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away.
    The women hovered on the pavement.
    ‘Well,’ Vesta sighed, ‘perhaps you’ll catch him later. What were you going to ask him anyway?’
    ‘I want to know if he’s a freemason.’
    ‘How would you figure that out?’ Vesta watched the vehicle receding down East Street. ‘Do you know the secret code? Is it a handshake? Or a special word? There’s a code word, isn’t there, that you can work into the conversation?’
    Vesta had a dramatic bent that in the past had occasionally proved useful. Still, Mirabelle did not approve of it. ‘Don’t be silly. I’m sure there are masonic handshakes – different for different lodges – but it’s only between masons, and I’m obviously not one of those. No, I was simply going to ask him.’
    Vesta looked unimpressed. ‘He’d hardly just tell you, would he? Bill said it’s a secret society.’
    ‘Freemasons don’t confirm they’re freemasons, or at least they don’t have to, but they aren’t allowed to deny it either. They have a whole Judas complex. If I ask him and he says he’s not a freemason, then he isn’t one. There’s nothing dramatic about it.’
    Vesta’s eyes narrowed.‘What’s going on between you two, Mirabelle? Have you been seeing Superintendent McGregor?’
    Mirabelle looked startled. ‘Only last night.’
    ‘Dinner, you mean?’ Vesta pushed her. Not that Mirabelle ate.
    ‘No. I bumped into him. I went to the boxing and he was there. That’s all.’
    Vesta took a breath. It gave her a moment to think. There was no point in quizzing Mirabelle more closely. If there was a medal for dodging questions, rather than dodging bullets, then Her Majesty would definitely award it to Miss Bevan. In the two years Vesta had known Mirabelle she still hadn’t scratched very far beneath the surface. When anything personal came up, Mirabelle iced over. It vexed Vesta that, to her boss, the whole world was a crime scene. It was as if she was always on the lookout for something out of place to latch on to – a knot to unravel that took attention away from her tightly coiled emotions. Still, at least it meant she’d always talk about a case.
    ‘What on earth do you think this is all about, then? I mean, if McGregor is a mason, why is it important? It’s only a bit of dressing up. A funny handshake and a secret meeting. Unless you think Bill’s conspiracy theory is right.’
    ‘I don’t know yet,’ Mirabelle admitted, ‘but it’s intriguing, isn’t it?’
    Vesta considered this. ‘Queen’s Road, then?’
    ‘Let’s go.’
    The walk only took a few minutes from Bartholomew Square. As they climbed the hilly streets Mirabelle looked at the shining new aerials mounted on the roofs. She rarely ventured very far up the roads that led away from the front. Up here, the Georgian horizon was punctuated with a forest of thin metal branches sticking up from elegant buildings in various stages of disrepair.
    ‘Televisions,’ Vesta nodded. ‘Everyone and his mum got one for the Coronation.’
    ‘Yes, of course.’ Mirabelle had listened to the ceremony on the wireless as the summer rain beat on the window. It would have felt intrusive to have a screen with a moving picture at home.
    ‘We saw it on Mrs Agora’s new set,’ Vesta enthused. ‘Charlie baked biscuits – Coronation cookies he called them – and Mrs Agora had us in. It’s like having another auntie. A white one.’ Hot from the exertion of walking up the steep incline, the girl fanned herself with a piece of paper she had folded for the purpose. ‘Is it much farther?’
    Mirabelle pointed at the street sign. ‘No, just up here,’ she said, emerging onto the main street past the church. She looked left and right along Queen’s Road. There were pubs as you got closer to the station, and some offices and private accommodation. When she thought about it, there weren’t that many buildings that might house a freemasons’ lodge. ‘Do you think that’s the place, over there?’
    ‘I