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about me too, Brian. That’s what coppers do. It’s why they’ve got no friends.’
    He clutched my arm.
    ‘I had nothing to do with it.’ There was panic in his voice.
    ‘Of course you didn’t,’ I said. ‘You need to get some sleep. You’re not thinking straight.’
    We went into Mother’s house and found her upstairs in her study, writing her daily letter to Fulton.
    ‘I haven’t told him about Darlene,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to worry him until we know what’s really happened.’
    I thought this was an odd expression, but didn’t comment on it. I knew that Mother loved gossip, but I also knew that she held firmly to the view that events could not be dressed neatly as anecdotes in the presence of grief. She put down her pen and asked, ‘Brian, is this Sarah person a big woman?’
    This was precisely what I had intended to ask.
    ‘No,’ he said. ‘She’s small, petite. Smaller than Darlene. The coppers asked me the same thing. I told them that she was mad, and that mad people are very strong.’
    ‘Yes,’ Mother said, ‘when they’re in a frenzy. But this was planned. She must have had help.’
    ‘Yeah. And they think I’m the one who helped her.’
    ‘Well, of course they do, darling. They’re not entirely sure that I’m innocent either. We just have to get on and let them do their work. There’s no point taking it personally.’
    ‘If I could just turn the clock back,’ Brian said and began expressing his profound regret over his affair with Sarah Goodenough. Mother listened patiently, but I left them and went downstairs, and helped myself to a slice of Darlene’s ever-diminishing fruit cake. While I was in the kitchen, I realised Mother was right — Sarah Goodenough must have had an accomplice, and the accomplice must have been a man. He probably came with her from Maryborough. If I wanted to go any way towards finding Darlene, I would have to telephone Sergeant Peter Topaz in Maryborough, and this was something I really didn’t want to do.
    My relationship with Peter Topaz was less than cordial. I acknowledge that I had made one or two understandable errors of judgement in my efforts to clear my name, but he’d been wrong about me, and that should have evened the score. He hadn’t quite seen it that way. Nevertheless, finding Darlene, apart from being the first feather in my PI agent’s cap, was more important than my feelings about a country-town walloper who harboured a grudge. I rang the exchange and booked a call to the Maryborough police station. I would be connected, I was told, in half an hour.
    While I was waiting, I flicked through that day’s copy of The Age . There was very little in the way of professional theatre in town. ‘The Mikado’ was playing at His Majesty’s — nothing for me there. Singing is not among my accomplishments, although I can carry a tune well enough. ‘Robert’s Wife’ was on at The Comedy. Lowbrow fare. Apart from that, there was the Tivoli, and I wasn’t prepared to prostitute my talent by donning a pair of roller skates and performing a vulgar dance surrounded by half-naked women. I don’t consider dancing on roller skates to be a skill. It is simply a failure of the imagination.
    My acting career might have to be rested. Indeed, I saw no reason why I couldn’t combine acting with investigating, should a suitable part come along. The certainty that one did not preclude the other, and the equal certainty that I had a talent for both, filled me with a sense of optimism and excitement. My reverie was interrupted by the clang of the telephone. My person-to-person call to Peter Topaz was now ready. I thanked the operator and waited for the sound of Topaz’s voice.
    ‘Well, well, well. Will,’ he drawled, and I reminded myself that those elongated vowels didn’t reflect any lassitude in his thinking.
    ‘Peter,’ I said, and tried to sound as though all that had passed between us was now of no consequence. ‘How are