Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 40, No. 6, June, 1995

Inspector McKell had fallen into the habit of letting his wife drive him to work and take their car to her own workplace. He had the use of official vehicles while on duty, but lunch hours left him between the devil of Central’s dreary canteen and the deep blue sea of sinfully expensive restaurants where only the bill would be presented in English. Unless he patronized a midget sandwich bar — the premises, not the sandwiches — where no crowd-disliker could bear to linger during nourishment.

Being well organized, Tom McKell picked up a sandwich on the way to work and, weather permitting, lunched in Castle Hill Park. “I’m not antisocial, but you need a minute or two’s fresh air and peace and quiet. I do, leastways.”

One lunchtime he was absorbed in his paperback Pickwick Papers when a shadow fell across the page. “Fancy bumping into you,” Tania Wark trilled. “My, that bench looks inviting, so cosy and secluded.” She sat close enough for a shiny nylon knee to graze his thigh. “I hope Mrs. McKell doesn’t hear about this and get the wrong idea.” He was mildly surprised that his book’s pages stayed dormant while her false eyelashes fanned so vigorously.

McKell had been interested in Tania Wark for a month or more. Many men found her eminently fanciable. While bold-eyed blondes with good bodies never lack for admirers, the inspector’s interest was professional. He felt that Mrs. Wark had something on her mind, like a deal. Now he was sure of it.

Tania Wark had not happened to encounter him during a lunch-hour stroll. Tall, she chose to look taller, and her backless, needle-heeled shoes were not made for the shaggy turf and gravel paths of Castle Hill Park. Someone had told her that he might well be found there, inspiring Mrs. Wark to drive a mile and a half in order to meet him by accident. Not just a pretty face, she was a qualified pharmacist and ran a chemist shop at Appleyard, one of the town’s better suburbs. McKell knew her from Long-down’s after-hours drinking clubs. Mr. Wark — he owned the chemist shop — was a homebody who permitted his wife to behave like a single. Possibly he welcomed her nights on the town as a respite.

Smiling politely, McKell closed his book and studied her. “Penny for your thoughts!” she cried, when silence grew long enough to embarrass her, though not him.

“I never think off duty,” McKell lied, still smiling.

Tania Wark shifted away, jawline firming. But along with that went an aura of new respect. Pretending to sunbathe, she spoke dreamily. “Being a copp — policeman, you must be a good judge of character. Me, people are always surprising me. I’m a t’riffic people-watcher, you see. Well, stuck behind a shop counter, it’s either that or go crazy from boredom.”

He was unmoved by her level gaze, lips slightly parted, eyebrows slightly raised in implicit cue for him to suggest other cures for boredom. He’d dealt with many a Tania Wark in his time, learning that flirtation was their reflex to male company.

Tom McKell made a vaguely impatient noise. Mrs. Wark continued, overtly rambling still, “I usually get them wrong, that’s the funny part. Executives turn out to be hooligans and vice versa. Angel-faced kids are the worst shoplifters. Even customers I know pretty well, or thought I did, are full of surprises.

“Case in point, Ivy Challis — I only mention her because you know Ivy, too. By sight, anyway, she’s often been in the Rocket Room or Captain Hook’s when you were there. Redhead, terribly attractive, could have been a model. She’s a great friend of Ivor Grange... rest his soul.”

Inspector McKell’s fisherman’s instinct tingled, but he made no comment on her mixing of tenses in referring to Grange. Two could play at sunbathing. Eyes slitted, he sensed Tania Wark’s stare. “Hope I’m not talking out of turn, saying that. Rest his soul, I mean. Ivor hasn’t been around for days and days, and there are horrible rumors he might... have had an accident?”

“I keep hearing that, too. Small world.”

Mrs. Wark laughed angrily, a breathy yelp. “You’d be a dead loss on a talk show, making me do all the work.”

“But,” he countered blandly, “I’m a grand listener.”

She contrived to keep her temper and started over. “Ivy is ever so elegant. I mean, you’d expect her to be into champagne and caviar, coming on so classy. But would you believe it, I’ve sold her, oh, pounds’ and pounds’ worth of baby food recently. The slop in those little jars?” After a longish wait, Tania Wark finished lamely, “It just goes to show, eh?”

“Maybe she’s pregnant. Don’t women get odd cravings then?”