he has yet been willing to volunteer.'
Ellie smiled warily. There weren't many people left in the world who could embarrass her, but Thelma was certainly one of them. Which was probably why, as Peter had theorized, she allowed her the moral ascendancy.
Greenall had emerged from the kitchen with two more baskets which he placed before the two men at the bar, saying blithely, 'Here you are. Piping hot.'
Thelma turned back to her friends, completely unruffled. That's what I envy too, thought Ellie. I get all pink and abusive.
'Is your husband really on the case?' asked Lorraine Wildgoose.
Ellie nodded.
'Are they getting anywhere?' pursued the woman rather intensely.
'I'm not sure. I expect so,' said Ellie cautiously.
Lorraine Wildgoose looked as if she might be going to say something more and Ellie's heart sank at the prospect of having to listen to an attack on the police, no matter which of the many possible forms it took. But Thelma, as if spotting the danger, said lightly, 'What about all this clairvoyant help?'
'You read about that?' said Ellie, relieved. 'Listen, I've got a theory. I pinched a transcript of what this woman actually said from Peter. It might interest you in your archaeological hat.'
She produced the transcript and was holding forth when Greenall returned with the tartare sauce.
'Sorry to interrupt,' he said, putting the sauce on the sheet of paper in front of Thelma.
'Don't do that, Austin!' she said. 'You may offend the spirits.'
'You're doing a bit of table rapping, are you?' he said. 'Be careful. It's Mr Middlefield you don't want to offend!'
'It's OK. This is police business,' said Thelma.
'My friend is a Mrs Detective-Inspector. These are official documents.'
Greenall picked up the transcript and pretended to rub it with his sleeve, murmuring at the same time, 'By the by, Middlefield's threatening to drop in at the disco on Friday on a fact-finding tour.'
'Is he? I may join him. Thanks, Austin. Join us for a drink later?'
'I'd love to, but another time. I've got things to do and his lordship's got to be launched after lunch. Per ardua ad astra, as they say.'
He left and Ellie fluttered her eyebrows at Thelma.
'Now he seems nice, Thelma.'
'He's bearable,' she said noncommittally. 'When he came six months ago I thought Christ, another ex-RAF wizard-show chauvinist pig. But he was a nice surprise. I think he's got genuine sympathy with the feminist position.'
'I bet,' grinned Ellie.
'That, if I may say so, is the kind of crack that comes from too close an association with the racist, sexist constabulary.'
'Is that so? And perhaps you'll now explain how you come to be rolling around with evident pleasure in this male chauvinist sty,' said Ellie.
'Why, to overcome my fear of flying, of course,' said Thelma, wide eyes wider with surprise. 'Now let's eat. Ellie, you've nearly finished your drink. Would you like something else? A quart of warm milk, perhaps.'
Ellie giggled girlishly.
'You'll think I'm silly,' she said coyly. 'But being like this and all, I get these funny urges, you know how we mothers-to-be are, and whenever I eat scampi and get put down at the same time, I've just got to have a couple of glasses of Dom Perignon. It brings up the wind so nicely!'
Chapter 5
Andy Dalziel, according to much of his acquaintance, had a very simplistic approach to life. He saw everything as either black or dark blue. In this they were mistaken. Life was richly coloured for the fat man; full of villainy and vice, it was true, but with shifting shades and burning pigments, like Hogarthian scenes painted by Renoir.
Pascoe understood this. 'He detects with his balls,' he had once told Ellie gloomily.
To Pascoe's rational mind, there was still some doubt whether Brenda Sorby's murder was truly in sequence with the other two strangulations.
'She wasn't laid out like the other two,' he