Free Sins of the Flesh by Colleen McCullough

three plates filled, the three of them repaired to a small table having just three chairs. Ideal for talking, but not yet, she thought, her eyes as busy as her antennae, thrumming on full alert.
    Dr. Aristede Melos, Jess’s senior assistant, was a thin, dark man of forty-odd—strange, that nearly all the protagonists were around forty. His face was plain, his expression dour, and his eyes conveniently hidden behind thick-lensed glasses with horn rims. His brand-new wife was the bustling, cheery type, but looking into her pale-grey eyes didn’t inspire much cheer, Delia felt. Rose’s fair complexion would have benefited from pinker clothes; white simply bled her to a chalky effigy.
    The other two shrinks were husband and wife: Dr. Fred and Dr. Moira Castiglione. They radiated a long marriage complete with a couple of kids. Delia knew that Jess valued the Castigliones more than she did Melos, whom she found stubborn and afflicted with tunnel vision. Moira was red-haired and hazel-eyed, had a plain face and little charm of manner, whereas Fred, a brown man, was outgoing and ebullient. He had the gift of seeming an intent listener, though whether he actually did listen was moot, for his eyes gave nothing away. Like most married couples in the same profession, they worked as a team, used each other to bounce ideas off, and had a conversational shorthand.
    The meal ended, Todo excused himself, and Delia started to dig. “Rufus, exactly why do you and Rha invite Jess’s shrinks to your shindigs, as Shirl calls them?”
    “Ah, you’ve sensed the negative feedback.”
    “What rot! One would have to be dead not to sense emotions that strong. Your people dislike Jess’s shrinks intensely.”
    “They do, which is unfortunate,” Rufus said on a sigh. “It’s all to do with music, with Jess’s comfort, and ultimately with our duty as well as our love for Ivy. It goes back to 1962, when we invited Jess to an evening very much like this one. She went back to HI raving about it, and her senior staff got it into their heads that they should have been invited too. So they nagged.”
    “Over not being invited to a party thrown by people they didn’t know? Jess’s personal friends, unrelated to her work?”
    “You’ll understand better when the evening’s over,” Rufus said, “and I’d rather you experienced what’s going to happen in the same ignorance Jess felt at the time, which is why I don’t want to go into explanations this minute. Just take my word for it, Jess’s shrinks felt left out in the cold, and thought they deserved to be let into the warm.” He shrugged, looked wry. “A work situation can be uncomfortable when the people who consider themselves indispensable get it into their heads that they’re unappreciated. They carped and nagged.”
    “Jess is a very strong and fairly ruthless woman,” Delia said, unconvinced. “Senior professional staff behaving like children? As an explanation, Rufus, it’s weak, though I don’t doubt it’s the one fed to you and Rha—and possibly Ivy too.”
    “Point taken. Personally I tend to think that Ari Melos or one of the Castigliones caught Jess out in a bureaucratic error she’d find embarrassing to explain.”
    “More likely, yes. Capital criminals incarcerated for life as insane provide institutions like HI with their patients, and the paperwork is a nightmare.” Delia grinned. “You’ve whetted my curiosity, I’m dying to find out what’s so special about this kind of shindig. I must confess that the arrival of the shrinks looks a little like cabbage moths invading an orchid house.”
    Jess and Ivy bore down on her; Rufus escaped.
    “You both look sensational,” she said, kissing Jess’s cheek and, on a little upward leap, Ivy’s chin.
    “I’m sorry we were so late,” Jess said. “A conference.”
    “On an August Saturday?”
    “Or an August Sunday,” Jess answered dryly. “Don’t tell me it doesn’t happen to you, Delia.”
    “Oh, I