You weren't there to see how disappointed Gladys-rhymes-with-lattice was that I was the Dr Blythe in question. Or how astonished she was to hear we'd been married for seventeen years this September.'

Laughter and the chink of Sunday china mixed with the horrified exclamations of assorted gremlins. Said Sophy with gusto, 'But she's not allowed to like Dad! He's Dad and anyway, he has Mum!'

'Well, quite,' said Jem, feeling he couldn't have said it better. He found the mould in his pocket and placed it amidst the remains of the meal, and said, 'Here's one for any of you to have a go at. What the devil killed Flying Flora of the trapeze?'

Several heads bent in scrutiny of it. Sophy leaned too far in and her head collided with that of Christopher to general chaos. Teddy left his seat to see to both children at once and tripped over Tuesday, who squealed betrayal. Mara, unhelpfully, was laughing.

'But that's easy,' she was saying. This was news to Jem, who could still feel the long hours of scrutiny in his lower back.

'Have you never seen a lemon press?' she said to him now. Unhelpfully, Shirley appeared to have picked this moment to forgo brotherly solidarity in favour of spousal agreement.

'Of course!' he said. 'Mother Susan had one. I never thought.'

Jem forewent pointing out that neither Shirley nor Mara had seen the murdered woman, and could not, possibly, have thought of this sooner, even if they'd wanted to. He focused on what seemed the salient point. Over Mara's golden head he said to Faith, 'What's a lemon press when it's at home?'

Faith, also forgoing the solidarity that seventeen years of marriage should logically have earned him, as Jem perceived it, shrugged.

'Here,' Mara said, 'there'll be one in the kitchen.'

'Will there?' asked Faith. She sounded dubious. Jem took her point.

'There will so,' said Mara. 'Because I gifted it you for a wedding present.' Gracefully she eschewed the confusion of chairs and gremlins around the table and headed for the kitchen. But Larkrise's domestic arrangements were apparently on Jem's side if no one else was, because the supposed lemon press proved elusive.

'I'd better grab it,' said Teddy. 'Probably Fox Corner keeps the thing somewhere totally else. You all right, Soph?'

Christopher barely had time to inquire into the nature of his status as chopped liver when Teddy reappeared, lemon press in hand. It was small, obliquely oblong and egg shaped, pointed at the top and fitted exactly the mould Jem had set on the table. Jem glared at it.

'That,' he asked with no small incredulity, 'caused all that damage?'

'I'd guess so,' said Teddy, holding the offending thing out to Jem. 'Feel the weight of it. Nice, silver thing like this? Doctoring's your job but I guess it would do the trick.'

Jem took the lemon press and turned it over in his hand. Wondered, because it had yet to be explained, what the deuce one did with a lemon press. When not murdering the flying trapeze act, obviously. Because whatever else the thing did, Jem could tell immediately that Teddy was right. The thing weighed a tonne. He hefted it experimentally in his hand.

'Wanted to make sure Faith had a way out, did you, Ariel?' he said. Sophy looked if possible more horrified than previously.

'Hardly,' said Mara. 'They've got rules against that sort of thing where I'm from.'

'Right,' said Jem, 'well I suppose we're looking at kitchens, then. And at people likely to have one of these lying around.'

'Likely to have a nice one,' said Teddy. 'They don't all come in sterling silver.'

'Strictly speaking,' said Faith, 'if it doesn't pass the sterling test for – '

'You know what I mean,' said Teddy. 'They're posh. Can't imagine the clown lot are likely to have something like that lying around.'

So they went to search the caravans of the circus troupe. Only they hit a logistical issue with Flora's caravan because someone had burned it, as per unspecified tradition. Teddy was furious. Geordie was more nearly cyanotic.

They hit a further logistical issue when one Big Alf appeared with a pack of dogs and proceeded to object to their investigation on cultural grounds of oblique nature. He had last been seen bellowing at the mouth of the circus tent, and was a big, square-built, square-jawed type with a voice that came out of the bowels of the earth. Jem did not fancy the chances of anyone inclined to go to war against him. Geordie, with the full weight of the Superintendent's position behind him and ramrod straight with it, went into full tirade. Big Alf did not budge. He did not, in fact, say anything. He did not have to, because the pack of dogs, hitherto sitting mute and tethered behind him, began to bark. They did not bark the way Tuesday barked, which was to say with great ambition but no real purpose. This was fierce, savage barking and Jem got the distinct impression these dogs were not pets. They probably weren't tame, either. More like a lesser sort of lion. He was about to point out the illegality of setting them fighting when Gladys of the other evening appropriated his elbow.

'I was hoping you'd be here,' she said. 'I wanted a word.'

'Er…'said Jem. 'Look, I'm not really the right person. Inspector Lovall, though, just there…'

She had got red-talonned fingers into Jem's elbow. It was painful. He looked around for an exit but between the caravans in need of investigation and the furiously barking dogs, nothing presented itself.

'Right,' said Jem. 'Well, show me your caravan, why don't you, and you can tell me as we go.'

'Oh, that wouldn't be right,' said Gladys and laughed. 'Men not from the community alone with us – that's against the rules.'

'That's right,' said Big Alf, his dogs were currently barking to raise the dead. He reiterated the edict and Geordie sputtered furiously for another five minutes, but did not storm the barricades.

Instead, he turned with spectacular flare on his heel and muttered darkly, 'At least we have an obvious solve to thatproblem.'

'Oh no,' said Jem. 'No, no, no, no, no. No.'

'Sir,' said Teddy, 'You aren't thinking…'

'Course I bloody am,' said Geordie. 'Anyway, Judith loves an excuse to muck into the thick of it.

'Yes,' said Teddy, 'but the procedure says – '

'Procedure,' said Geordie, 'doesn't have to deal with Big Alf over there and his dogs.'

They reconvened at the Carlisles, where Geordie's mood was partly sweetened by tea and partly by Judith's rather better success with the first-rate hack masquerading as a reporter.

'It turns out,' Judith said, pouring out, 'That your Flora was indebted to everyone and his dog.'

'Unfortunate,' said Teddy, 'if it really did include the dogs.'

Judith raised her eyebrows but did not ask. Teddy held up a consolatory hand and she pressed on. 'And she'd been cavorting – your hack's word, my love, not mine – with someone by the name of Big Alf.'

'Ah,' said Geordie. 'That charmer. Makes stone henge seem bloody chatty. How on earth…'

Not one to miss an opportunity, Judith said, straight-faced, 'Well, you see, when a man loves a woman very much, there's – '

'Very funny. And not what I meant. I take it there's a Mrs Equally Big Alf who took exception to this cavorting?'

Beside Jem, Teddy turned an outstanding shade of red and proceeded to choke on his tea.

'And several mistresses. Shall I explain…?'

'No,' said Teddy and Geordie together. Jem just refrained from laughing. Geordie, because he was incorrigible, said, 'Did you flirt?'

'Trail my coat?' said Judith and laughed. 'You never think he parted with all those details willingly?'

Geordie shook his head. Said, 'Dare I ask what you've promised him?'

'By all means,' said Judith. 'I doubt you'd understand. I'd probably have to explain. With diagrams.'

They laughed, all of them, there being no children around to be scandalised. But it was a shame, Jem thought, because here was a textbook example of unthreatened matrimony. He'd have liked some of their murderers to have seen it.

That was how they went overnight from no motive to altogether too much, and a weapon custom wouldn't let them locate. Geordie glowered into a bridge hand and said that if they burned the other caravans too he would ensure the lot of clowns was held in contempt of court. Jem did not bother pointing out that they were not all of them clowns, and not because he was too preoccupied trying to parse his cards.