Enter Pale Death by Barbara Cleverly Page A

downstream.
    Joe stared after it, sighing in mock disappointment.
    Hunnyton handed him back his glass, commenting starchily, “You look like Mr. Toad when he caught sight of his first motorcar. Sitting dazed in the middle of the road murmuring ‘Poop, poop!’ as it disappeared in a puff of smoke. I must say, I can never see the attraction of a punt.”
    “Oh, I don’t know. It’s hard not to look heroic, playing captain and crew at the same time. Towering over your girls, poised on the stern, chin raised, teeth to the wind, muscles cracking.”
    “River water running down into your armpit.” Hunnyton grinned. “You may manage to look like Odysseus resisting the call of the Sirens but you can never leave go of that bloody nine-foot-high pole! Nowhere to park it. You’re lumbered. Both hands fully occupied for the duration of the whole chilly uncomfortable event. All you can do to impress from back there on the platform is look noble and spout Homer. If you really want to make some serious progress with your girl, you’d get further in the one and ninepenny double-seaters on the back row at the Alhambra. The city lads all know that much. For them, a punt is some old fenland boat you ferry the cows across the river in.”
    “Don’t spoil it! I was just considering bringing my girl up here to stage a romantic moment,” Joe said.
    “She’s not a stranger to East Anglia, then?” Hunnyton suggested tentatively.
    “I had thought so, but you, I’m willing to wager, know better,” Joe said drily. “Shall we stop pussyfooting about and put the few cards we have between us on the table?”
    Hunnyton laughed, shrugged and plunged in. “Miss Dorcas Joliffe I understand to be known to you in some way or other. Mind telling me in what capacity exactly?”
    “I’d love to tell you exactly but there’s no exactitude about our situation at all. Wish there were.” Joe gave him the few unadorned facts about his relationship with Dorcas. It occurred to him, inhis dry account, that he’d never once discussed the matter with a male friend or relation. It came surprisingly easily when face to face with this bluff, unquestioning, apparently all-knowing fellow copper.
    “So, after a seven-year absence, so to speak, this girl comes back into your life and lays claim to you? She’d sort of marked you down as a subject of interest when she was still a whippersnapper?”
    “Dorcas was never that. She’s what some would call, fancifully, an Old Soul. Experienced beyond her years, uncertain in some things, over-confident in others … But you’ve got it just about right. She attached herself to me when she was fourteen—looking about ten at the time so I didn’t see the dangers. Terrible family background. Mother absconded when she was a baby. Father never bothered to marry any one of the succession of mistresses who flowed through his life. His children, of whom Dorcas is the eldest, ran wild, occasionally whipped into some sort of order by their fearsome grandmother, who disowned the whole brood.”
    “Lord! How’d you get involved with that mob? Couldn’t you have cut and run?”
    “Hardly. I was firmly in the middle of a murder enquiry to which Miss Dorcas held the key. A pest, a burden at times, but never less than entertaining, is what she was for me.” Not much liking the incredulity blended with pity on the superintendent’s face, he tried to explain further: “Look, Hunnyton, some people find themselves claimed by stray cats and before they know it their lives are taken over.”
    At last Hunnyton grunted his understanding. “Can’t abide cats but I’ve got a dog. I rescued it from a gang of tormenting kids when I was on the beat. It loves me and I can’t persuade it otherwise. Funny thing—I never picked him but I’d go through hell and high water for Tommy and he knows it, curse him!”
    “Tommy?”
    “He reminded me of us lads in the trenches. Us Tommies. Mongrel. No value to him but he was