Free The Saint Valentine's Day Murders by Ruth Dudley Edwards Page A

surprised you’re not bearing a placatory bunch of flowers.’
    Amiss cheered up. That was another nice thing about Rachel. She didn’t mind apologizing. He addressed himself seriously to the matter of food and ordered greedily.
    ‘I don’t know if I come to Paris so often because of you or the food.’
    ‘That’s more like the old Robert,’ she said approvingly. ‘Now, what’s the matter with you? Tell me the latest.’
    ‘Not yet. I can’t do it justice till I’ve recovered from the trip and lined my stomach. You tell me about what you’ve been doing since your last letter.’
    As ever, Rachel did the job entertainingly. Amiss munched on his endive salad, grappled happily with his boeuf en croûte , drank copiously of the house wine and delighted in the tales of diplomatic cock-ups and bureaucratic hassles. He almost choked over her account of the latest battle with the French PTT. It was a relief to be reminded that he didn’t work in a uniquely silly outfit.
    She timed her last story to finish as the coffee and cognac arrived. ‘Your turn.’
    ‘Are you sure you really want to hear?’
    ‘Darling Robert,’ said Rachel, whose most enthusiastic endearment this was, ‘I’ve got too involved with this circus for you to start going coy on me now. You keep saying it’s boring, but it seems pretty action-packed to me. What’s happened since Lorre and Greenstreet departed in confusion?’
    ‘Nothing much till last night. Shipton put the fear of God into Security. They wrote a formal letter to him – circulated to all the staff – saying that the enquiries had proved totally inconclusive.’
    ‘So Shipton is no longer despised. You’ve found hidden depths in him.’
    ‘Not half. Really, you know, not all these people are as bad as they seem on the surface.’
    ‘Of course they’re not. You judged them too harshly in the beginning because you were suffering from culture-shock. You’ve led such a sheltered life. You knew nothing about how ordinary people live.’
    Amiss felt injured. ‘That’s not true, Rachel. You know it’s not. I come from a very ordinary background.’
    ‘Spare me that shit about coming from the working classes. Your parents are as middle-class in their attitudes as mine – even if they don’t have as much money.’
    ‘Oh, all right. It’s my automatic defence against allegations of privilege. Not that I admit that there’s much in common between the household of a northern solicitor’s clerk and that of a Jewish intellectual.’
    She looked fixedly at him until he giggled out loud. ‘OK, OK, I’m talking like a schmuck.’
    ‘Well stop it and tell me what’s been happening.’
    ‘Things have been pretty good, really. Everyone was very relieved when the manhunt was called off. There seems to be a tacit gentleman’s agreement to forget about Twillerton, and the plus point is that no one’s playing any more practical jokes. And Tiny’s being very nice to me.’
    ‘So what was last night like?’
    ‘Awful. Well, I admit I went to it apprehensively. All the married men had been griping about it for days, claiming they would never go if their wives didn’t insist. Endless complaints about the expense of new dresses, the difficulties of finding babysitters, the cost of wives’ train tickets, the problems of getting home. You can guess the sort of thing.’
    ‘I can. But they came anyway?’
    ‘Everyone except Melissa. I was surprised that Bill turned up. Apparently he never had before. But then he had to look after his mother until she died last year. He’s branching out a bit now.’
    ‘Where was it held?’
    ‘In the largest conference room. BCC actually have four of these occasions every year to accommodate all staff and spouses. There must have been four or five hundred at ours alone.’
    ‘It doesn’t sound like a very festive venue.’
    ‘They did try with Christmas decorations, but it was hardly the Talk of the Town. PD had two tables. I presided at